Jonathan P. Baird

For Democrats and progressives, this is a very dark time. Leading up to the 2024 election, the Democrats had one major overriding goal and that was the defeat of Donald Trump. They failed. If the Democrats were a football team, their general manager, head coach and assistant coaches would all have been fired and replaced.

But that is not how Democratic leaders have responded to a catastrophic loss. I am reminded of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?” The lack of leadership is striking. The Party has made no effort to look hard at what went wrong. Nor do they seem up to the challenge of fighting autocracy and billionaire rule. As Sen. Bernie Sanders has said:

“The Democratic Party is increasingly, a party dominated by billionaires, run by well-paid consultants whose ideology is to tinker around the edges of a grossly unjust and unfair oligarchic system.”

Voters did not sign up for the overwhelming onslaught of unconstitutional maneuvers we have so far seen from Trump. He is violating laws on a scale we have never seen before while scapegoating DEI. He is reveling in his own brand of performative cruelty. He has turned lying on social media into an art form. Anand Giridharadas called all the Executive Orders a coup against Congress, like a second January 6.

The Democratic response has been underwhelming and lethargic. It is like Republicans are on a search and destroy mission against democracy but Democrats are asleep at the switch. Our septuagenarian and octogenarian Democratic leaders don’t appear to appreciate the gravity of the situation. They are busy voting for absurd and laughable cabinet choices.

Our two New Hampshire senators voted for the dog killer, Kristi Noem, for Homeland Security Secretary. Noem defended the dog murder as an example of her ability to perform “gruesome jobs in life when necessary”. How revolting! That person may not be as ridiculous a choice as Hegseth, Kash Patel or RFK Jr. but she most certainly did not deserve confirmation. Such a sycophant would never stand up to Trump no matter how unhinged he might be. No doubt she will be a key operative in carrying out his racist and hateful immigration plans.

I have nothing against Kamala Harris but she underperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 national popular vote by more than six million votes. Democrats raised a billion dollars but our base voters were not inspired to turn out to vote. What is the story behind the poor turnout when there was so much money to spend? Democrats lost every battleground state and Trump gained in blue states and among male and working class minority voters. Democrats also lost both Houses of Congress.

The same thing played out at the state level. As Andy Volinsky pointed out in the Concord Monitor on January 31, this is the fifth election in a row Democrats lost the Governor’s race. They also lost the House and Senate in the state legislature and the Executive Council. As Volinsky wrote, that is a political disaster but who is holding leaders accountable for poor state election results? Where is the new blood that maybe could turn it around? Leaving the same leaders in charge is a self-destructive repetition compulsion.

Democrats don’t understand why they lost but they want to keep doing the same thing. And they have shown seemingly no interest in reforming themselves. For example, uninspiring Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer should be removed for ineptness. Where is the fightback? He is sleepwalking through a constitutional crisis pretending this is business as usual.

Then, on the House side, there was the Democratic choice to make Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Instead of picking a charismatic young legislator with social media expertise, Democrats picked a 74 year old suffering from esophageal cancer. It is like they want to lose.This is a political party in desperate need of an overhaul.

We need a vital opposition from the grassroots that can motivate and rally masses of people and will stand up to the billionaire class and autocracy. Democrats should frame the struggle as the working class versus the billionaires but the Democrats are afraid to frame it that way and pick a fight maybe because of their own reliance on billionaires.

The Harris campaign presented a canned, phony message massaged by their out-of-touch consultants. Other than abortion rights, who could figure what they stood for? Instead of any authenticity, Democrats thought it would be wise to play it safe and not tell the story of how much the American working class has been screwed by the system. Democrats told a story about how great the economy was. People weren’t buying.

One writer, Thomas Frank has consistently diagnosed the Democrats’ problem. He has pointed to a 50 year history of the wreckage of neoliberalism reflected by NAFTA, shuttered factories and the loss of good paying blue collar jobs across the country. This was engineered by Bill Clinton, not Republicans. Instead of defending a working class majority as they did in the FDR era, Democrats now focus more on appealing to suburban Republicans and the professional managerial class.

Democrats don’t tackle income inequality or even defend Medicare-for-all. Harris, who had previously supported Medicare-for-all, opposed it during the campaign. I think Democrats failed to give masses of people good reasons to vote for them. They could not persuasively say how their election would improve life.

Speaking more broadly about the whole progressive movement, it is time for some soul-searching. The movement is hardly a welcoming place. Anyone who has been around progressives would have to acknowledge the attitude of sectarian nastiness and intolerance that are all-too-common and it has been that way for a long time.The magnitude of our loss should mandate much greater humility.

We face an unprecedented threat. Trump and his MAGA movement are trying to fast track a theocratic autocracy. They seek a post-constitutional regime where the dictator has all the power with hollowed-out checks and balances. They are out to reverse everything progressive since the New Deal.

I found peoples’ strong response to the Trump administration’s across-the-board spending freeze very hopeful. That response forced Trump to rescind the OMB memo. Then two courts blocked Trump. Every effort to slow down autocratic takeover matters and has value.

On social media, I saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say this: “One thing about me is that I will fight Nazis until I’m six feet in the ground”. That is the spirit we need now. Resistance matters if the American people are going to save our democracy.