To read the recent commentary, you’d think the Democratic Party is already going the way of the Whigs. Writers are racing each other to find the most alarming words to describe the party’s predicament — “leaderless, rudderless and divided,” and, of course, “crisis.”
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Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is dismantling the country’s constitutional order at a furious pace.
From his botched spending freeze to illegal firings of inspectors general, Justice Department lawyers, FBI agents and commissioners at the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — this is a very partial list — Trump is claiming power no president actually has and sowing chaos in the government he purports to lead. Treating our public sector as if it were a mere cog in his business empire, Elon Musk is zeroing out programs and accessing financial information about every American without any authority from the Constitution, the Congress, the law or the voters.
However disoriented Democrats may be, they have to understand that Trump has given them a mission. They need to accept it — all of it.
Follow E.J. Dionne Jr.
Which means that a lot of what once passed for strategy is useless now. Democrats cannot pretend that business-as-usual behavior is appropriate to this moment. They cannot “choose their battles” because what’s at stake is not just this or that policy but whether we will endure as a free republic in which presidents recognize they are not monarchs. It’s absurd to say of Trump “we will work with him where we can” when the project on which they’d be “working with him” involves shattering the rule of law and making it impossible for government workers to do the jobs Americans expect them to carry out.
Democrats who want to save the nation — and their party — need to end their malaise, mobilize their supporters and fight for something that matters. If our constitutional democracy doesn’t matter, I don’t know what does.
No party prospers by looking weak, and nothing would be more feckless than awaiting a more politically convenient moment to take on opponents demolishing institutions and rights at warp speed. History teaches that political movements often discover what they are for by first being clear about what they are against. Franklin D. Roosevelt built the New Deal coalition by opposing concentrated economic power and highlighting the human costs of a form of capitalism with weak guardrails and a paltry safety net. Ronald Reagan unraveled the New Deal coalition with his three antis — anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-communism. In both cases, the power of negative thinking created paths to sweeping affirmative agendas.
If the Democrats’ claim that they were fighting for democracy in 2024 seemed too abstract for many voters before Jan. 20, it is terrifyingly concrete now. Trump is laying the groundwork for a more authoritarian scheme of government by undermining the legal system, ignoring the plain language of the Constitution and violating statutes. If you wanted to make our country weaker and less safe, you would move quickly to undermine the FBI, the CIA and the Defense Department — which is what Trump is doing with his appointments and targeted firings.
Trump’s spending freeze was a reminder that while government is far from perfect, Americans still value much of what it does. As Republican senator (and future defense secretary) Bill Cohen said many years ago, “Government is the enemy until you need a friend.” When it became clear that child-care centers, Meals on Wheels, housing and health programs, and countless other services were threatened, Trump was forced to back away, at least temporarily, from the ineptly drafted order. The episode, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut) told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, encapsulated the Trump regime — “a perfect mixture of brutality with incompetence.” Democrats take note: You can actually win if you actually fight.
Trump and Musk’s efforts to dismantle government regulation should galvanize an argument Democrats have been reluctant to make. The Musks of the world want you to believe that “regulation” is a horrible word that means red tape, bureaucracy and inefficiency. But regulations are rules to protect consumers, workers and things of value (clean air and water, bank deposits, food safety) in ways that the market by itself will not. As Trump and Musk sweep away regulations, a smart opposition would show how their deregulatory fervor is serving corporate interests at the expense of citizens.
For example: Trump fired Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created in the wake of the Great Recession to protect Americans from financial scams and dodgy practices. Before Chopra was forced out, he and his colleagues left behind a number of new rules — capping overdraft fees, giving consumers more access to their financial data, excluding medical debt from credit reports — that most Americans would welcome if they had ever heard about them.
But Trump and Musk want to eviscerate the financial rights of consumers. Late Friday, Musk signaled an end to the agency, which he has no legal right to shut down, with a post on X – “CFBP RIP”. Hours later, Trump put Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 svengali Russell Vought in charge of the agency, a sure sign he wants it terminated. On Saturday morning, the CFBP’s homepage no longer existed. The public outcry should be loud and persistent. And Trump’s firings have disabled the National Labor Relations Board by depriving it of a quorum. It now has no way of enforcing labor law and protecting workers’ rights. That’s his reward to the many working-class voters who helped elect him.
Democrats have a bad habit of pulling back from thorny matters by saying: “Oh, voters don’t really care about this issue.” What Republicans understand is that voters often notice an issue only if a party is persistent enough in forcing it into the public conversation. The trans debate and Hunter Biden’s problems were hardly front of mind for most voters. Republicans worked hard to put them there.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is dismantling the country’s constitutional order at a furious pace.
From his botched spending freeze to illegal firings of inspectors general, Justice Department lawyers, FBI agents and commissioners at the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — this is a very partial list — Trump is claiming power no president actually has and sowing chaos in the government he purports to lead. Treating our public sector as if it were a mere cog in his business empire, Elon Musk is zeroing out programs and accessing financial information about every American without any authority from the Constitution, the Congress, the law or the voters.
However disoriented Democrats may be, they have to understand that Trump has given them a mission. They need to accept it — all of it.
Follow E.J. Dionne Jr.
Which means that a lot of what once passed for strategy is useless now. Democrats cannot pretend that business-as-usual behavior is appropriate to this moment. They cannot “choose their battles” because what’s at stake is not just this or that policy but whether we will endure as a free republic in which presidents recognize they are not monarchs. It’s absurd to say of Trump “we will work with him where we can” when the project on which they’d be “working with him” involves shattering the rule of law and making it impossible for government workers to do the jobs Americans expect them to carry out.
Democrats who want to save the nation — and their party — need to end their malaise, mobilize their supporters and fight for something that matters. If our constitutional democracy doesn’t matter, I don’t know what does.
No party prospers by looking weak, and nothing would be more feckless than awaiting a more politically convenient moment to take on opponents demolishing institutions and rights at warp speed. History teaches that political movements often discover what they are for by first being clear about what they are against. Franklin D. Roosevelt built the New Deal coalition by opposing concentrated economic power and highlighting the human costs of a form of capitalism with weak guardrails and a paltry safety net. Ronald Reagan unraveled the New Deal coalition with his three antis — anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-communism. In both cases, the power of negative thinking created paths to sweeping affirmative agendas.
If the Democrats’ claim that they were fighting for democracy in 2024 seemed too abstract for many voters before Jan. 20, it is terrifyingly concrete now. Trump is laying the groundwork for a more authoritarian scheme of government by undermining the legal system, ignoring the plain language of the Constitution and violating statutes. If you wanted to make our country weaker and less safe, you would move quickly to undermine the FBI, the CIA and the Defense Department — which is what Trump is doing with his appointments and targeted firings.
Trump’s spending freeze was a reminder that while government is far from perfect, Americans still value much of what it does. As Republican senator (and future defense secretary) Bill Cohen said many years ago, “Government is the enemy until you need a friend.” When it became clear that child-care centers, Meals on Wheels, housing and health programs, and countless other services were threatened, Trump was forced to back away, at least temporarily, from the ineptly drafted order. The episode, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut) told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, encapsulated the Trump regime — “a perfect mixture of brutality with incompetence.” Democrats take note: You can actually win if you actually fight.
Trump and Musk’s efforts to dismantle government regulation should galvanize an argument Democrats have been reluctant to make. The Musks of the world want you to believe that “regulation” is a horrible word that means red tape, bureaucracy and inefficiency. But regulations are rules to protect consumers, workers and things of value (clean air and water, bank deposits, food safety) in ways that the market by itself will not. As Trump and Musk sweep away regulations, a smart opposition would show how their deregulatory fervor is serving corporate interests at the expense of citizens.
For example: Trump fired Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created in the wake of the Great Recession to protect Americans from financial scams and dodgy practices. Before Chopra was forced out, he and his colleagues left behind a number of new rules — capping overdraft fees, giving consumers more access to their financial data, excluding medical debt from credit reports — that most Americans would welcome if they had ever heard about them.
But Trump and Musk want to eviscerate the financial rights of consumers. Late Friday, Musk signaled an end to the agency, which he has no legal right to shut down, with a post on X – “CFBP RIP”. Hours later, Trump put Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 svengali Russell Vought in charge of the agency, a sure sign he wants it terminated. On Saturday morning, the CFBP’s homepage no longer existed. The public outcry should be loud and persistent. And Trump’s firings have disabled the National Labor Relations Board by depriving it of a quorum. It now has no way of enforcing labor law and protecting workers’ rights. That’s his reward to the many working-class voters who helped elect him.
Democrats have a bad habit of pulling back from thorny matters by saying: “Oh, voters don’t really care about this issue.” What Republicans understand is that voters often notice an issue only if a party is persistent enough in forcing it into the public conversation. The trans debate and Hunter Biden’s problems were hardly front of mind for most voters. Republicans worked hard to put them there.
