Democrats Are Stuck Using LinkedIn Tactics In a Post-X World

Supporting liberal democracy unfortunately remains a domain of performative civility. It's time for the language of the streets.

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1.

For too long, Democrats have been playing by a set of rules that no longer apply. While the right—led by Trump, amplified by Elon Musk, and turbocharged by billionaires with an axe to grind—wages a no-holds-barred war on democracy, too many Democrats are still trapped in a losing game of LinkedIn style politeness. We craft carefully worded statements, hedge our criticisms, and act as if we’re still operating in a world where "reasonable discourse" holds any weight.

That world is gone.

Trump and Musk are not interested in debate, reason, or good-faith governance. They are arsonists, torching institutions and norms, burning down trust in government, and salting the earth so nothing functional can grow in its place. And what’s our response? A press statement? A fact-check? A politely worded post?

Supporting liberal democracy unfortunately remains a domain of performative civility. This is understandable: we are arguing for fairness, a sense or order, and progress in society. But in the political arena, and the world of media, that messaging style is losing the middle. Democrats, liberals, and progressives are still stuck in the careerist LinkedIn mindset—writing lengthy, polished takes that sound professional but lack the visceral punch needed to win the fight. The reality? The average voter sees three words in all caps on X that change the game.

Trump gets this. Musk owns this. All of Trump’s appointees get this - because they’re all chosen on their relative abilities as right wing social media trolls. In the modern media war, rage travels faster than reason.

Or to illustrate this phenomenon in an appropriately brutalist style: the new Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino is a full-time social media troll who proudly proclaimed: “My life is all about owning the libs now.”

Meanwhile, our fainting couches are getting heavy usage. You probably missed the slight kerfuffle last week in which unnamed Democratic leaders kvetched to reporters that they were “pissed” at activist groups like Indivisible because their members were calling Congressional offices demanding that their Senators and Representatives doing a better public job of standing up to Trump’s incipient authoritarianism and Musk’s ruination of the American system.

"There were a lot of people who were like, 'We've got to stop the groups from doing this,' one House member told Axios. “People are concerned that they're saying we're not doing enough, but we're not in the majority.”

Oh, heaven forfend!

That pain and suffering that Congressional staffs must endure by answering constituent phone calls - and the pure trauma that members of Congress must somehow survive by (gasp!) reading the call summaries - is quite frankly more than these poor Democrats should have to bear. Can we get some counselors to the Rayburn Building, stat?

2.

With the daily onslaught of degradation, degeneracy and lawlessness that comprises the first month of Trump-Musk Administration, you’d think that Democratic electeds would be out front leading the opposition to the dismantling of the United States rather than lobbing whiny background quotes - but as usual, it’s the rank and file of the Democratic base taking action.

This past weekend, Democratic activists targeted Musk’s car company Tesla for direct action. At dealerships around the country, angry protesters blocked entrances, shouted slogans, and got themselves on local cable news. In my home county of Westchester north of New York City, a crowd of more than 300 people flooded the Tesla showroom in Mount Kisco to protest the devastating cuts to public services of Musk’s DOGE operation, run by an unelected billionaire with non-governmental contractors gutting major departments like the FAA and slashing funding for things like childhood cancer and Alzheimer’s research.

The Mount Kisco protest was mirrored all over the country, as Musk becomes Public Enemy Number One in the fight against rising American totalitarianism. The Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch has the these protests right - it’s all about attacking Musk’s wealth and power directly:

The idea behind the nationwide #TeslaTakedown protests — with Week Three planned for next Saturday — is to weaken Musk by attacking the main source of his wealth: his massive stake in the electric vehicle giant where he still serves as inattentive CEO. The goal is both to cripple new sales of Tesla and also tank its astronomic stock price that underwrites Musk, and there are powerful signs it is already working. Many experts say the CEO’s right-wing politics are why U.S. sales of its EVs flattened in 2024 and fell below 50% of the domestic market, and also why Tesla’s value on Wall Street has plunged as much as 21% since Trump’s inauguration.

Direct action doesn’t mean abandoning our principles. But it does mean we should stop being afraid of brutal, unapologetic rhetoric. In simple terms, Democrats and anti-Trump indies need to:

• Call Trump what he is: a criminal authoritarian bent on destroying America. Stop softening the language. He’s not “dangerous to democracy.” He is actively trying to end democracy. And hurt the elderly, the sick, the vulnerable, the children. He’s making flying unsafe. He’s destroying your plans for retirement. He’s wrecking our environment. He’s pro-disease.

• Hammer Elon Musk for what he’s doing: using his platform to mainstream fascism and cut the legs out from under our liberal democracy. He is not a “tech entrepreneur with controversial views.” He is a billionaire radicalizing millions for his own power trip. He’s going to kill people, and doesn’t care. He is the embodiment of evil in our society.

• Stop worrying about sounding too "divisive." The right doesn’t care about civility, and neither should we. We should be speaking in a language that makes people feel the urgency of the threat. There is Middle Earth (us) and Mordor (them). Don’t chase phony bi-partisanship.

• Take the fight to social media, to the streets, to their businesses, to where they live. Bluesky is fantastic, but we cannot cede X and Meta and YouTube to the right. It is a political battlefield, and we need fighters who know how to wield language like a weapon.

We are not in an era where the best argument wins. We are in an era where the loudest, most relentless, most fearless voices set the agenda. Democrats and progressives must stop treating this like a debate and start treating it like a fight for survival. And at this stage, don’t be worried about what “the Democrats” will do. This is on us. Answer back. Throw sand in the gears. Blow up a railway line (metaphorically speaking).

Trump and Musk want to dismantle democracy brick by brick. They viscerally despise a multicultural society, a pluralistic democracy. If we keep whispering warnings while they scream propaganda, we will lose. It’s time to raise our voices, sharpen our words, and meet the moment with the ruthless clarity it demands.

Because if we don’t, we’ll all be writing polite LinkedIn posts while the country burns.

3.

If you want an early roadmap to the cancerous metastasis that is DOGE, a visit to the malignant memories of the Gamergate swamp is a necessary sojourn into the rotting core of Elon Musk’s obsession. The original anti-feminist techbro backlash of 2014 spawned a digital misogynist hate mob whose basement-dwelling incel shock troops power Musk’s attack on communitarian values. No one does a better job of reviewing this foetid history than Amanda Marcotte, whose work in this area is deep.

“DOGE owes everything to Gamergate, from its aesthetics to its tactics to its manpower, which largely draws on the same young men — now 10 years older — who were radicalized to the far-right via social media,” she writes this week in Salon. It’s a sobering account, and frankly brings back hideous memories of a phenomenon that deserves to stay buried. Read it to understand the origins - but also the weakness, because that will matter. As Amanda writes:

This is all depressing, but there is some hope to hang onto. It's important to understand that Gamergate failed. Thousands of people, mostly men, spent inordinate amounts of time screaming invective online at feminists, but ultimately, they accomplished nothing. They didn't make feminism go away, that's for sure. They didn't even make video games less "woke," which is why they're still whining about it now. All they did was turn themselves into worse people.

Also, it’s motivational to line these bozos up again for a cultural beating, I have to say. We liberals tend to take our eyes off the ball after a successful inning, but the haters keep coming. Time to swing again.

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