The Only Political Ideology That Matters Now Is Opposition

It’s not just the economy, stupid - inside the growing Democratic schism between business-as-usual accommodation and true opposition.

Last week, the architect of the Trump Administration’s ongoing war against civil society and the democratic norms of this republic suggested that the United States would suspend the writ of habeas corpus - the bedrock of American jurisprudence.

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Stephen Miller, the President’s extremist policy major domo, told the press corps at the White House. “So, to say that's an option we're actively looking at ... a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

While much of the nation recoiled, some Congressional Democrats immediately called it a distraction. Explicitly threatened with radical threat to both the courts and anyone who should have a right to access them, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota reflexively back-pedaled to the economy: “He's doing it because they don't want to focus on what's really in front of them, and that they have created havoc in our economy.”

Klobuchar blustered that Miller and the Trump henchmen weren’t really serious about habeas corpus, that they’d never be able to bypass Congress, and that the whole threat was simply a tactic to distract voters from a stumbling economy and the threat of inflation.

The Senator is certainly not alone in her political thesis - and we’ve seen countless Democrats with national roles return to this analysis over the last few months. California Governor Gavin Newsom called Trump’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an infamously brutal El Salvadoran prison a distraction. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put the same label on Trump’s threat to invade and annex Greenland and retake the Panama Canal. Some rushed to describe the open bribery of a “free” luxury 747 jet from Qatar (a clear violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution) as - you guessed it - just another distraction.

Frankly, there’s a growing schism in the Democratic Party that’s non-ideological but deeply structural - the Sunday morning show Rotunda interview wing, which is frankly accommodationist in nature and wedded to the “it’s just another distraction from the economy” mindset, and the true opposition to radical Trumpism from the base of the party and a growing number of independents who want to live in a liberal democracy.

To flip James Carville’s famous 1992 proclamation on its 2025 head: “It’s not just the economy, stupid.”

And it’s no more “distraction,” either. There are several issues at play here.

Democratic leaders and their consultants believe that the path to victory in the 2026 mid-terms lies only in the economic argument, that Americans don’t much care about civil liberties, especially when they are denied to non-white undocumented immigrants. They also believe that the unhinged insanity of the Trump White House is itself a clever six-dimensional chess tactic designed by the brilliant MAGA tacticians who won the national election last fall. Further, some actually think that Democratic candidates will be able to peel away MAGA voters by pointing out their own economic immiseration - that they will abandon their cult-like cultural allegiance to all things Trump because of kitchen table issues. By focusing most of their attention and energy on economics, Democrats can stay away from the kind of cultural issues - ahem, civil rights - that super-charge Trump’s followers and craft a winning kitchen table agenda. So the thinking goes. Carville himself has recommended standing back and letting Trump fail.

The cost of such misguided thinking is the future of American civil society itself, and millions of victims around the country who don’t fit the MAGA agenda because of who they are. The country is changing week by week in ways that go beyond the pernicious effects of bull-headed tariffs. And not for the better.

I agree with New Republic columnist and podcaster Greg Sargent who argued that “Trump is trying to bludgeon us into accepting the tactics and imagery of fascism: Forced disappearances, renditions to foreign gulags, the ritual humiliation of hated enemies within. That's why it's so crucial that the middle is rejecting it.”

Sargent pointed to recent polling that showed Trump slipping underwater on his most potent issue - immigration - because more Americans (particularly independents) are rejecting the outright cruelty employed by his administration in pursuit of the mass deportation he promised in his campaign. “Only 21 percent of independents want wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to remain imprisoned in El Salvador, while 39 percent say he should be returned to the United States. Here, many are undecided, but that abysmal 21 percent figure suggests Trump’s propaganda depicting him as a gang member who doesn’t deserve due process is a bust,” he wrote.

“The main divide within the Democratic Party is not between left and right — it’s whether you think this is a constitutional crisis or this is politics as usual,” Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive activist group Indivisible, told the New York Times.

I think that is exactly correct, and all of my conversations with active Democrats - both “regulars” serving on local committees and in political clubs, and activists out at the protests - align with this idea. Our political media cannot help but engage in super early horserace handicapping on the 2028 Presidential election three and a half years in the political future. My advice: Don’t bother signing up for any individual right now. We’re way too far away for anything to truly matter yet.

But by all means, do pay attention to the stark contrast between the types of prospective candidates being touted by the media.

For example, the true opposition wing is probably best represented right now by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who in my view is winning the super early pre-game “silent primary" spring training season.

“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” Pritzker told a group of Democratic activists, officials and donors in New Hampshire two weeks ago. “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. The reckoning is finally here.”

Here in the politically charged Hudson Valley, quotes from Pritzker’s speech made the rounds on Signal and in all the Indivisible Facebook groups - just before an event in which New York State Troopers infamously physically removed Nyack social worker Emily Feiner from a town hall meeting held by Republican Congressman Mike Lawler - ostensibly because she dared to ask Lawler where his “red line” was with Trump’s worst abuses. The photos of the burly armed troopers hauling Feiner by her arms from the auditorium of a Catholic high school in Westchester made national news.

And they made even starker the contrast between the muted reactions of elected Democratic leadership and the steaming base of the party - an emerging gap shrewdly captured by Pritzker.

“Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces,” he said in New Hampshire. “Today, as the blaze reaches the rafters, the pundits and politicians — whose simpering timidity served as kindle for the arsonists — urge us now not to reach for a hose.”

There are signs that Democratic leaders are hearing the message. The shocking arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility - and subsequent threats to also arrest members of Congress at the ICE center - got a swift and angry response from Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

"The masked agents who physically accosted two Congresswomen must be identified immediately and any trumped-up charges against Mayor Baraka dropped. Keep your hands off of Members of Congress."

Strong talk. Non-economic argument. And a defense of civil liberties and American civil society. This is where non-MAGA politics lies for the foreseeable future - the only ideology is opposition.