Your friend and colleague Ben Rhodes wrote a column making the same point in today’s New York Times.
Quote: Nika Kovac, a 31-year-old activist from Slovenia, has led successful movements against authoritarian politics in Europe. “When you want to fight them,” she said, “you have to build huge coalitions around one particular topic, when they are attacking something that really matters to people.” Looking at the United States, she volunteered health care as a place to start.
“The thing that is making him powerful now is he’s thinking that nothing can stop him,” Ms. Kovac said. “You need one victory.” When you get that win, people start to feel that they still have power because of what they did together.
Our Psychological and Political Pandemic DR. BANDY X. LEE
🔸️Mental pathology in a president is a public matter. The more severe the mental pathology the less one will recognize that one is even ill.
🔸️Every other job that deals with life or death has a mental fitness evaluation as a requirement, even before one takes the position.
🔸️When this is not available, the public needs to be educated about the risks as much as possible, especially when they involve conditions that elude detection, manipulate others into collusion, and resist their own management, as mental disorders do.
The law of averages means something has to stick sooner or later. Maybe it's the Dept. of Ed, maybe not. I think when all those folks who got hammered by storms and fires in the Midwest and South realize that FEMA isn't around any more and that their Medicaid/Medicare won't help them and their SS checks don't arrive, that will be the straw that breaks the proverbial back. I'm not sure about anything else.
My personal choice is 'when nursing homes start shutting down', or rather the whole class of related events. We'll know we're there when Congressional Offices in R Districts are firebombed. Some of the local residents are entirely capable of this.
Dan, I wish I shared your confidence that an unpopular Trump would slow down this slide into the abyss. But I don’t. When the poll shows that 40% of the people are okay with abolishing the DOEd, I think that’s enough for the Republicans to prevail.
Why? Because we have seen that the American people don’t act to stop this - not directly. They act through our institutions - Congress, the courts, the legal system - and those institutions are commanded by the forces backing Trump’s madness. Congress will do as he wills, because the GOP members are under personal threat. The agency heads do as he wills, because that’s why they were put in place. The courts may judge against him, but they have no enforcement powers - they depend on the agencies, the DOJ, OLC, the Congress, and none of those will turn on Trump and his DOGE enforcers.
Democracy - government by the people - has ended. It has always been government by the people through the institutions. And the Republicans-backers smartly understood that they don’t need the people’s permission - they only need to control the institutions. And they’ve done that.
Of course, I’d like to be wrong, and I’d like you to be right. We will see.
In my little corner of the country, democracy is not over yet. Between now and 2026 we have school boards, community college boards, educational service districts, local levies, and other special district elections. We are fighting HARD to diminish MAGA power in every goddam one of them. Why? Because MAGA at any scale hurts people, full stop. If we make Trump less popular, even better. After all the French Resistance didn't swing at Hitler, it attacked the Nazi's within their reach.
If we have elections in 2026, we'll be better positioned to further deplete MAGA power. If we don't, at least we will have strengthened our community to better protect each other from MAGA aggression. And, if we don't have elections in 2026, it won't be because right now in 2025, we rolled over whimpering that all is lost.
So tired of the Doomacrats. In the 60s, with a then-popular war raging, students and recent veterans and others relentlessly took to the streets. Drove a popular president away from re-election, and eventually helped destroy the presidency of his thuggish successor (though he certainly helped destroy himself). There was no effective political leader to follow—RFK was killed in ‘68 and Gene McCarthy did a Kamala Harris-quality disappearing act after he lost the nomination. So it was us. No rich funders. No pols to follow.
But it worked. So paint a sign, Find a group protesting on a street corner. Join them. You will be surprised at the support you receive. THAT is how the resistance eorks.
Lots of teachers in my family across 3 generations (my 94 year old aunt is a retired teacher and principal and witnessed federal money vastly improve rural schools in her career. She is aghast at this).
The Dept of Education does not dictate curriculum—that’s left to local control. Nor do they hire or fire teachers—again, local control. The are big positive points for many that we should also mention.
The Department does help fund schools in poorer districts, provide grants for continuing teacher education, funds special programs for intellectually and physically challenged kids, protects civil rights of school children (this from the top of my aunt’s mind, so not a full list).
My wife and I will separately get this message out to friends, family, and social media groups.
Isn’t there a bigger BIGGER picture other than tax cuts? Kamala Harris won the votes of a well-educated electorate, people who read newspapers and broadly understand how government works. Dismantling public education seems like a really great strategy that starves a huge part of the population of things like critical thinking skills, an understanding of civics, internet literacy, all the things they need for agency and economic mobility. Oh and then for a dash of horror, they’ll be dependent on education systems run by the mega-church industrial complex to ensure that they know that their lot in life is part of God’s plan, FFS. Limited opportunity and curiosity about the world seems like a wonderful recipe to ensure that the MAGA empire stays in power with a huge part of the American public cheering them on.
Is it just me or does focusing on Elon’s tax cuts seem to miss the real point of this nightmare?
This is a twofer if you've school board elections coming up. But start right now. Use Trump's move to define, claim, shout, and get attention for your narrative before the Republicans do, or else you'll be Schumering your way into impotence and frustration.
Thanks again for the wisdom, DP. I still worry that Dems haven’t accepted the reality that Rs and Ds speak different languages. In a democracy, yes, the Dept. of Education move is politically stupid. But in MAGA WORLD, public education means free school for brown and black kids. Medicaid means free health care for brown and black people. Racial Justice means racism against whites. Social Justice means sex freaks are indoctrinating my kids. Equality means pushy “Feminist” women are taking men’s jobs, instead of staying home to deliver and raise “our” kids. These are deeply held beliefs, planted and fed over decades, that are very tough to get past. The R solution has long been, that if these lazy people would just “work harder”, they wouldn’t need this free stuff. Hence the admiration for the obscenely rich.
Dan- I think in communicating about beating Trump these words are not helpful. “He skates over controversies that would devastate any other politician, but politics hasn’t changed that much. Trump cannot defy political gravity for long. “. He has defied gravity for 9 years!! Our politics have radically changed over the last 10 years. We have gone from an Obama era to Trump era. There is not one issue that will sink Trump. Maybe this is a cornerstone issue.
Character is destiny,” an aphorism proven true over and over through millennia. He will go down, and in fact will dangle from the lowest rung of American history in the end.
I applaud this Message Box entry from Dan. It’s laying down messaging groundwork that is focused, compelling and repeatable. More like this!
Former PA Governor Tom Corbett lost reelection, I seem to recall, by messing with public education. So agree it’s an opportunity for Democrats, but we need to improve HOW we communicate it.
Undermining public education is about hurting people’s children and lowering their property values. In other words, the messaging should be personal and thereby relatable.
Call your elected representatives and make sure they hear from you.
We'll see if he is successful. In the interim, since Gingrich and Reagan tried, the movement for school choice paired with standardized testing has decimated public schools. Plenty of scholarship to support this. Standardized testing is partially responsible for people not understanding how government works, particularly since social studies have been kneecapped and minimized, as have regular history classes. So that's at least two decades, if not more, of students in public schools who have not learned the finer details of government. This American Life broadcast an episode several years ago about the furious pushback against school integration titles The Problem We All Live With - 2 episodes, linked below. This is where I first heard work by Nikole Hannah Jones. School choice has devastated schools and created a racial gap in terms of well-funded schools. My long-winded point is that the ground was much more fertile for Trump's move than it was for Reagan or Gingrich. I'm not so sure Trump won't succeed. But of course student loans will still be due. Heaven forfend.
Like all issues, key is how to get the message thru/past the right-wing media ecosystem to most Americans. The right continually hammers the message of "give it (DoE responsibilities) to the states" without really explaining what that means and how it would work. And this overly simplistic message seems to have traction on the right and perhaps some independents/swing voters. Somehow, Dems need to break thru on communications of what the impacts are/will be. Meanwhile, IMHO, I don't believe most Trump voters will change their minds until they personally feel the adverse effects.
But it seems from the polling (which has been pretty consistent over decades) that the majority are already on our side, and that the decades of simplistic GOP messages have only taken root at the margins. That’s a reason for real hope. So maybe breaking through will be easier thsn you are thinking. I hope.
lndeed. This give-it-back-to-the-states message has serious traction on the (white) right because it goes back to the Civil War. And I believe you're right that at least the hardcore MAGA Trump voters aren't going to change their minds. But many of those 77 million Trump voters don't seem all that clear about what they voted for.
Maybe I missed previous writings, but I’m wondering what are the best ways for progressive groups to get an opposition message across? Protests? Letters/phone calls to electeds? Coordinated social media posts? Etc.?
Don't want to be nitpicky but you might want to fix this "...his Contract for America policy agenda that fueled the Republicans taking over the House for the first time in 50 decades." I'm assuming it's 50 years...?
I’m hoping this may mobilize (or further mobilize) parents and teachers. I would challenge anyone who thinks this is a great idea to talk with a few teachers, or a few parents of school-age kids, especially those with special needs. They are overwhelmed by the large class sizes and the demands placed upon already limited services.
Your friend and colleague Ben Rhodes wrote a column making the same point in today’s New York Times.
Quote: Nika Kovac, a 31-year-old activist from Slovenia, has led successful movements against authoritarian politics in Europe. “When you want to fight them,” she said, “you have to build huge coalitions around one particular topic, when they are attacking something that really matters to people.” Looking at the United States, she volunteered health care as a place to start.
“The thing that is making him powerful now is he’s thinking that nothing can stop him,” Ms. Kovac said. “You need one victory.” When you get that win, people start to feel that they still have power because of what they did together.
Our Psychological and Political Pandemic DR. BANDY X. LEE
🔸️Mental pathology in a president is a public matter. The more severe the mental pathology the less one will recognize that one is even ill.
🔸️Every other job that deals with life or death has a mental fitness evaluation as a requirement, even before one takes the position.
🔸️When this is not available, the public needs to be educated about the risks as much as possible, especially when they involve conditions that elude detection, manipulate others into collusion, and resist their own management, as mental disorders do.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bandyxlee/p/our-psychological-and-political-pandemic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=280c3q
The law of averages means something has to stick sooner or later. Maybe it's the Dept. of Ed, maybe not. I think when all those folks who got hammered by storms and fires in the Midwest and South realize that FEMA isn't around any more and that their Medicaid/Medicare won't help them and their SS checks don't arrive, that will be the straw that breaks the proverbial back. I'm not sure about anything else.
My personal choice is 'when nursing homes start shutting down', or rather the whole class of related events. We'll know we're there when Congressional Offices in R Districts are firebombed. Some of the local residents are entirely capable of this.
Dan, I wish I shared your confidence that an unpopular Trump would slow down this slide into the abyss. But I don’t. When the poll shows that 40% of the people are okay with abolishing the DOEd, I think that’s enough for the Republicans to prevail.
Why? Because we have seen that the American people don’t act to stop this - not directly. They act through our institutions - Congress, the courts, the legal system - and those institutions are commanded by the forces backing Trump’s madness. Congress will do as he wills, because the GOP members are under personal threat. The agency heads do as he wills, because that’s why they were put in place. The courts may judge against him, but they have no enforcement powers - they depend on the agencies, the DOJ, OLC, the Congress, and none of those will turn on Trump and his DOGE enforcers.
Democracy - government by the people - has ended. It has always been government by the people through the institutions. And the Republicans-backers smartly understood that they don’t need the people’s permission - they only need to control the institutions. And they’ve done that.
Of course, I’d like to be wrong, and I’d like you to be right. We will see.
In my little corner of the country, democracy is not over yet. Between now and 2026 we have school boards, community college boards, educational service districts, local levies, and other special district elections. We are fighting HARD to diminish MAGA power in every goddam one of them. Why? Because MAGA at any scale hurts people, full stop. If we make Trump less popular, even better. After all the French Resistance didn't swing at Hitler, it attacked the Nazi's within their reach.
If we have elections in 2026, we'll be better positioned to further deplete MAGA power. If we don't, at least we will have strengthened our community to better protect each other from MAGA aggression. And, if we don't have elections in 2026, it won't be because right now in 2025, we rolled over whimpering that all is lost.
So tired of the Doomacrats. In the 60s, with a then-popular war raging, students and recent veterans and others relentlessly took to the streets. Drove a popular president away from re-election, and eventually helped destroy the presidency of his thuggish successor (though he certainly helped destroy himself). There was no effective political leader to follow—RFK was killed in ‘68 and Gene McCarthy did a Kamala Harris-quality disappearing act after he lost the nomination. So it was us. No rich funders. No pols to follow.
But it worked. So paint a sign, Find a group protesting on a street corner. Join them. You will be surprised at the support you receive. THAT is how the resistance eorks.
Lots of teachers in my family across 3 generations (my 94 year old aunt is a retired teacher and principal and witnessed federal money vastly improve rural schools in her career. She is aghast at this).
The Dept of Education does not dictate curriculum—that’s left to local control. Nor do they hire or fire teachers—again, local control. The are big positive points for many that we should also mention.
The Department does help fund schools in poorer districts, provide grants for continuing teacher education, funds special programs for intellectually and physically challenged kids, protects civil rights of school children (this from the top of my aunt’s mind, so not a full list).
My wife and I will separately get this message out to friends, family, and social media groups.
Isn’t there a bigger BIGGER picture other than tax cuts? Kamala Harris won the votes of a well-educated electorate, people who read newspapers and broadly understand how government works. Dismantling public education seems like a really great strategy that starves a huge part of the population of things like critical thinking skills, an understanding of civics, internet literacy, all the things they need for agency and economic mobility. Oh and then for a dash of horror, they’ll be dependent on education systems run by the mega-church industrial complex to ensure that they know that their lot in life is part of God’s plan, FFS. Limited opportunity and curiosity about the world seems like a wonderful recipe to ensure that the MAGA empire stays in power with a huge part of the American public cheering them on.
Is it just me or does focusing on Elon’s tax cuts seem to miss the real point of this nightmare?
This is a twofer if you've school board elections coming up. But start right now. Use Trump's move to define, claim, shout, and get attention for your narrative before the Republicans do, or else you'll be Schumering your way into impotence and frustration.
Dan, please tell me that you are reaching out Democratic office holders directly.
Thanks again for the wisdom, DP. I still worry that Dems haven’t accepted the reality that Rs and Ds speak different languages. In a democracy, yes, the Dept. of Education move is politically stupid. But in MAGA WORLD, public education means free school for brown and black kids. Medicaid means free health care for brown and black people. Racial Justice means racism against whites. Social Justice means sex freaks are indoctrinating my kids. Equality means pushy “Feminist” women are taking men’s jobs, instead of staying home to deliver and raise “our” kids. These are deeply held beliefs, planted and fed over decades, that are very tough to get past. The R solution has long been, that if these lazy people would just “work harder”, they wouldn’t need this free stuff. Hence the admiration for the obscenely rich.
Dan- I think in communicating about beating Trump these words are not helpful. “He skates over controversies that would devastate any other politician, but politics hasn’t changed that much. Trump cannot defy political gravity for long. “. He has defied gravity for 9 years!! Our politics have radically changed over the last 10 years. We have gone from an Obama era to Trump era. There is not one issue that will sink Trump. Maybe this is a cornerstone issue.
Character is destiny,” an aphorism proven true over and over through millennia. He will go down, and in fact will dangle from the lowest rung of American history in the end.
I applaud this Message Box entry from Dan. It’s laying down messaging groundwork that is focused, compelling and repeatable. More like this!
Former PA Governor Tom Corbett lost reelection, I seem to recall, by messing with public education. So agree it’s an opportunity for Democrats, but we need to improve HOW we communicate it.
Undermining public education is about hurting people’s children and lowering their property values. In other words, the messaging should be personal and thereby relatable.
Call your elected representatives and make sure they hear from you.
We'll see if he is successful. In the interim, since Gingrich and Reagan tried, the movement for school choice paired with standardized testing has decimated public schools. Plenty of scholarship to support this. Standardized testing is partially responsible for people not understanding how government works, particularly since social studies have been kneecapped and minimized, as have regular history classes. So that's at least two decades, if not more, of students in public schools who have not learned the finer details of government. This American Life broadcast an episode several years ago about the furious pushback against school integration titles The Problem We All Live With - 2 episodes, linked below. This is where I first heard work by Nikole Hannah Jones. School choice has devastated schools and created a racial gap in terms of well-funded schools. My long-winded point is that the ground was much more fertile for Trump's move than it was for Reagan or Gingrich. I'm not so sure Trump won't succeed. But of course student loans will still be due. Heaven forfend.
Here's the link: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one
Agree completely.
We're getting government by and for the billionaires. Do we really want to be ruled by clueless, socially underdeveloped, men-children?
Like all issues, key is how to get the message thru/past the right-wing media ecosystem to most Americans. The right continually hammers the message of "give it (DoE responsibilities) to the states" without really explaining what that means and how it would work. And this overly simplistic message seems to have traction on the right and perhaps some independents/swing voters. Somehow, Dems need to break thru on communications of what the impacts are/will be. Meanwhile, IMHO, I don't believe most Trump voters will change their minds until they personally feel the adverse effects.
But it seems from the polling (which has been pretty consistent over decades) that the majority are already on our side, and that the decades of simplistic GOP messages have only taken root at the margins. That’s a reason for real hope. So maybe breaking through will be easier thsn you are thinking. I hope.
lndeed. This give-it-back-to-the-states message has serious traction on the (white) right because it goes back to the Civil War. And I believe you're right that at least the hardcore MAGA Trump voters aren't going to change their minds. But many of those 77 million Trump voters don't seem all that clear about what they voted for.
Maybe I missed previous writings, but I’m wondering what are the best ways for progressive groups to get an opposition message across? Protests? Letters/phone calls to electeds? Coordinated social media posts? Etc.?
IMHO, yes to all.
Don't want to be nitpicky but you might want to fix this "...his Contract for America policy agenda that fueled the Republicans taking over the House for the first time in 50 decades." I'm assuming it's 50 years...?
I’m hoping this may mobilize (or further mobilize) parents and teachers. I would challenge anyone who thinks this is a great idea to talk with a few teachers, or a few parents of school-age kids, especially those with special needs. They are overwhelmed by the large class sizes and the demands placed upon already limited services.