Don’t trust the Democrats, we need real resistance to Trump
As the Trump administration tears through the US, deporting, sacking and ripping up decades of social progress, the Democratic Party has been playing dead. This is no exaggeration—in a New York Times piece published in late February, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville argues: “With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political manoeuvre in the history of our party: roll over”. Essentially, Democrats shouldn’t lift a finger to obstruct Trump’s agenda, and simply wait until he runs out of steam. Tough luck if you’re one of the people Trump plans on running down before the next election.
The Democrats have been displaying more weaponised incompetence than a dud husband. In a moment that symbolised the party’s stance, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries threw his hands in the air at a February press conference and asked, “What leverage do we have? ...They control the House, the Senate and the presidency; it's their government”. For a party that has spent the last decade staking its legitimacy on being the only viable bulwark against Trumpism, this has not been a good look.
A recent survey by polling firm Data for Progress showed that 70 percent of Democratic voters gave the party’s response to Trump a “C” grade or below, 21 percent assigning a failing grade. Another from the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini shows that nearly 80 percent of Democrats want the party to take a more combative approach to the president. No wonder they’ve enjoyed record low approval ratings, even as Trump’s popularity dips.
But now Democrats are starting to look alive as the Trump administration hits bumpy roads. One leading elected official is taking calls from the party’s supporters to stand up to Trump literally—last week, Cory Booker stood to excoriate Trump for 25 hours straight, in the longest speech ever delivered to Congress. Booker has been widely praised for this political stunt. In the words of one supporter, a small business owner quoted in the New York Times, “The Democrats have been acting like it’s OK what Trump is doing, and it’s not OK ... Now, there’s finally some fire”.
Democrats have drawn encouragement from their victory in a race for a vacant Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin—a campaign into which Musk unsuccessfully ploughed $25 million of his own money. Two special elections in Florida returned Republicans to Congress, but with drastically reduced margins. On the left flank of the party, “Fight the oligarchy” rallies headed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are drawing enormous crowds that dwarf Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies. The “Hands Off” protests against Trump and Musk on 5 April, which mobilised millions across more than 1,200 locations, were used as a platform by Democrat representatives keen to relate to the anti-Trump feeling.
It’s good that there is more push back against Trump. This can help cut through the climate of intimidation the administration is seeking to create, and give people more confidence to stand up. But the Democrats don’t offer an alternative worth getting behind.
The Democrats agree with many of the worst aspects of Trump’s politics. In 25 hours of speechifying against Trump, Booker declined to mention the administration’s support for the resumption of genocide in Gaza since Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire deal in March. This is because Booker, like the overwhelming majority of Democrat representatives, is a loyal supporter of Israel’s offensive against the Palestinians. While denouncing Trump’s disregard for the “rule of law”, he happily poses for photographs with former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who is subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a method of warfare.
Booker’s speech neglected to mention the violation of the legal rights of student activists like Mahmoud Khalil, who has been kidnapped by ICE and faces deportation for protesting. When the Palestinian American representative Rashida Tlaib initiated an open letter demanding the release of Khalil, a legal permanent resident who has not had any charges filed against him, only 14 of 213 Democrats in the House were willing to sign it.
Democratic accordance with Trump’s agenda goes beyond the party’s support for Israel. Trump’s very first anti-migrant bill, giving ICE more powers to detain and deport, was passed with Democrat votes. On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris attacked Trump for failing to support a Democrat-backed bill to hire 1,500 more border cops.
Post-election soul-searching among Democrats has resulted in a variety of different conclusions. Democrats lost to an unpopular candidate whose last term ended in chaos and embarrassment. Many are envious of the enthusiasm Trump inspires, while Harris lost 6.8 million votes compared to Biden’s 2020 result.
Unwilling to break with the pro-business and anti-worker policies that have steadily undermined their support, leading Democrats have decided to pin blame for their loss on the left. According to Democrat strategist Stuart Malec’s implausible account, the problem is: “In the name of keeping the peace internally, we have allowed politicians and activist groups from our left-most flank to seize an outsized role in defining the party’s national brand”. He argues Democrats have been shamed out of proudly trumpeting Biden’s many achievements, such as massively expanding fossil fuel extraction and deporting record numbers of migrants. Talking tough against the tiny US left is a lot easier than standing up to Trump or the billionaires.
Following this line of argument, many leading Democrats are now championing the Trumpist claim that “wokeness” has gone too far. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has recently complained that “We’ve gone through five years where people became way too permissive as a culture”. In an interview with the LA Times, California Governor Gavin Newsom said his party’s brand had become “toxic”. “People don’t think we make any damn sense”, he said. Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York slammed Democrats for “pandering to the far left” on trans rights.
Democrats who argue the party has gone too far in supporting social justice frequently frame this retreat as a turn back to “bread and butter” issues. But the same Democrats who urge this back-to-basics approach are hostile to workers’ rights and the welfare state. Emanuel, for instance, spent his time as Chicago mayor attempting to crush teachers’ unions and close public schools.
Democrats can comfortably agree with war, deportations, bigotry and austerity. Their fundamental problem with Trump is that he’s an unreliable and erratic enforcer of the interests of American capitalism. The Democrats’ criticism of Trump is tied to the growing chorus of capitalists who are concerned he is doing irreparable damage to their system. Wall Street billionaires are infuriated by Trump’s tariff gambit: Bill Ackman said the US is “heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”. Boaz Weinstein predicted the “avalanche has really just started”. And Jamie Dimon warned it “may be disastrous in the long run”.
This chorus also includes sections of the US imperialist establishment, like ex-Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, who are concerned Trump’s crude and blustering approach to foreign policy risks undermining US imperialist influence. This explains the furore around “Signalgate”, when Trump’s team accidentally added an Atlantic journalist to their group chat discussing military strikes on Yemen. Democrats condemned Trump, not for bombing a poor country and slaughtering civilians, but for letting the world know about it. Traditionalists through and through, the Democratic Party prefer US war crimes to be kept secret.
This is why their dominant strategy for “resisting” Trump thus far has been an endless series of legal challenges. The balance sheet of this strategy has been dismal. While court cases may temporarily halt some of Trump’s agenda, the administration is intimidating judges and moving rapidly toward defying their orders. This strategy does nothing to mobilise people to resist attacks or provide people with a coherent political argument against the right.
The huge turnouts at anti-Trump demonstrations on 5 April show that millions are looking for a way to resist Trump’s agenda effectively. While many are frustrated with the Democrats’ leadership, the party isn’t going anywhere. The Democrats hold on because of the strength of “lesser-evilism”, the pull for people to rally around the Democrats because they’re the only viable electoral alternative. Many accept a pathetic and pro-capitalist “resistance” to Trumpism even when they would prefer something better. So Democrats were able to front the 5 April demonstrations to begin rebuilding their credibility after a bruising few months. They were also able to exert influence through the party-aligned NGOs that organised the marches to exclude “controversial” issues like Palestine from the platform.
The popularity of the “Fight the oligarchy” campaign led by Sanders and AOC shows that many support the idea of a left-wing resistance to Trump’s agenda. Their rally in Denver on 21 March drew 34,000 people and connected Trump’s reactionary social agenda to his war on workers. “People are starting to put the pieces together. The same billionaires who are taking a wrecking ball to our country derive their power from dividing working people apart”, said Ocasio-Cortez. “The last thing they want is for us to realize that the real division and the real harm in this country is how endless greed is costing the lives of everyone else.”
This is a good starting point for a socialist opposition to Trumpism. But it needs to be connected to a strategy that can actually build the power of workers and the oppressed. While they talk about fighting the oligarchy, AOC and Bernie urge support for the Democratic Party, an irredeemably oligarchic organisation.
The alternative to this is to build grassroots organisations that can mobilise opposition to Trump and involve people in political action, to build working class power at the point of production and to cohere a political force that has an orientation to the power workers and the oppressed have when they act together.
