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Why Resistance Alone Will Fail
Without organizing the working class under a shared vision and demand for a more fair and just society, we will remain largely powerless to stop the Trump-led takeover by the billionaire oligarchy.
Feb 13, 2025
Trump and Musk are stirring up a resistance movement among liberals and the left. The protests are a righteous struggle against the authoritarian usurpation of lawful power, the reckless, illegal attacks on government agencies, the stripping of DEI programs and language, and the trampling over the rights of immigrants and transgender people.
But what are the goals of this resistance? And do voters outside the liberal bubble support them?
It's time to face up to the harsh reality: Trump’s flurry of activity, at least so far, has made him more popular, not less so, with the American public. Here’s the latest CBS poll:
- How would you describe Trump? 69 percent said “tough,” 63 percent said “energetic,” 60 percent said “focused,” and 58 percent said “effective.”
- Is Trump living up to his campaign promises? 70 percent said “yes.”
- Trump’s overall job rating is 53 percent. At this point in his first term it was only 40 percent.
- A hefty 59 percent approve of his program to “deport immigrants illegally in the U.S,” while 64 percent approve of sending troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. A smaller majority, 52 percent, oppose setting up large detention centers.
- How about Gaza? 54 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the conflict, though only 13 percent think it would be a good idea to for the U.S. to take over Gaza.
- Trump’s major vulnerability seems to be inflation. Two-thirds believe he is not focusing enough on lowering prices.
Progressives emphatically believe that Trump is destroying democracy, but doesn’t democracy have something to do with the will of the people? And what does it mean for democracy if Trump’s actions are broadening his base even beyond those who voted for him? It likely means that a majority of the public does not view Trump as the destroyer of democracy.
Rather than simply coming to the defense of USAID, progressives should organize protests aimed at stopping pharmaceutical price gouging and for promoting price controls on the food cartels.
Trump is broadening his base by doing what he said he would do and thinks he was elected to do. His support is growing because there is a hunger for action that is, at least symbolically, in the people’s interest. Will Trump’s approach improve the outcomes for the working class? That’s doubtful, but there is a desire for defiant action, and they are getting it.
Breaking Out of the Bubble
There’s a lesson there. Broadening the base is precisely what progressives must do.
That starts with a recognition that protests alone don’t signal action on behalf of working people. And such displays may be helping Trump increase, not undermine, his support. He may even want to provoke them, because he understands what liberals don’t—that most of the protests will be seen as resistance to change, as support for established elite institutions, and as obstacles to creating a better life for voters.
Think for a second about USAID. Most Americans are not strong supporters of spending billions to aid other countries while needs at home go unmet. As David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief advisor, put it:
“My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’ When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: ‘Cut foreign aid.’”
What then are the tests to evaluate resistance tactics?
- Do protests and resistance expand the progressive base?
- Do they engage with working people who have drifted away from the Democratic Party over the last generation?
- Do they win over those who support Trump’s efforts to dramatically change the federal government?
So far, probably not. That’s because progressive protests mostly, if not entirely, involve mobilizing and appealing to those who already agree with liberal positions. There are plenty of people who support these efforts, but not enough.
It will take real effort and imagination to figure out how to promote dialogue that expands the progressive base.
This is not to say that protests to protect the vulnerable are not important. Saving an immigrant child from being ripped out of the classroom and deported is both courageous and humanitarian. But by themselves, most protests only give Trump more ways expand his base.
Mobilizing for 2026?
If progressives want to halt Trump’s authoritarian actions, they will want the Democrats recapture at least one of the Congressional chambers. To do that the progressive base must expand in swing districts.
How should those battles be waged?
We know from the polling done by the Center for Working Class Politics that a strong populist economic message is far more effective than attacking Trump on democracy issues. We also know from the CBS poll that Trump is vulnerable on the high cost of living.
Saving an immigrant child from being ripped out of the classroom and deported is both courageous and humanitarian. But by themselves, most protests only give Trump more ways expand his base.
Rather than simply coming to the defense of USAID, progressives should organize protests aimed at stopping pharmaceutical price gouging and for promoting price controls on the food cartels. As I recently wrote, the Democrats also could put Trump on the defensive by demanding he implement an executive order that prevents government contractors (like Musk) from laying off workers involuntarily.
Progressive activists have the creativity to mobilize protests around price hikes and needless layoffs. But the move from defense to offense will only be possible if they are engaged in dialogue with Trump supporters about an economic platform that protects the livelihoods and economic well-being of working people.
In a fragmented society, this is a heavy lift. More affluent progressives and Trump working-class supporters do not often live in the same areas or share the same spaces. Inflation and job insecurity may not feel as pressing to them as they do to working people. It will take real effort and imagination to figure out how to promote dialogue that expands the progressive base.
The move from defense to offense will only be possible if they are engaged in dialogue with Trump supporters about an economic platform that protects the livelihoods and economic well-being of working people.
In our own small way, the Labor Institute has figured out how to build educational bridges between MAGA workers and others in our Reversing Runaway Inequality training for union members. The participants bring with them a wide range of political preferences, but after an 8-hour workshop they come together to design a common vision for what a society without runaway inequality should look like. It turns out workers from all across the red-blue spectrum have similar ideas about the key elements of a fair and just society.
Then what? That openness won’t translate into Democratic votes unless candidates are willing to put forth a powerful populist economic message that supports workers’ jobs and wages.
It turns out workers from all across the red-blue spectrum have similar ideas about the key elements of a fair and just society.
And there’s the rub: those candidates not only have to mouth the words, but also, they need to believe in the message. To build a bigger base, they must be willing to take on Wall Street and the billionaire class instead of trying to raise money from them.
The alternative? More marches, more chanting, and... more defeats.
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What Can Be Done About the Left’s Diminished DNC Presence?
The recent race for DNC chair raises questions about how the progressive wing of the party can and should move forward toward 2028.
Feb 09, 2025
Just before starting to write my lament about what a dramatic step backward the recent campaign for Democratic National Committee chair had been, I opened an Our Revolution email that told me, “We beat back the party establishment at the DNC.”
Now Our Revolution being a direct organizational descendent of the 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and me having been a 2016 Sanders convention delegate, I feel pretty confident that our ideas of who “we” means are pretty much the same. So what accounts for the widely divergent takes?
For those who haven’t been following this, Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin was just elected to lead the DNC for the next four years, defeating Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler by a 246.5–134.5 vote margin. There was no contested election four years ago, because by tradition a just-elected president selects the new chair; contested elections generally follow defeats. In the last one, in 2017, former Obama administration Secretary of Labor Tom Perez won the job, beating Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison in a second round of voting, 235--200.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders’ mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign.
Ellison’s candidacy came in the wake of his having been just the second member of Congress to support Sanders in the prior year’s presidential primaries, and the fact that Sanders people harbored serious grievances with the DNC over its perceived favoritism for the ultimate nominee, Hillary Clinton, lent a distinct edge to the election, bringing it considerably more buzz than the one that just occurred. At the time, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a vociferous opponent of Sanders’ run—who had once declared, “The most effective thing liberals and progressives can do to advance our public policy goals... is to help Clinton win our nomination early in the year”—now thought there was “a great deal to be said for putting an active Sanders supporter in there,” so as to clear the air “of suspicions and paranoia.” But Clinton and Barack Obama apparently didn’t think so, and Clinton’s past Obama cabinet colleague, Perez, took up the torch in a race that produced a level of grassroots involvement seldom if ever before seen in this contest.
Although the office is traditionally considered organizational rather than ideological and the 2017 candidates did run on those issues, the underlying political differences were obvious to all. This time around, the race was generally understood to involve little if any political disagreement on the issues. By way of explaining its support for new party chair Martin, Our Revolution characterized runner-up Wikler, as “an establishment candidate backed by Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer, and bankrolled by the billionaire class.” We understand that election campaigns are about sharpening the perception of differences between the candidates, but still this seems a rather thin, flimsy basis for hailing the vote as an anti-establishment triumph, given that Martin has publicly stated that he doesn’t want the party to take money from "those bad billionaires" only from "good billionaires;”and one of the two billionaires who gave a quarter million dollars to Wikler’s campaign was George Soros—probably the DNC’s model “good billionaire.” Besides Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg probably aren’t thinking of donating anyhow. Oh, and Chuck Schumer actually supported Ellison eight years ago.
Actually, “we” did have a horse in the race—2020 Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir. Shakir, who has been running a nonprofit news organization called More Perfect Union, dedicated to “building power for the working class,” argued that Democrats needed a pitch for building a pro-worker economy to go with their criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy proposals. His viewpoint presented a serious alternative to that of Martin, who told a candidates forum that “we’ve got the right message... What we need to do is connect it back with the voters,”—seemingly a tough position to maintain following an election in which NBC’s 20-state exit polling showed the majority of voters with annual household incomes under $100,000 voting Republican, while the majority of those from over-$100,000 households voted Democrat. But even though Shakir was a DNC member and thereby able to get the 40 signatures of committee members needed to run, he entered the race far too late to be taken for a serious contender and ultimately received but two votes.
Mind you, none of this critique comes as a criticism of the work of the two state party chairs who were the principal contenders. Martin touts the fact that Democrats have won every statewide election in Minnesota in the 14 years that he has chaired the party, and anyone who understands the effort that goes into political campaign work can only admire that achievement. Nor is Our Revolution to be criticized for taking the time to discern what they thought would be the best possible option in a not terribly exciting race that was nevertheless of some importance.
At the same time it’s hard not to regret the diminished DNC presence of the “we” that Our Revolution spoke of, after “we” legitimately contended for power in the last contested election. Certainly this lack of interest was in no small part a consequence of the extraordinary circumstances that produced a presidential nominee who had not gone before the voters in a single primary—for the first time since Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
More importantly, it raises a serious question for those of us who believe that the structure and history of the American political system require the left’s engagement in the Democratic Party—uncomfortable and unpleasant as that may be at times. As the social scientists like to say, politics abhors a vacuum, and absent a national Democratic Party presence for the perspective that motivated the Sanders campaigns, people seeking action on the big questions on the big stage may start to look elsewhere. And elsewhere always looms the possibility of the cul-de-sac of yet of another third party candidacy that holds interesting conventions and debates, but ultimately receives only a small share of the vote, but a large share of the blame for the election of a Republican president.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders’ mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign. But we may have to make it our business to find one.
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The Trump-Musk Oligarchic Plan: Dismantle, Loot, Privatize
We need to organize in states and congressional districts across the country to pressure members of Congress to stand up to the Musk-Trump agenda.
Feb 08, 2025
The Musk-Trump administration has made its agenda perfectly clear: dismantle the government, then loot and privatize it. It is executing a carefully planned oligarchic coup, illegally firing workers, freezing funds and exerting power. Yet for several weeks, most congressional Democrats are operating as if it’s business as usual. It’s become clear that it’s up to us to push our leaders to defend our food, water, climate and democracy.
What the Musk-Trump administration is doing is totally unprecedented. Trump has empowered the richest man on earth to - without congressional approval or oversight - take over and shut down entire agencies. Musk and his team have taken control of key processes and data at the Office of Personnel Management (the HR department for the federal government), the Treasury Department and at General Services (federal buildings). And Musk-Trump is illegally shutting down congressionally-approved programs like USAID, with even more far-reaching plans targeting the Department of Education, FEMA and more.
On issues that impact our food and water, Musk-Trump has encouraged the resignation of all federal workers charged with food inspection and water safety. And it froze huge amounts of federal funding, causing chaos before a federal court intervened. They have also used manufactured public concern about DEI excesses to gut all environmental justice programs. This includes dismantling the environmental justice units at the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Climate Corps and the USDA Forest Service Climate Change Resource Center. They have also scrubbed hundreds of pages of information from websites related to food, public health, and the environment.
It may feel overwhelming, but all well-meaning people who care about the future of the country and the planet must engage now.
These are extreme, rapidly unfolding and unprecedented actions. They require a forceful, unified and powerful Democratic response—one that says this is totally unacceptable, and that every tool in the toolbox will be used to block, delay or otherwise obstruct the Musk-Trump destructive agenda. But with a few exceptions, Democrats have so far been muted, divided and ineffective, doing little to stand in the way of this terrible agenda advancing.
For example, the same day that Trump announced the federal funding freeze, the Senate confirmed Treasure Secretary Bessent with just 29 Democrats opposing him. Days later it advanced Interior Secretary Burgam with just 17 Democrats in opposition. On the same day that Musk’s team gained access to the federal payment system at the Treasury Department, Senate Democrats on the Agriculture Committee unanimously voted to advance Rollins for Secretary of Agriculture, and seven Democrats (plus independent Angus King) voted to confirm fracking industry CEO Chris Wright as Energy Secretary.
This is not how an opposition party should operate in the face of an unfolding crisis of democracy.
The threat to our democracy is too great. Bold action is required now.
Clearly we can’t wait for Washington Democrats to lead the path forward—it’s up to us. It may feel overwhelming, but all well-meaning people who care about the future of the country and the planet must engage now. We need to organize in states and congressional districts across the country to pressure members of Congress to stand up to the Musk-Trump agenda. This means pressuring Democrats and also Republicans. We must reject business as usual until they stop their illegal and unprecedented actions.
Food & Water Watch has been on the ground already numerous rallies in recent weeks, generating thousands of emails and phone calls, and achieving impactful media coverage. And we aren’t alone - there are other organizations mobilizing actions across the country as well. This is all really important, and more is needed.
As the protests have ramped up, we have begun to see some Democratic leaders stepping up to organize rallies in front of the federal agencies being gutted and using measures to delay the appointment of nominees. But it is not nearly enough and we must continue to push them to do even more. The threat to our democracy is too great. Bold action is required now. It’s on all of us to provide the required leadership if we’re going to protect our food, water, climate and the country we all love.
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