To Defend Democracy We Have to Take Back Power Now
Empower the People
This column is also posted at Robert’s Substack “Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture.”
Democrats need to organize immediately to stop the threat to our democracy. Democratic major donors need to resource our state and local parties, especially in red states and D.C., so that they can empower staff and allied groups to put millions of Americans on the streets in peaceful protests to create the political power to rein in the lawless Trump administration. Republicans in Congress are not going to provide any guardrails to Trump. The evidence is mounting that they are hostages to the most radical and extreme MAGA movement ideologues empowered by Trump. Fund our state parties and let them do the groundwork they know how to do.
This needs to happen immediately. This is how we save Democracy.
The Senate's advice and consent power to confirm or deny presidential nominations and treaties is one of the most important components of the system of checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution. Our Republican Senators have abdicated this important constitutional role in nearly unanimously confirming Trump’s unqualified nominees whose only fealty is to Trump and not the Constitution.
Republicans have also stood by and watched Elon Musk’s DOGE use the same playbook over and over at federal agencies over the past few weeks. He’s installed loyalists in leadership positions and used tech help without security clearances to gain control of all internal data including information which is sensitive and classified. They’ve controlled the flow of funds and eliminated jobs and programs not ideologically aligned with the Trump administration’s goals and will continue to do so. Republicans are watching Trump and Musk dismantle our democracy brick by brick and are either helping or standing by.
The argument is that opposing him will mean that they will be primaried in the next election cycle. That they would rather hold on to power than protect democracy. This is too simplistic. It frames the situation in terms of elections and the norms of our form of representative democracy.
The Trump Administration with appointees loyal to him above their loyalty to the Constitution and rule of law are moving at incredible speed to compromise every possible guardrail meant to prevent an authoritarian takeover of our nation. These guardrails are also there to prevent infiltration from foreign threats.
We need to consider the possibility of something deeper and darker--that many Republicans are being held “hostage” because Trump is threatening them beyond simply political retribution. National Security expert Malcolm Nance speaks of direct threats of violence to members of the Senate and their families. Also, do Trump loyalists have knowledge of Senators’ personal lives that may compromise them if made public? As is the case with most politicians, there is a swirling of personal innuendo that it seems a lot of people know of, but no one speaks of in public. They are flawed human beings, just like the rest of us, and we find it possible that Trump holds that compromising information on many Republican Senators and is threatening to use it.
Anne Applebaum with the Atlantic, while speaking Friday on Washington Week on PBS highlights their fear:
So, we're now at a really weird moment in history where powerful U.S. senators who are elected for six years, who have huge staffs and money and great futures ahead of them if they leave the Senate at the Harvard Kennedy School or, you know, on television, are more cowardly than unnamed USAID bureaucrats, several of whom have done very brave things in the last few days, who've tried to stop orders, even knowing they would lose their jobs.
And the only conclusion I can come to is that they are all terrified, and they're afraid of Twitter, they're afraid of Musk, they're afraid of their constituents, they're afraid of threats of violence that they get against their families. This is a very, very strange moment in U.S. politics where we have, you know, members of Congress elected politicians who are afraid to speak their minds and afraid to do their jobs.
If Trump's team is willing to send a wrecking ball through the Federal Government that puts CIA spies at risk, that sends regions of the world struggling to recover from natural disasters and conflict back into chaos, violence, disease, and famine sentencing 100’s of thousands of people around the world to death, they are certainly willing to go to every powerful Republican and force them into alignment with whatever personal threats are needed to do so. The MAGA-cult Republican Senators don't need coercion.
Here in Iowa, Senator Ernst and Representative Nunn in particular, with their high-level military training and national security experience both know the consequence of the unsecured email of CIA staff from the CIA to the White House. Our enemies have that list of names. That bell cannot be unrung. They know that American lives have been put at risk.
They both know the security consequences of immediately pulling all of our soft power investments through USAID out of emerging hotspots around the globe.
Where is their outrage, and that of other Republican Senators and Representatives? What’s holding them back from resisting when they know lives are at stake? It’s either their thirst for power, damn the consequences, or Trump is holding something over them.
The radical right is investing unlimited resources in their plan to take over full control of the power of the Federal Government. They are being strategic in the targets of their attack. They are being strategic in their speed. And they have been unrelenting in lining up Republican support.
Democrats campaigned on how ideological and radical Trump's inner circle was going to be. Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads about the threat. But after the election, they pivoted from rallying the troops (voters) for immediate action, to planning for retaking power in the next election cycle.
We now know this was a miscalculation. The time to act is now, and the Democrats must immediately make a show of electoral power because the evidence shows the majority party has been taken hostage. If a few Republican Senators break against Trump more will and his efforts stymied.
It's become clear to many everyday Americans how much unchecked power Trump and his team now has. Democrats sold this possibility in the ads before the election, but now that it’s happening, the urgency of action is missing.
If Democratic elected leaders, the new Democratic National Committee chair, the big Democratic donors, and the celebrities with wealth and influence, wait for the next election cycle to invest in the foot soldiers and not now, the Republicans now controlled by Trump will continue to tear down democracy as they destroy more guardrails and take more hostages.
States are taking the Trump Administration to the courts. However, it’s clear that the timeframe of those actions is too long to provide accountability. It seems obvious that Trump and his team intend to break the courts as well, and the Supreme Court is compromised as a body.
This is an old and transparent play. You compromise people so they do your bidding. By the time they are asking you to do really ugly and ultimately violent things, you are completely compromised. It's all about fear. We don't believe Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley and our House delegation set out to be part of tearing down our nation. It happened over time. And at this point, they are either fearfully taking part or are as deranged as Trump, Musk, Steven Miller, and those who've been in on the game since the first Trump administration. We don’t believe any of our representatives are deranged. We believe they are acting out of fear.
If Democrats rationalize their normal response to an abnormal attack, we lose our ability to fight back. We need Democrats to lead right now in ways unseen before in American history. Because an attack on our nation from within like this has also never been seen before.
People stand ready to act. Thousands are already protesting. But we need leadership and resources. Democrats can provide both. We call for a billion dollars to be committed by Valentine's Day and by the end of the month tens of millions of dollars going directly to state parties and non-profits to invest in everyday Americans to get into the streets and dominate the media.
Legacy media, the punching bag of the MAGA world, is playing an important role in telling our nation what’s happening. We need to amplify the most dangerous parts of what’s happening so that the media continues to document the threats and attacks. You know the media we can trust.
We need Democratic leaders, major donors, business leaders, celebrities, labor leaders, and the others who stepped up last summer to intervene within their own party when it became clear that President Biden was not going to be able to win an election. Yes, you.
We challenge you to raise the money and make the investments now. We can debate about mistakes made and opportunities not leveraged leading up to November 5 later.
The only thing that can save our democracy are the American voters. But if we wait to mobilize them for the next election it will be too late. And as the extent of the threat becomes more clear, we will be joined in the streets by Independent voters and non-cult MAGA Republicans.
Now that Republicans have been taken hostage, the very foundations of our democracy are being blown up. Our allies are being rebuffed, our enemies both domestic and foreign are being empowered, and our nation is causing pain and death in our own country and around the world. The Democrat’s campaign ads predicted this, and now that it’s happening voters are ready for a call to action.
Students, workers, farmers, teachers, nurses, small business owners, chambers of commerce, local elected leaders, and more are ready to act. We are ready to defend our democracy. Protests have begun. But we need the Democratic Party to rally us, invest in us, organize us, and put us into the streets.
Every day that we wait, is a day that more of us are taken hostage and the harder it will be to take back our nation and our democracy.
Don't send the money to the D.C. consultants. Billions have gone that route and have built almost nothing. Go directly to the state parties with the directive to partner with state and community-based organizations. We need action directed at the state level. Empower the states to determine how to put pressure on their Republican members of Congress. Let them determine the tactics that will work best in their states such as boycotts, sit-ins, strikes, walkouts, press events, marches, rallies, street theater, and other tactics that emerge organically as Americans are called into action.
Resource the teams and put them on the streets. Hire young people to create a social media blitz, everything, everywhere, all at once. The longer we wait to invest in new leadership, the harder it will be to stop the destruction and continue to build on the legacy of American democracy.
Don't let legal considerations about the money slow it down. You've got the lawyers working on the legal case to stop Trump, put some lawyers on figuring out how to legally get the money to the streets.
Don't worry about how this plays into the next election. If we don't mobilize voters now, the plans you're making for 2026 are moot. The midterms won't be free and fair if Trump's team continues to take hostages. But if you invest in Americans to fight for our democracy now, not only will the next elections be consistent with our democracy, Democrats and the United States will win big.
If you agree that this is the direction Democrats need to go, please share this column far and wide. Please forward it to the party chair in your state, and with the Democratic National Committee by clicking here. It’s also important to us for you to share your thoughts with us and each other.
It’s going to take all of us to make it happen.
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