By Color Of Change
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
The huge decentralized turnout for No Kings Day has shown that grassroots power can be a major force against the momentum of the Trump regime. The protests were auspicious, with 5 million people participating in 2,100 gatherings nationwide. Activists are doing what the national Democratic Party leadership has failed to do – organize effectively and inspire mass action.
What we don’t need now is for newly activated people to catch a ride on plodding Democratic donkeys. The party’s top leadership and a large majority of its elected officials are just too conformist and traditional to creatively confront the magnitude of the unprecedented Trumpist threat to what remains of democracy in the United States.
Two key realities are contradictions that fully coexist in the real world: The Democratic Party, led by the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, is in well-earned disrepute, having scant credibility even with most people who detest Trump. And yet, Democratic Party candidates will be the only way possible to end Republican control of Congress via midterm elections next year.
Few congressional Democrats have been able to articulate and fight for a truly progressive populist agenda – to directly challenge the pseudo-populism of MAGA Republicans. Instead, what implicitly comes across is a chorus of calls for a return to the incremental politics of the Biden era.
Awash in corporate cash and milquetoast rhetoric, most Democratic incumbents sound inauthentic while posturing as champions of the working class. For activists to simply cheer them on is hardly the best way to end GOP rule.
With top-ranking Democrats in Washington exuding mediocrity if not hackery, more and more progressive organizers are taking matters into their own creative hands, mindful that vocal reframing of public discourse can go a long way toward transforming public consciousness and the electoral terrain. The Occupy movement did it early in the 2010s. The Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns did it later in the decade. The Black Lives Matter movement did it several years ago.
In contrast, playing follow-the-leader by deferring to the party hierarchy is a trip on a political train to further disaster. The kind of leadership now exemplified by Schumer and Jeffries amounts to the kind of often-devious partisan maneuvering that dragged this country into its current abyss, after protracted mendacity claiming that President Biden was fit to run for re-election.
Today, realism tells us that the future will get worse before it might get better – and it can only get better if we reject fatalism and get on with organizing. Republicans are sure to maintain control over the federal government’s executive branch for another 43 months and to retain full control over Congress for the next year and a half. While lawsuits and the like are vital tools, people who anticipate that the court system will rescue democracy are mistaken.
The current siege against democracy by Trump forces will be prolonged, and a united front against them will be essential to mitigate the damage as much as possible. The need is to engage in day-to-day pushback against those forces, while doing methodical groundwork to oust Trump’s party from the congressional majority in 2026 and then the White House in 2028. READ MORE…
