I don’t understand why anyone still cites poll numbers regarding DJT. He owns the DOJ and every federal law enforcement agency in the country, including the military. If he wants to ignore the law, or break it, it wouldn’t matter if 99% of Americans hate what he’s doing. If he decides to stay in power, no election, impeachment or any other action short of a military coup will force him out. And he knows it. And he’s not afraid of it.
Viewed through this lens, Americans can no longer focus on “preserving” democracy. We have entered the “hope of restoring” democracy territory, and this will be much, much harder to do, likely requiring much more drastic action than simply polling or protesting. Tell me why I’m wrong. Please.
History would suggest you are far too pessimistic. Off the top of my head, let me list a few protests and other direct actions (sit-ins, strikes) that achieved change, often in the face of violent opposition:
The Bonus Army March (WWI)
Labor strikes of the 1930s (esp the Flint Sit Down Strike)
The Double V and Montgomery Bus Boycott ( used to kick off the Civil Rights Movement)
Freedom Rides and Sit ins and the March on Washington of the 60s. The bus boycott led directly to a court case where SCOTUS ruled that discrimination in public transportation was unconstitutional.
The Selma March led directly to The Voting Rights Act.
The Stonewall Riots galvanized the LGBTQ movement
Wounded Knee led to the Native Rights movement
Standing Rock, The Women’s March, George Floyd, The Sunrise Movement.
These actions didn’t always immediately change laws, but they shifted public opinion, forced political leaders to act, and created lasting cultural and legal change.
I strongly believe the power of the people is as strong a force as exists in the country. When it is used, it makes enormous differences.
Yes Tom, all of those actions resulted in positive change. But we are living in different times. In each of your scenarios, we had a working constitution, and we had enough people in power who respected the rule of law to overcome the power grabs, the criminality and the lawlessness that was being protested. Here, I think the biggest problem is that it is those who wield the power who are completely corrupt. What happens when we protest? They call in the national guard and/or the Marines to suppress the opposition. The courts rule against the president? He ignores the rulings. Try to impeach him? Who will physically remove him? He will declare the impeachment unlawful and stay in the WH. Never before have we had a president who truly not only believed he was above the law, but had no qualms about abusing power to stay in power.
I hope I am being an alarmist. I hope I am wrong. But I see too many terrifying signs of fascist leanings to be convinced of that.
You sound hopeless. I am sorry that you do. The country has been in the shitter before, and how we got out of it began with people who believed (the 1850s through the Civil War; the end of Reconstruction until the start of the Gilded Age; and the 1930s.
At one point, during the Vietnam War, there were only a handful of elected Dems who did NOT support the war. Pro civil tights electeds were a tiny club even in the early 60s.
We have a huge country with 320 million people, and a most complex organizational infrastructure. I refuse to believe that a relative handful of fascist kooks can pull off a takeovrr of this country. Unless ee lose hope.
I don’t mean to sound hopeless, but rather, trying to steel myself to meet the moment, whatever that turns out to be. It’s admittedly hard, at my age, to feel like I could survive anything, because obviously, that’s not how life works. But my dad fought in WWII, and I look for that same courage to fight a similar enemy, only this time it feels like the enemy is in my own backyard. Did you see JOJO Rabbit? The Scarlett Johansson character is what I see the worst case scenario becoming. The good guys won in WWII, but it came at a terrible, high price. I just hope enough of us are willing to pay that price if that’s what we need to do.
I am encouraged and heartened by the responses here that have so much optimism and resolve. Time will tell if my perception is way off. In many ways I hope it is.
For me, this kind of analysis is useful because it tells us what kind of things are likely to resonate with the marginally engaged and disengaged. We can use that to grow the opposition, and to motivate people to move from on-the-couch-disapproval to tangible action, like attending protests, speaking out, non-cooperation, and participating in mutual aid for those most impacted. With our democratic processes, particularly elections, being under attack, and with our first amendment rights under threat, we need as many people as possible to step up and participate in opposition as soon as possible. It's never going to get easier until we've won and made MAGA Republicanism utterly and permanently irrelevant.
I think that we need to first talk about the physiology of stressful moments. When we humans get scared, that has a chemical response -- and we start to think from the part of the brain focused on quick action rather than rational thinking. This can lead to "fight-or-flight" responses, such as overly white-and-black thinking that may not help us to best respond to a nuanced political situation.
One manifestation of this: During times when the political situation is particularly dire, it can be much more difficult to have well-reasoned strategy discussions on social media because some participants have the cortisol pumping away in their brains. To make matters worse, language is a virus -- and social media, which includes comment threads like this one, can infect a wide range of people all too rapidly.
This is why I think it is becoming more important than ever to self-monitor where we are at physiologically when we engage difficult political topics like whether American democracy is over. And if we are in "fight-or-flight" mode it may be a good time to take a walk rather than debate.
Now, to your question as to whether more drastic action is needed than polling and protesting: My sense is that although our democratic system is under severe stress, there are still potential checks and balances. We need to monitor on an ongoing basis what's going on in order to take full advantage of any leverage points in the system. We won't recognize those points if we default to a worst-case scenario such as categorically assuming that Trump will be able to ignore or break ANY law at will.
I'm not saying that the worst case can't happen, but rather that there are still other possible scenarios. If we keep our cool we may be more successful in achieving them.
In addition, I think that we need to do more than react -- we also need to come up with a cohesive vision of a healthy liberal democracy that is effectively dealing with the great issues of the 21st Century. I suspect that this will require fresh thinking not unlike what FDR's New Dealers brought to the table during the Great Depression. What does our New New Deal look like? And how do we make it happen?
A big reason why Trump 2.0 has been so successful is that it has robust strategies, such as embodied in Project 2025. We can learn from that.
Thanks Steve. This is a great response. I agree that I am not happy with what is happening, but I do not feel panic—I do however feel like the hill behind the house is on fire and sitting and waiting until I feel the flames will be too late. Current polls often make me feel better, but I wonder if these don’t create a sense of complacency that things will work out without having to do the hard things necessary to effect real positive change.
I suppose the answer here is that we need to stay engaged and informed, and be ready for action (or to act now where possible). There are very few people who sounded the alarm in 2024 who aren’t now saying that things are far worse than feared. And they are only getting worse. So we need to be clear eyed about what is happening, what motivates those in power, and what will need to be done to turn things around. And don’t be shocked if things get even worse than they are right now. That’s not panicking, that’s just gaming out what we are seeing with our own eyes right now.
That's fair. Steering a party can be a bit like trying to change the direction of a tanker, but I'm seeing hopeful signs that a new generation of Democratic leadership is emerging that doesn't cling to the old ways of doing things. Are we changing quickly enough? I guess we're going to find out.
Part of where I generate hope is that Trumpism is a fundamentally retrograde movement that is avoiding contemporary problems rather than solving them. That makes Trumpism very vulnerable to the course of events, which as we saw with Katrina can shift public opinion decisively.
One of Trumpism's other big vulnerabilities is that its power base is too heavily grounded in rural parts of the country. Simply put, They don't have the economic power to keep the urban parts of the country under their thumb for very long.
Polls are what will begin to separate the MAGA Senate snd House toadies from Trump snd this administration .
They don’t support Trump because they love, respect or admire Trump. They are merely hack grifters who want to stay in office, and they need his support. Once you see Trump’s approval rating in the 30s, you will see politicians start to peel away. And Trump’s a lame duck. After the midterms, you will see the politically ambitious start to stake out their own positions. Cruz, Hawley, Rubio, others.
You are wrong because, as flawed and tattered as our political-electoral system is, it is still functioning and Trump does not control it. We have a highly decentralized election system. Trump and MAGA are on track to lose BIG in this November's "mini-midterm" elections and even worse in the '26 midterms. Instead of this kind of defeatist doom-and-gloom pessimism, please focus your energy on the hard political work of defeating Trump. That's what the Far Right does (while too many Dems and progressives waste their time marching or gnashing their teeth or doing other performative stuff that doesn't accomplish anything).
Thanks, as always, Dan. I refuse to give in to a sense of democracy is over. As you have noted, the media space has changed with new technologies allowing the strong and healthy emergence of independent entities and voices. I am in Virginia, we are working hard not only to elect a Democratic governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, but to flip seats in the House if Delegates. A new group (at least to me) called Rural Groundgame recruited, trained snd financed ($5,000 each) Democratic candidates in all 100 House Districts.. a first for Virginia. Many of us are receiving training on how to talk to people who don’t agree with us.
In other words, we do not concede rural Virginia to MAGA. We’re reaching out at a time when these folks are in grave danger of losing their health care. They need to know who is responsible. Also, everyone in my Blue circles has cancelled Disney+ and Hulu. Most have also cancelled the Washington Post. I am very sorry I will not be in the US for the 10/18 No Kings 2 protest. But given the new attacks on free speech, I expect they will be huge, possibly reaching the 3.5% history shows authoritative regimes cannot sustain. Because the protests are self-affirming: big begets bigger. Finally, my husband has never protested anything in his life. Since March he has participated in 5 protests, including two Town Halls.
Consider using the word "opponents" rather than "enemies" in the headline. They are enemies of Trump only if you accept as legitimate his personalist, authoritarian perspective. From the perspective of those of us who see them as legitimately pursuing their duties to suborn the rule of law and hold Trump accountable for his actions or simply expressing their objections to Trump's actions they are merely Trump's opponents, and they are being persectuted solely for that reason.
Isn’t the point of the headline and the newsletter itself that Trump considers these people enemies? Isn’t that the motivation for his attempted persecutions?
Trump's rant to Pam Bondi is more evidence that he's morphed from a run of the mill fascist to a total fanatic. The GOP, who could rid the country of Trump's poison, own this crisis and must be held accountable in 2026 and 2028.
Justice is likely dragging its feet because they don’t have cases. They’ll have to cook something up. What ever happened to Tulsi Gabbard’s Obama-led “treasonous conspiracy”? If there were any truth to that one wouldn’t it be the administration’s number one priority? But they will probably sloppily move forward. Show trials in America.
She spoke at the Kirk memorial, which, in a pre-Trump era would be shocking because the DNI is supposed to be a non-political position. So much for that norm.
I just read E. Jean Carroll’s book about her cases against DT. The details of her assault and harassment helped me unearth the mounds of *#@% he has heaped upon us since. His hubris and demand for privilege were sickening. Remembering who he actually is keeps me going, and I hope we all keep reminding others who he is. Yes, the R party has been on a destructive mission for decades, but enlisting DT seemed to give them the permission to be cruel and craven without looking back. Even Steven Miller might have trouble carrying out his dastardly plans, if not for DT.
Thank you for keeping us “on messsage”! I would like to see more positive solutions proposed by Democrats. The problems t**** has created are overwhelming and we need to see a way out. We don’t need to discuss t**** specifically, as he benefits from the attention and we sound like complainers. First on my list would be to overturn Citizens United- other than SCOTUS and billionaire CEOs, nobody thinks rich corporations should be able to buy elections. Also, let’s put forward the idea of term limits for Congress and SCOTUS. Even if no chance of succeeding, let’s start the conversation and show we have good ideas and are not indebted to rich donors.
I don’t understand why anyone still cites poll numbers regarding DJT. He owns the DOJ and every federal law enforcement agency in the country, including the military. If he wants to ignore the law, or break it, it wouldn’t matter if 99% of Americans hate what he’s doing. If he decides to stay in power, no election, impeachment or any other action short of a military coup will force him out. And he knows it. And he’s not afraid of it.
Viewed through this lens, Americans can no longer focus on “preserving” democracy. We have entered the “hope of restoring” democracy territory, and this will be much, much harder to do, likely requiring much more drastic action than simply polling or protesting. Tell me why I’m wrong. Please.
History would suggest you are far too pessimistic. Off the top of my head, let me list a few protests and other direct actions (sit-ins, strikes) that achieved change, often in the face of violent opposition:
The Bonus Army March (WWI)
Labor strikes of the 1930s (esp the Flint Sit Down Strike)
The Double V and Montgomery Bus Boycott ( used to kick off the Civil Rights Movement)
Freedom Rides and Sit ins and the March on Washington of the 60s. The bus boycott led directly to a court case where SCOTUS ruled that discrimination in public transportation was unconstitutional.
The Selma March led directly to The Voting Rights Act.
The Stonewall Riots galvanized the LGBTQ movement
Wounded Knee led to the Native Rights movement
Standing Rock, The Women’s March, George Floyd, The Sunrise Movement.
These actions didn’t always immediately change laws, but they shifted public opinion, forced political leaders to act, and created lasting cultural and legal change.
I strongly believe the power of the people is as strong a force as exists in the country. When it is used, it makes enormous differences.
Yes Tom, all of those actions resulted in positive change. But we are living in different times. In each of your scenarios, we had a working constitution, and we had enough people in power who respected the rule of law to overcome the power grabs, the criminality and the lawlessness that was being protested. Here, I think the biggest problem is that it is those who wield the power who are completely corrupt. What happens when we protest? They call in the national guard and/or the Marines to suppress the opposition. The courts rule against the president? He ignores the rulings. Try to impeach him? Who will physically remove him? He will declare the impeachment unlawful and stay in the WH. Never before have we had a president who truly not only believed he was above the law, but had no qualms about abusing power to stay in power.
I hope I am being an alarmist. I hope I am wrong. But I see too many terrifying signs of fascist leanings to be convinced of that.
You sound hopeless. I am sorry that you do. The country has been in the shitter before, and how we got out of it began with people who believed (the 1850s through the Civil War; the end of Reconstruction until the start of the Gilded Age; and the 1930s.
At one point, during the Vietnam War, there were only a handful of elected Dems who did NOT support the war. Pro civil tights electeds were a tiny club even in the early 60s.
We have a huge country with 320 million people, and a most complex organizational infrastructure. I refuse to believe that a relative handful of fascist kooks can pull off a takeovrr of this country. Unless ee lose hope.
I don’t mean to sound hopeless, but rather, trying to steel myself to meet the moment, whatever that turns out to be. It’s admittedly hard, at my age, to feel like I could survive anything, because obviously, that’s not how life works. But my dad fought in WWII, and I look for that same courage to fight a similar enemy, only this time it feels like the enemy is in my own backyard. Did you see JOJO Rabbit? The Scarlett Johansson character is what I see the worst case scenario becoming. The good guys won in WWII, but it came at a terrible, high price. I just hope enough of us are willing to pay that price if that’s what we need to do.
I am encouraged and heartened by the responses here that have so much optimism and resolve. Time will tell if my perception is way off. In many ways I hope it is.
For me, this kind of analysis is useful because it tells us what kind of things are likely to resonate with the marginally engaged and disengaged. We can use that to grow the opposition, and to motivate people to move from on-the-couch-disapproval to tangible action, like attending protests, speaking out, non-cooperation, and participating in mutual aid for those most impacted. With our democratic processes, particularly elections, being under attack, and with our first amendment rights under threat, we need as many people as possible to step up and participate in opposition as soon as possible. It's never going to get easier until we've won and made MAGA Republicanism utterly and permanently irrelevant.
I think that we need to first talk about the physiology of stressful moments. When we humans get scared, that has a chemical response -- and we start to think from the part of the brain focused on quick action rather than rational thinking. This can lead to "fight-or-flight" responses, such as overly white-and-black thinking that may not help us to best respond to a nuanced political situation.
One manifestation of this: During times when the political situation is particularly dire, it can be much more difficult to have well-reasoned strategy discussions on social media because some participants have the cortisol pumping away in their brains. To make matters worse, language is a virus -- and social media, which includes comment threads like this one, can infect a wide range of people all too rapidly.
This is why I think it is becoming more important than ever to self-monitor where we are at physiologically when we engage difficult political topics like whether American democracy is over. And if we are in "fight-or-flight" mode it may be a good time to take a walk rather than debate.
Now, to your question as to whether more drastic action is needed than polling and protesting: My sense is that although our democratic system is under severe stress, there are still potential checks and balances. We need to monitor on an ongoing basis what's going on in order to take full advantage of any leverage points in the system. We won't recognize those points if we default to a worst-case scenario such as categorically assuming that Trump will be able to ignore or break ANY law at will.
I'm not saying that the worst case can't happen, but rather that there are still other possible scenarios. If we keep our cool we may be more successful in achieving them.
In addition, I think that we need to do more than react -- we also need to come up with a cohesive vision of a healthy liberal democracy that is effectively dealing with the great issues of the 21st Century. I suspect that this will require fresh thinking not unlike what FDR's New Dealers brought to the table during the Great Depression. What does our New New Deal look like? And how do we make it happen?
A big reason why Trump 2.0 has been so successful is that it has robust strategies, such as embodied in Project 2025. We can learn from that.
Thanks Steve. This is a great response. I agree that I am not happy with what is happening, but I do not feel panic—I do however feel like the hill behind the house is on fire and sitting and waiting until I feel the flames will be too late. Current polls often make me feel better, but I wonder if these don’t create a sense of complacency that things will work out without having to do the hard things necessary to effect real positive change.
I suppose the answer here is that we need to stay engaged and informed, and be ready for action (or to act now where possible). There are very few people who sounded the alarm in 2024 who aren’t now saying that things are far worse than feared. And they are only getting worse. So we need to be clear eyed about what is happening, what motivates those in power, and what will need to be done to turn things around. And don’t be shocked if things get even worse than they are right now. That’s not panicking, that’s just gaming out what we are seeing with our own eyes right now.
That's fair. Steering a party can be a bit like trying to change the direction of a tanker, but I'm seeing hopeful signs that a new generation of Democratic leadership is emerging that doesn't cling to the old ways of doing things. Are we changing quickly enough? I guess we're going to find out.
Part of where I generate hope is that Trumpism is a fundamentally retrograde movement that is avoiding contemporary problems rather than solving them. That makes Trumpism very vulnerable to the course of events, which as we saw with Katrina can shift public opinion decisively.
One of Trumpism's other big vulnerabilities is that its power base is too heavily grounded in rural parts of the country. Simply put, They don't have the economic power to keep the urban parts of the country under their thumb for very long.
Polls are what will begin to separate the MAGA Senate snd House toadies from Trump snd this administration .
They don’t support Trump because they love, respect or admire Trump. They are merely hack grifters who want to stay in office, and they need his support. Once you see Trump’s approval rating in the 30s, you will see politicians start to peel away. And Trump’s a lame duck. After the midterms, you will see the politically ambitious start to stake out their own positions. Cruz, Hawley, Rubio, others.
You are wrong because, as flawed and tattered as our political-electoral system is, it is still functioning and Trump does not control it. We have a highly decentralized election system. Trump and MAGA are on track to lose BIG in this November's "mini-midterm" elections and even worse in the '26 midterms. Instead of this kind of defeatist doom-and-gloom pessimism, please focus your energy on the hard political work of defeating Trump. That's what the Far Right does (while too many Dems and progressives waste their time marching or gnashing their teeth or doing other performative stuff that doesn't accomplish anything).
Thanks, as always, Dan. I refuse to give in to a sense of democracy is over. As you have noted, the media space has changed with new technologies allowing the strong and healthy emergence of independent entities and voices. I am in Virginia, we are working hard not only to elect a Democratic governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, but to flip seats in the House if Delegates. A new group (at least to me) called Rural Groundgame recruited, trained snd financed ($5,000 each) Democratic candidates in all 100 House Districts.. a first for Virginia. Many of us are receiving training on how to talk to people who don’t agree with us.
In other words, we do not concede rural Virginia to MAGA. We’re reaching out at a time when these folks are in grave danger of losing their health care. They need to know who is responsible. Also, everyone in my Blue circles has cancelled Disney+ and Hulu. Most have also cancelled the Washington Post. I am very sorry I will not be in the US for the 10/18 No Kings 2 protest. But given the new attacks on free speech, I expect they will be huge, possibly reaching the 3.5% history shows authoritative regimes cannot sustain. Because the protests are self-affirming: big begets bigger. Finally, my husband has never protested anything in his life. Since March he has participated in 5 protests, including two Town Halls.
It may be fetching up hard aground. The DOJ can’t find any evidence of ties between the shooter and leftist groups. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/no-evidence-charlie-kirk-shooting-left-wing-groups-rcna232513
They can't find any real evidence, but I'm certain that they will try to sell us fake evidence.
Consider using the word "opponents" rather than "enemies" in the headline. They are enemies of Trump only if you accept as legitimate his personalist, authoritarian perspective. From the perspective of those of us who see them as legitimately pursuing their duties to suborn the rule of law and hold Trump accountable for his actions or simply expressing their objections to Trump's actions they are merely Trump's opponents, and they are being persectuted solely for that reason.
Isn’t the point of the headline and the newsletter itself that Trump considers these people enemies? Isn’t that the motivation for his attempted persecutions?
Trump's rant to Pam Bondi is more evidence that he's morphed from a run of the mill fascist to a total fanatic. The GOP, who could rid the country of Trump's poison, own this crisis and must be held accountable in 2026 and 2028.
...in 2026, 2028 and beyond.
🤞🤞
Justice is likely dragging its feet because they don’t have cases. They’ll have to cook something up. What ever happened to Tulsi Gabbard’s Obama-led “treasonous conspiracy”? If there were any truth to that one wouldn’t it be the administration’s number one priority? But they will probably sloppily move forward. Show trials in America.
For that matter, what happened to Tulsi Gabbard? We haven't heard anything from her in a while. Maybe she's saving up for something REALLY stupid.
She spoke at the Kirk memorial, which, in a pre-Trump era would be shocking because the DNI is supposed to be a non-political position. So much for that norm.
I just read E. Jean Carroll’s book about her cases against DT. The details of her assault and harassment helped me unearth the mounds of *#@% he has heaped upon us since. His hubris and demand for privilege were sickening. Remembering who he actually is keeps me going, and I hope we all keep reminding others who he is. Yes, the R party has been on a destructive mission for decades, but enlisting DT seemed to give them the permission to be cruel and craven without looking back. Even Steven Miller might have trouble carrying out his dastardly plans, if not for DT.
Thank you for keeping us “on messsage”! I would like to see more positive solutions proposed by Democrats. The problems t**** has created are overwhelming and we need to see a way out. We don’t need to discuss t**** specifically, as he benefits from the attention and we sound like complainers. First on my list would be to overturn Citizens United- other than SCOTUS and billionaire CEOs, nobody thinks rich corporations should be able to buy elections. Also, let’s put forward the idea of term limits for Congress and SCOTUS. Even if no chance of succeeding, let’s start the conversation and show we have good ideas and are not indebted to rich donors.