Damn the Democrats’ Diffidence
Whatever happened to the loyal opposition?
ENOUGH CAPITULATION! DEMOCRATS and other MAGA opponents have responded to the election with acquiescence bordering on servility. Time to pull up our socks and remember what is at stake.
It’s important in a democracy that the losing side grapple with its defeat and learn the right lessons for next time. A certain amount of reflection and self-criticism is healthy, but we’ve blown past that point and are in danger of over-interpreting the 2024 results. Despite headlines proclaiming the GOP won in a “rout” or declaring that “This is the collapse of the Democratic Party,” November’s election was actually quite close. Donald Trump received 49.9 percent of the popular vote to Kamala Harris’s 48.4 percent, a difference of a point and a half. That’s a smaller margin than any winner since John F. Kennedy in 1960. The popular vote margin in 2000 was also razor-thin, but the candidate who received more votes that year was not the Electoral College winner. The margin in the Electoral College looked large—Trump won 312 to 226—but it would have gone the other way if just 100,000 voters in the swing states, or 0.06 percent of all voters, had swung the other way. Republicans took control of the Senate but their margin in the House was reduced.
This is not to say that the Democrats don’t have lessons to learn. It seems pretty obvious that shaking off the outsized influence of “the groups”—the immigration rights, LGBTQ rights, anti-development, anti-police agitators—is a good place to start. By all means, Democrats should convene conclaves and discuss all of that with their pollsters and greybeards.
But meanwhile, Trump was not transformed by his victory. He did not suddenly become more normal or less of a threat to democratic norms and institutions than he was on November 3. Yet Democrats are in a haze. Instead of behaving like the loyal opposition—loyal, that is, to the Constitution—they’re behaving like a junior partner to the Republicans, withholding judgment on some of the wilder Trump cabinet nominees, and focusing on areas in which the two parties can work together rather than the ones on which they differ. The papers are filled with chirpy articles about how Trump can really make a difference on housing policy, or public health, or our energy future.
If the Democrats have concluded, with Rep. Jared Moskowitz, that Democrats “were to the left of the American people” on immigration, fine. And if Democrats want to pay lip service, with Rep. Ro Khanna, to the DOGE initiative (if it even is an initiative), okay, though it would be nice if they noted that other commissions have addressed the matter of government waste and deficit spending to zero effect. These commissions recommended sensible reforms. But in order for anything to happen, Congress and the president must take their duties seriously and, just perhaps, enact laws. Our leaders ignored them.
Democrats and others should focus a bit less on last November’s election and a bit more on wannabe co-president Elon Musk. Not content with threatening to primary any Republican who dares assert independence from Trump, Musk has gone abroad seeking fascist-adjacent leaders to support. The man Trump has entrusted with vast influence has endorsed the German AfD, a Russia-philic, extremist right-wing party that cannot seem to stop using racist and antisemitic slogans; agitated against the British government by spreading lies, promoted the cause of right- wing provocateur Tommy Robinson; and announced, as if ex cathedra, that Nigel Farage is no longer acceptable as the leader of the Reform UK.
Where are the calls for Trump to repudiate Musk?
Perhaps people are feeling defeated. What’s the point? After all, Trump himself just gave a press conference in which he repeated Kremlin talking points about the origins of the Ukraine war. It’s perfectly reasonable for Democrats and others to conclude that Trump is aligned with Putin and with the fascists worldwide who adore him. Remember how he responded to news that Putin’s tanks had rolled into Ukraine? He thought it was brilliant.
Maybe Trump is trolling when he threatens to use force to retake the Panama Canal or Greenland. Or maybe his authoritarian juices are rising as inauguration day beckons. It’s impossible to say at this moment, but what is possible to say is that most Americans do not perceive Trump as a would-be Putin. They may be okay with him firing some bureaucrats and deporting some illegal aliens, but they didn’t sign up for unabashed authoritarianism.
Or perhaps they did. But one thing is certain—we’ll never know unless the opposition shakes off its torpor. If Democrats and tech barons and newspaper owners and columnists keep pretending that Trump is really interested in health reform or housing initiatives and continue to sweep the dangerous and fascistic messages under the rug, there is zero chance that the American people will understand what is happening.