[NOTE: In a previous blog, I mentioned the likelihood that local police would readily fall in line with state and federal guidelines for aggressive conduct toward political dissenters and public marches or protests. If armed U.S. Marshals obeyed orders to serve a late-night letter warning to fired DOJ attorney Liz Oyer not to testify before a Congressional panel, local police would likely be equally, if not eagerly, compliant with improper or illegal orders. A pertinent article is “Trump’s Crackdown on Protests is Spreading to Local Law Enforcement.”]
After Trump’s 5 November election and his 20 January inauguration, Democrats were in dismay, understandably, and in disarray, unfortunately. They found fault with Biden, Harris, Schumer, Jeffries, the Democratic National Committee, and the man behind the tree. They attributed the loss of the election to the losses of voters in some demographic groups, notably, young Black men, young Hispanic men, and white women. They bewailed their differences about messages or the lack of means to target messages to these groups and the working class. The Democratic Party united in grief and divided in analyses of its political impotence at all levels of government. Why? Mostly tradition.
About ninety years ago, Will Rogers quipped, “I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.” Indeed, the Democratic Party is not organized. It has operated by political quilt-making, stitching together selected patches (groups) to make a comforter (party). For decades, it has targeted and won diverse demographic groups, especially Blacks and Jews. More recently, it has targeted and won over other groups, including Hispanics; white, suburban, college-educated women (formerly, soccer moms); and LGBTQ+ individuals; and tried to win Taylor Swift fans and NFL game-day tailgaters. It has also been content to win in a few geographic areas, mainly the East Coast, the West Coast, and the upper Midwest. This approach failed in 2024, when the Party lost votes among these groups and a few of states in these areas, for three reasons. It failed to appeal to diverse demographic and geographic groups with a cogent philosophy, coherent platform, or compelling talking points. By emphasizing culture war and identity politics issues, it failed to emphasize issues important to most Americans.
To appeal to a broader electorate, the Democratic Party must appeal across the breadth of the electorate without regard for demographic enclaves. (I use the word “must” throughout as a shorthand for “I strongly recommend.”) It must unlearn the lessons taught by past successes which no longer lead to present successes. It must expand its campaign not only to retain blue states, but also to reach red states. It must no longer divide and conquer by tailoring different messages to different groups of voters and hope to win presidential elections. It must not make assumptions about voters on the basis of their geographical location, political affiliation, or special interests. It must think of voters as American citizens who have shared concerns and commitments, and who want a government of, for, and by the people. AOC and Sanders are doing it right. Said AOC recently: “I don’t think this is Trump country; I think this is our country.”
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To make this appeal, the Democratic Party must approach the 2026 mid-term elections with two main messages. First, it has sensible proposals for dealing with voters’ primary concerns: the economy and inflation; employment and unions; health care and abortion; education; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other safety-net concerns; public safety and immigration; energy; climate change; the environment; international trade; and national defense. Given the damage being done to federal departments and agencies, it must pledge to undertake their robust recovery and return to effective and efficient operations. Since most voters favor the Party’s positions on their primary concerns, the Party must emphasize its proposals and de-emphasize, though not avoid, its positions on issues like gun safety, LGBTQ+ , DEI, and “woke.”
Second, the Democratic Party will enact legislation to address voters’ primary concerns if, by free and fair elections, its candidates, with “the consent of the governed,” become a majority of their elected representatives. This linkage is necessary not only to avoid talking vaguely about a Republican threat to democracy, but also to attack Republican efforts to manipulate “consent” by rigging elections of candidates opposed to the positions which most voters favor. It must stress that national or statewide efforts to limit the franchise or hinder voting are efforts to enable a minority of voters to elect representatives who will reject legislation addressing the majority’s primary concerns. It must attack anti-democratic proposals, like the SAVE Act or Trump’s 25 March Executive Order, which require proof of citizenship or residency, demand hard-to-obtain or expensive documents like birth certificates or passports; limit the times and places to register or vote; and intervene or interrupt the casting, receipt, or counting of ballots. (This Executive Order is mostly bluster because the President has no say in how states run their elections.).
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At present, Democrats place their collective hope—not an unreasonable one given the many opportunities which Trump, his Cabinet Secretaries, and Elon Musk and his muskrats provide—in the off-year House and Senatorial elections in 2026. Those elections might take place—most autocrats need their legitimization—, but, if so, they might be decided by pre-election “fixes” before votes are cast. Indeed, Trump seems to be inviting foreign—Russian, Iranian, Chinese—penetration of voting systems to manipulate the vote by having DHS disband the Cyber Safety Review Board of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which protects voting systems from hacking. However, elections might not take place if Trump fears that Republicans might lose control of the House or the Senate, not to mention both.
Trump can urge Elon Musk to support House and Senate Republican candidates. An average House contribution of $2.5 million in half the races (218) and an average Senate contribution of $7.5 million in half the races (17)—total cost, only $672,500,000—might secure super-majorities in both Congressional chambers. At this rate, less than a half percent of Musk’s wealth, more than compensated by more or larger government contracts, might ensure Republican dominance of the federal government throughout and beyond his lifetime. The havoc that Republican super-majorities could wreak with Constitutional amendments, the approval of which by the states which Musk can fund, is easy to imagine. Or Musk can fund state campaigns calling for a constitutional convention to enable drafting a new constitution from scratch. Trump’s remarks about a third term, not only suggest his unwillingness to be a lame duck, even if only for two years, but also make sense in terms of Republican super-majorities able to quickly amend or re-write the Constitution after the mid-term elections.
Aside from the aforementioned ways within the electoral system, Trump has other ways to advance the election of House and Senate Republican candidates. As the resistance to Trump’s capricious and destructive executive actions grows, he may become increasingly desperate and reckless, and resort to increasingly desperate and reckless measures. He can signal domestic terrorist groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, still standing back but standing by, to disrupt urban voting sites and serve as pretexts for intervention by police. He can direct the Department of Justice to have the FBI assign agents to infiltrate, investigate, and thereby intimidate voting rights groups. He can invoke the Insurrection Act to use active-duty military or National Guard units to suppress demonstrations or intimidate voters at election sites.
Given these possibilities and others which I cannot imagine, I worry that the harder the Democrats try to win the 2026 elections, the more likely Trump and Musk will take more drastic steps to make it harder for them to win. Yet the Democrats have no choice but to try to make an overwhelming appeal to the electorate. I repeat: that appeal depends on its vigorous advocacy of widely approved policies in domestic and foreign affairs, and resolute protection of democratic practices to enable enactment of those policies.
Democrats can also appeal to the value which Americans place on their independence by framing the choice between candidates as a question: who makes the decisions? Democrats elected by the entire franchise—“the consent of [all] the governed”—to enact majority positions or Republicans elected by a fraction of the franchise to impose minority positions. They must stress that, without democratic governance, the majority’s interests (listed above) are not likely to be advanced, as they have been repeatedly thwarted by Republicans for many years. Thus they connect the general issue of decision-making to the actual decisions which must be made about what serves the interests of the people and the nation, not the interests of oligarchs with an authoritarian leader.
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