Arise, Democrats - and Lift Your Voices in Opposition

Rank and file Democrats want an opposition, not a collaboration. Don't kiss the ring - and demoralize the party even further.

1.

I rise this week to discuss the current psychic state of the most successful American political entity of the last 100 years. I speak, of course, of the great Democratic Party.

Our vast and imperfect political party defeated Hitler, saved the economy, launched Medicare and Social Security, passed civil rights, and led the fight for greater fairness and opportunity for hundreds of millions of Americans. Yet we’re now trapped in a post-election crisis of confidence, our Congressional leadership quieted and prostrated, with various nationally known elected Democrats openly flirting with Elon Musk, floating a Trump pardon, and even musing that this incoming extremist administration may extend public healthcare.

We had the specter in recent days of California Rep. Ro Khanna extolling the virtues of “DOGE” - the phony government-cutting non-department supposedly to be headed by Elon Musk and extremist Vivek Ramaswamy to gut public services - and musing that Trump may support Medicare for All. (He’s threatened to cut Medicare, of course). Senator Bernie Sanders (always happy to damage the Democratic brand with voters) said he looked forward to working with Musk and Ramaswamy to cut defense spending (yeah right, Musk is a defense contractor). Senator John Fetterman signaled support for Trump's embattled pick to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, credibly accused of a particularly brutal sexual assault. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado praised Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump’s pick to run Health and Human Services. Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, joined the new “DOGE caucus” and told Axios he thinks "more Dems will join the caucus."

"Democrats and Republicans should work together to make government more efficient without hurting people, and whatever we can come up with as a team would be great," wheedled a shockingly smarmy Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York.

Do not do this. Enough. This can’t and won’t happen with this criminally malignant incoming administration. Look at the nominees. Look at the campaign promises. Look at the transition. Hell, look at the Republican governors. Pre-compromise on their wildly extreme positions is retreat. At this point, it’s not “reaching across the aisle” - frankly, it’s a lot closer to a seamy back-alley reach around.

The job of the Democratic Party is opposition. And our defeat - painful as it was - was very far from total. So quit bending the knee.

History is a great teacher. In his two winning elections, Ronald Reagan won by 9% and 18% - yet 1980s era Congressional Democrats still opposed Reaganism - and in retrospect, seem more willing to be that opposition, even though Trump's popular vote margin is only 1.4%. We’re taking this election as a total smackdown, when it was a narrow fourth quarter loss, aided by some bad calls.

2.

We want an opposition, not a collaboration. Don't kiss the ring. And while I’m well aware that the constant thrum of factional conflict between progressives and mere liberals dominates coverage of our party, you don’t have to look that far to find representatives of each wing using the right language.

Take, for example, two New York Democrats singing from the same hymnal of opposition. Last weekend, Congressman-elect George Latimer, a liberal Democrat from Westchester (and full disclosure: my friend) told Marcia Kramer on WCBS television:

“If Bobby Kennedy does become head of HHS and decides he wants to get out of the vaccination business for childhood diseases, there’s going to be a battle and I’m going to be on the side of those battling.”

He went on to call Kennedy’s statements on vaccinations “simply insane.” I call it simply the right kind of language to use at this moment. Where Trump’s minions are so wildly either outside the mainstream or violently dangerous, Democrats in Congress like Latimer should be direct and plainspoken. This goes for Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel or any of the Trump gallery of Rogues and Relatives slithering through Mar-a-Lago. Speak directly to constituents in non-academic terms - without bureaucratic gobbledegook - and say what you mean.

Just like AOC did. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive nominally from a different wing of the party than Latimer, talked to the media about the nomination of pro-Assad former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence, she didn’t mince words: 'Let's be very clear. A Tulsi Gabbard nomination is a pro-war nomination globally. Point blank, period.”

Indeed.

3.

That does not mean doing it all for show, as too many elected Democrats in this recent era seem to think the job entails. It means using the institutional inside game - and by its use, actively strengthening the perception of the institution with the public - and limiting the constant outside social media personality-driven harangue that has passed for too much of what we used to call “resistance.” A flurry of messaging bills that never even make a committee agenda is not “working.” It’s just spotlighting our weakness.

While this does not mean that Democrats won’t - for example - eventually agree on a national budget that passes with Republican votes (or on a handful of limited issues), it does mean not caving in advance, not crawling, not moderating or stifling our own values and goals, and not keeping silent because it’s easier.

I agree with the filmmaker and author Steven Beschloss who said we should take careful note of who kow-tows and kisses the ring - and who steps up to the firm line of opposition.

As much as I am angry and worried and prone to lament over what may come to pass, the examples of ring-kissing by people who should know better is valuable. Rather than fear that the opposition is weakened by these Americans who are bending down to Trump, they are saving us time by telling us that they are not up to the fight and we cannot count on them.

Exactly. It’s time for deciding who will go along, and who will stand up.

And by way of conclusion, I’d note that “standing up” is the very best move anyway. People like a fighter; they’re not crazy about focus group tested gray messages that aim at micro-targeting slices of the electorate without giving offense.

Or as one Democratic politician who has never lost a race told me recently “hit ‘em in the nose and hard.”

As the Florida political consultant Steve Schale wrote recently, we have to get back to speaking to everybody - and not just toting up narrow democratic slices in Google sheets.

Basically, we must get back to listening to the median voter. Bill Clinton got this. Barack Obama got this. Donald Trump gets this. That median voter probably isn’t the white “soccer mom” or “security mom” or “NASCAR dad” of elections past. Rather, the median voter today is just as likely to be a 38-year old African American father trying to figure out how to raise two kids, or a 28-year-old Hispanic woman struggling with affordable housing.

I find a lot of my party’s handwringing over where policy should fall on the ideological spectrum to be misplaced, because all that really matters is if we can convince that median voter. Win 50 percent of those voters plus one, and you win most elections.

Increasingly, our side believes we should only communicate on issues where voters give us an edge. But when the median voter isn’t there, or is worried about other issues, our communication echoes in a void. It is no wonder so many voters wonder what the hell we are all about.

The first step in answering that question is a strong and vocally forceful opposition that notches a few wins against Trump - beginning in 2025, well before the mid-terms. Start now.

listen to this

We all need some Curtis Mayfield right now.