MAKING PROGRESS OR RETREATING?
Democrats do have a story and program. Time to tell us.
What if we held a national election and nobody won?
For now, Democrats are in a deep hole with their lowest polling and registration in decades while Republicans are tainted by a leader with the worst presidential polls in history at this point (and declining).
Both are true yet miss the far bigger trend line — the governing party of Donald Trump is heading into the 2026 and 2028 elections measurably on the defensive.
Although he won’t appear on either ballot, every Republican running will have to justify their unflinching support for his unpopular failures: a likely tariffs-induced economic slowdown, the albatross of Epstein, blowing up the historic independence of the DOJ, FBI, Fed, BLS, a contempt for science that threatens the health of millions, widespread reductions in Medicaid and health insurance, tax cuts for the wealthiest paid for by large deficits and masked ICE agents assaulting Brown people nightly on TV.
And not to mention the rhythm of off-year elections costing the party in power an average of 22 House seats since 1970. (Democrats need three more House and four Senate seats to win majorities.)
Bellwether contests in 2025 have indeed swung sharply in favor of Democrats (like a flipped Iowa State Senate seat last Tuesday). GOP town hall meetings become shouting matches. Polling from January to August show Trump falling from 46% to 29% favorable among Independents (Gallup) and 53% to 31% among voters who think him “honest and trustworthy” (YouGov). Generic congressional polls currently show Democrats three points ahead.
Trump’s response to his Summer of Epstein has been not to directly respond. As in many prior scandals, he has resorted to diversionary razzle dazzle to dominate the “Attention Economy” — illegally sending American troops into Blue cities to play the crime and race cards, trying to rig the 2026 election with a mid-decade Gerrymandering and new Census, rechristening the Pentagon as the “Department of War” and military facilities with their original Confederate names, and of course his Niagara of lies that’s become a trademark (though occasionally with unintended humor, like interrupting his three-hour Cabinet meeting of servile praise with “I have no ego when it comes to this stuff.”)
Yet none of his chesty gaslighting actually lowers prices, boosts real income or slows Russia’s aggression — all of which he ran on in 2024. Worse, the approaching elections appear on track to be about the past versus the future, between his aim to “Make America 1898 Again” and Democrats’ promise to improve everyday lives.
The commentariat keeps lecturing Democrats “do something!” — i.e., counter not merely issue-by-issue but with a unified theory-of-the- case that both links his numerous predations and inspires millions more to hit the streets in an aligning pro-democracy movement.
So here’s “something”: base the elections on a choice between “Going Backwards or Forward?”, then build the case with examples of their epic corruption and policies to enrich the already wealthy. And contrast that with Democrats’ positive ideas to help the struggling middle class.
That is, bluntly explain what they're against and what you’re for in order to win attention and votes. That means declaring that there is a “national emergency” and it’s a president with his own S.S. and a fringy government of Fox hosts, amateur billionaires and Proud Boys in ties.
If Trump could run successfully against an elderly Joe Biden who wasn’t on the ballot, next time Democrats can run against an even more vilified Trump, racing in reverse to the Gilded Age of McKinley.
I. FIGHT CORRUPTION BY STRENGTHENING DEMOCRACY
Trump’s rap sheet of recidivism — his felony convictions, civil fraud,unconstitutional executive orders, sexual assaults and a lethal Jan. 6 Insurrection that he provoked and later defended — has elevated him to a special echelon: he’s objectively now the biggest crook since Charles Ponzi, who a century ago literally won naming rights to become the avatar of cheating. It’s likely that “to be Trumped” in the future will not be a compliment.
Especially as he weighs what would be a repulsive commutation for serial sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, this is not a right-left but a right-wrong contrast. A detailed analysis in The Atlantic found that Trump had personally profited in office by an emolumental $3.4 billion; and while Republican administrations from Nixon to Trump produced 206 total indictments, a comparable stretch of Democratic successors (Carter/Clinton/Obama/Biden) led to only three prosecutions. 206 to 3.
Here are four initial proposals that can advance this patriotic story-line:
Reign in the pardon power.
Pardons, established in Article II, have been corrupted by Trump’s repeated claims that convictions were “extremely unfair,” with the big majority going to his friends, donors, allies and former staff. “Leave no MAGA behind” said the indiscreet Ed Martin when he headed his pardon staff.
Democrats can propose either a law or, if necessary, a constitutional amendment for future administrations to slow the growth of what’s become an almost new branch of extra-legal government.
Mute the megaphone of money.
The 2011 Roberts majority opinion in Citizens United has turned our elections into auctions, as if one $280 million donation from Elon Musk to Trump was simply an example of speech by some soapbox orator. Polling shows the popularity of a constitutional amendment to restrict such legal bribery creating a government of purchased politicians.
End political prosecutions.
DOJ is pursuing cases against Obama, John Brennan, James Comey, Tish James, Adam Schiff and Act Blue. Presidents should not be allowed to order their Departments of Justice to destroy or financially exhaust the opposition party. That recurring retribution alone would replace America’s centuries-long rule-of-law with Trump’s law-of -rule. (And along the same lines, prohibit use of federal troops against civilian populations unless there’s an authentic threat of insurrection, like the Whisky Rebellion of 1794 or Civil War in 1861.)
Protect freedom and speech.
Banning abortions and books is not freedom. Nor is marshalling the huge power of federal contracting and licensing to censor — if not self-censor — the speech of universities, law firms, major networks and national museums based on #47’s definition of American “exceptionalism.” Five federal courts have all ruled against such First Amendment violations yet liberal targets still feel pressure to submit to such federal extortion.
II. CREATE AN ECONOMY-FOR-ALL
How can Democrats explain their continuing inability to campaign on the economy when GDP growth under Democratic presidents has been 50% higher since 1962 than under Republican presidents? Indeed, of the 43 million net jobs generated since 1989, 96% were created under Democratic presidents.
Thirty years ago, the ratio of average CEO pay compared to line workers was 30-1; now it’s 300:1. Will average-income voters stay calm at a feudal 1,000-to-1 if the party of free enterprise gets its way?
Many economic proposals could start to win back a meaningful slice of white working class voters once they notice the growing delta between Trump’s euphoric rhetoric and their middle-class struggles. For examples:
Strengthen the social safety net.
The federal minimum wage was $7.25 an hour in 2009 and $7.25 today. The next president should suggest a gradual increase to $25 an hour so that blue collar workers aren't impoverished if they work full-time. Ditto with creating a program for parental leave and expanding the Child Tax Credit, which would appeal to tens of millions of American families with young children.
Stop illegal tariffs.
According to Article I of the U.S. Constitution, tariffs can only be imposed by Congress, not a president using them to try to dictate economic terms to the rest of the world.
The U.S. Court of International Trade so ruled in May, a decision upheld this week by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. As Turkuler Isiksel, a political theorist at Columbia, put it: “The sovereign picking winners and losers — that’s something a 17th century king would do.”
Enact fair taxes.
Fifty years ago, two-thirds of federal revenues came from taxing capital; now it’s one-third. Instead, super-investor Warren Buffet popularized the idea that average workers at a firm should not be paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than its CEO. In the process, Democrats can announce they will finally bury the GOP “trickle-down” theory designed to hide its policy of picking our pockets to line theirs.
Focus on Affordability.
In the spirit of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary landslide, Democrats could advocate for a new TNEC (“Temporary National Economic Committee”), as FDR and antitrust chief Thurman Arnold instituted in 1937. An update could publicize how giant firms with huge market shares — even before super AI further consolidates corporate power — is systematically keeping prices high irrespective of federal budgets.
Democrats appear to be running out of patience with a mainstream media repeating Trump slanders about “communists” while ignoring the daily evidence of his slow-motion fascism. Can they rise to this occasion?
It’s happened at least once before.
When President Harry Truman in 1947 became convinced that Black soldiers returning from WWII lacked equal rights, he tried to bypass the Supreme Court’s notorious “separate but equal” Plessy decision and white supremacy in federal hiring established by President Wilson.
As described by historian Corey Brettschneider in his 2024 book "The Presidents and the People," Truman in effect revived the principles of the Civil War Amendments by ordering a policy of fair employment throughout the federal government and ending segregation in the military.
After Senate conservatives arose in furious opposition, the plain-spoken president wrote one ally that if his support of civil rights “ends up in my failure to be reelected, the failure will be in a good cause.”
Truman’s party 80 years later seems to be finally elevating a new generation of “give ‘em hell” patriots to try to pry our battered democracy out of the grip of the Mar-a-Lago Mussolini. Recently, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Cory Booker and Chris Murphy are calling out Trump’s dangerous extremism and contrasting that with a party of progress.
With the Supreme Court’s supermajority appearing afraid to annoy the elephant in the room — and a cowed White House press room largely just listening to his self-reverential monologues — the durability of Trumpism may now come down to which party most memorably frames the political choice in 2026 and 2028 — viz., when it comes down to your country and your family, who do you trust to tell you the truth and be on-your-side?
Trump or Truman? Wrecking America or Winning America?