Democrats in a Bind

Aging leadership and a win-at-all-costs opposition have hamstrung them.

The opposition to Donald Trump has been ineffective. For ten years, his over the top Reality TV bravado with the exaggerations, denials, and outright lies, have flown. All the yelling, foot-stomping, and legal maneuvering have proved to be about as impotent as a WWE referee.

Authoritarians recognize the need to take over institutions within government, and to intimidate into submission those that are outside of government—industries, firms, universities. They move quickly and without formal announcement. For instance, DOGE was never an official agency under Elon Musk’s control, but that didn’t stop him from hacking out institutions with a chainsaw on loan from the Devil. By the time most of us knew what was happening, the damage was done.

Here’s where our old friend “projection” comes into play. Authoritarians simply blame their Democratic opponents. They pose as protectors of democracy, and say unironically, the broad left is at fault, when it’s clearly they themselves—right-wing accusers. Most of their projection sounds like confession when turned on its head. Out of the mouths of authoritarians, the words, “They’re trying to destroy our democracy” should be viewed as a warning that the speakers are confessing to that very act, and trying to place the blame on their democracy-minded opponents, who are now playing defense.

Yes, the pro-democracy forces find themselves in a defensive crouch, and it’s hard to score points on defense. With Trump and his acolytes from the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025, to subservient Congress Critters, all nattering about the “lunatic left,” the only answer is to stand up and call it what it is: propaganda aimed at establishing an authoritarian state.

This great example is from the last election, where Kamala Harris said, “He has an enemies list, I have a to-do list,” which is pretty great marketing, but the Trump campaign capitalized on the tiny, far-left faction of the Democratic Party. They made an easy target. His campaign blanketed the internet and social media with this gem: "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

The opposition has spent all their time decrying the illegal, unconstitutional, and undemocratic things he’s done, but focusing on his insults, brazen norm-busting, and law-defying behavior, has gotten us nowhere. The writer Ben Rhodes says the Democratic Party “spends more time defending what is being lost than imagining what will take its place.” Fretting, while calling out the undemocratic, cruel behavior, has had no impact on Trump diehards, and next to none on his casual supporters.

Meanwhile, they don’t fret, they act. Just the other day, the president declared changes in the decennial census, saying he wants a new census right now, and that he will not count everyone in the U.S. as the Constitution demands. He’s desperate to discount all black and brown immigrants. Melania and Afrikaners are white, rich, and safe. Of course he doesn’t have the power to change the census in any way, but his misinformed base doesn’t know that. They think he’s fighting on their behalf.

Why Democrats and Independents don’t stand up and shout from the rooftops that he doesn’t have the authority to say who gets counted and who doesn’t (by law, everybody gets counted), and that there’s no magic spell that compresses the time it takes to plan and execute a census, which is years, not days or months.

The Republicans have publicly announced that they cannot win without cheating. Elections are supposed to unleash the marketplace of ideas where they are discussed and debated, then handed over to the voters on election day. Instead, Republicans have stacked the deck by purging voter rolls everywhere they can, and purging ideas they don’t like. Democrats have lost before the polls even open.

We now face our last chance to stop the authoritarian takeover that will ensure the one-party-rule that the un-American Right has tried to secure just about since colonial days.

Here are seven things that will prove more effective for Democrats:

1. First and Foremost, it’s time for a generational change of leadership. The times are not a-changin’—they’ve already changed. The octogenarians must get out of the way. Step aside, Chuck. You too, Nancy.

2. Stop belittling the working class. They are your natural base.

3. Demonstrably support labor unions. How did you get to a place where the autoworkers showed up at the Republican convention?

4. Acknowledge that the fringe-left is not the center-left. Pandering to them alienates the actually very large base.

5. Protesting is fine. Fighting is better. We are losing our democracy. Stephen Stills sang, “Singing songs and carrying signs, mostly saying ‘hooray for our side.’” We need Churchill, not Chamberlain. Rather than protesting what you’re against, talk about what you’re for.

6. Do not acquiesce. Do not agree without a fight.

©2025 Jon Sinton