In their current form, the Democratic Party is likely content to be the ‘last opposition party,’ an extremely dangerous historical trend with liberal / neoliberal politicians (see the February Revolution, Nazi party takeover in Weimar Germany, and, albeit not exactly liberal, the Optimates in the Roman Republic); they will sit there until our/their political system has been completely cannibalized by those looking to increase their power in the absence of governmental oversight (capitalists in this case), lending their legitimacy to this process and only being consumed last when it is too late and the loss of the dignity of old men is no longer of public concern because they gave their own power away. Democrats are normative political agents in a world that is no longer normative, attempting to arrive at consensus and compromise with the Republican party, a group of individuals interested in ending American politics on every level that they cannot control and continue to subvert. This lack of a strong representative group advocating for positive change leaves many Americans with the sensation that politics have already ended, giving the Republicans a massive advantage. This situation is intractable unless the Democrats do something that I believe is imperative for the vast majority of American institutions and impossible given their neoliberal ideology: turn around from the interests of capital and shareholders – the few – and specifically attend to the interests of workers and citizens (and, in the case of businesses, consumers). Another issue is that given the amorality of corporations, the increased power and license to operate with less oversight offered by Donald Trump represents a position too attractive to refuse for long; while the Democrats share their primary stakeholders (capitalists and billionaires) with Republicans, they will never offer an appealing alternative and suffer attrition as those with wealth and power complete their slow-motion coup d’état.
Republicans have prudently chosen to rally workers and citizens with their rhetoric, but I do not believe that their governmental policy does anything other than hasten wealth transfer and provide psychic returns for their followers. These psychic returns seem to be part of a phenomenon described by Slavoj Zizek (and consequently Lacan) – “worsting,” a response to the undermining of an authority where things are taken to their logical extreme and that authority manifests as a farce of itself; Donald Trump as president is the ultimate example of this intentionally ruinous caricature of a once-dignified office (Idea comes from pp. 43-4 of Zizek’s Against Progress). That dignity and the exact world of political nicety that was once prized and is still clung to by Democrats became an object to be subverted for the pleasure of those who felt excluded and snubbed by the expansion of the American democratic and capitalistic project to include marginalized groups. To summarize, Republicans have effectively chosen to undermine the legitimacy of the government in their various capacities and positions to build and reinforce their poorly informed base’s preconceived notions that 1) the government is corrupt and permanently inefficient, 2) politicians are corrupt and selfish and 3) these things have been and will continue to be true forever. This has prompted their base to select from among their options unqualified, intentionally incompetent, bigoted, scandal-plagued people that serve to fulfill their vision of and also help ‘get back at’ the political system itself.
How does one respond to a political movement who has power in the palm of its hand and is actively working to remove checks on its speed of reform and is actively disinterested in reasoning and discourse, especially from those that it perceives as being on the left (as I am permanently, irrevocably going to be seen as by those Americans whose news comes from a Murdoch mouth)? Why should any of those people listen if they are getting what they want? I believe that given the Democratic Party’s collection of policies and the reputation-albatross around its neck nothing can change. New rhetoric, new policies, new leaders, and a new key demographic must emerge for politics to remain competitive as things change. I think it is essential to remind people: change is already happening, whether it is what you want or not. Donald Trump has changed America and will continue to shape it.
The ultimate challenge and paradox here is related to the dissemination of information in the United States and the paucity of actual political discourse due to the dominance of the ‘image of discourse’ in news spaces. Additionally, Democrats struggle because they can only offer ‘negative’ discourse – in the sense of critiquing Republicans’ policies, character, and behavior – while having a relatively weak ‘positive’ (substantive) policy platform paired with messaging that was easily taken out of context and weaponized against their campaign by conservative media sources. I frankly believe the discourse about calling ‘conservative’ (in my opinion reactionary is a better word given the reforms they are putting into place) people racists and nazis swinging the election was relatively unserious and more important is the proletariat’s feeling that the Democrats were not developing policies in their interest (even when their basic umbrella policies foster a better economic environment than the piggy-bank-smashing-Trump). The average American is poorly informed, un(der)educated, and often moves through a media environment saturated with context-stripped information designed to sharpen their existing resentment for ‘politics as usual.’ The way that people consume media in selective echo chamber-bubbles renders critique of sources like the New York Times’ media practices almost moot; NYT articles and especially headlines legitimize Trump constantly, yet most NYT readers aren’t going to have a novel serious revelation about Trump at this point of his exposure to the public. This all strengthens my case for the left’s need for positive populist messaging that, at least for the time being, eschews intersectionality and the legacy of American liberalism for universality of economic and social causes in opposition to the billionaires. I believe that Trump supporters THINK they are thinking through things clearly, and when you present them with a policy proposal they understand that advantages them that doesn’t explicitly also help a demographic that they feel threatened by, you can begin to change things and help the public by giving them a serious populist alternative to our current “elite” populism, which is an absurd oxymoron; the double issue of the Trump supporter craving respect and the Democrat apparently offering zero solutions but calling them many names is hard to solve in these discrete spaces of pretend discourse where people can feel comfortable and confident about their beliefs and not experience a single moment of seriously uncomfortable learning and transformation prompted by interaction with someone different from oneself. This is my concept of the loss of social serendipity, something that has transpired in our society given television and the internet; when we do not have these natural moments where our beliefs are challenged, the space for malice and misanthropy balloons, both individually and politically.
Ultimately, I believe that we cannot create the change necessary in our current two-party system, because the capitalists are just going to stay where the fastest wealth transfer is and work to divide and subjugate the working class. We need to develop a legitimate, distinct leftist party whose stakeholders are workers and citizens first, and we need to develop and use a language separate from existing discourse to access the public while avoiding sources of pre-existing bias; they need to see and hear ideas that aren’t contained in the negative context of American politics. However, in the interim while there are still Democrats in government and these ideas have about 10 views on a blog, here are a few thoughts about how Democrats should act.
The current political moment is embodied by audacious erosion of traditional political processes (e.g. senate confirmation of presidential political appointments, the insertion of oligarchs into budget management, the power of the legislative branch and the influence of the president in budget decisions, etc.) that are going undernoticed for the power grabs that they are; the avalanche of gaffes, incompetent fools intended to attract and thus distract the public eye (and ire), and generally discombobulating atmosphere all help to keep the public shocked and trapped in petty discourse that never reaches the necessary systematic and legalistic review of Trump’s activity that is transforming America. I fear – deeply – that Donald Trump will simply run again in 2028 and effectively break American institutions for the final time while proving that the rule of law is a farce, and it feels like most Democrats are not moving with that urgency. People are worried, but a lot of the time their fears bubble under the surface and we’re all hastened down the American river to our destination mute and full of fear, anger, and futility. Most Americans aren’t in a position to do much, but Democrats in both houses of Congress and every state legislature in America need to use the power granted them by their constituents and resist. The goal is to force the urgency and tyranny of the Republican Party to become explicit; moments like Nicole Collier’s choice to stay overnight in the Texas state House chamber that create a splash are good examples to aim for (https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/19/nicole-collier-texas-house-lawsuit-police-escort/). However, I have an even more appealing playbook to pull from: Republican obstructionism! It is necessary to incite/elicit these acts of palpable fascism by pulling the VERY SAME LEVERS Republicans pulled every day a Democrat has ever been in office, with just as little decorum (https://www.dpc.senate.gov/dpcdoc.cfm?doc_name=fs-110-1-120, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/republican-party-obstructionism-victory-trump-214498/). I am disgusted by the two-party system and the possibility for endless gridlock (which does, indeed, help give rise to reactionaries and even the flimsiest promises of populism), but for the time being the left’s mission needs to be twofold: those in office need to obstruct, resist and make evident the abnormality of this political moment, and those outside the political establishment must develop a new political position and language built for citizens and workers. Finally, all Americans must begin having difficult conversations across political and sociological barriers to begin the process of transformation.
B Writes 