Expecting Legislators to Lead the Resistance Is a Category Error
On podcasts and in this post, I’ve been trying to make a point about how you resist fascism.
Americans have at least three tools to resist fascism: legal, legislative, and via political movement. A great many people have conflated legislative opposition with movement opposition, and based on that conflation, assumed that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries must be leaders of The Opposition.
But that’s a category error.
While there are a lot of things Schumer, especially, could do better, you shouldn’t want either Schumer or Jeffries to be the leader of the resistance. You shouldn’t want that because the goals of the movement and of an opposition party in Congress are not the same. You shouldn’t want that because having a Black guy and a Jew from New York leading your resistance will likely make it harder to do what you need to do, which is (in significant part) to build a political movement big enough to undermine if not overthrow fascism.
I’m sure I’ll need to tweak this illustration and table, but here’s how I think about it: Democrats in Congress are part of the political movement, but that is different than their legislative role.
Start from the end goal: according to a contested theory from Erica Chenoweth, if a popular nonviolent movement comes to incorporate 3.5% of the population, you can achieve political change. G. Elliott Morris estimates that around 4 to 6 million people participated in the No Kings protests, so about 1.4 to 1.8% of the population (but that’s a one-time protest and you need to sustain such numbers). If you buy this theory, you need to at least double the popular opposition to Trump willing to take to the streets.
While it’s possible you could get rid of Trump via other means (maybe right wingers get sick of him and support impeachment in two years; maybe a Democrat beats him or his chosen successor in 2028; maybe he dies a natural death and JD Vance takes over, with less charisma to get things done), doing so would not be enough to reverse a number of institutional things, starting with the right wing majority on SCOTUS, that serve to protect the trappings of Christian nationalism anyway.
To do a lot of things people rightly believe are necessary — such as holding the ICE goons accountable — you’d need to do far more than just win an election, because unless something more happens, the goons will be protected by qualified immunity.
Now go back to how opposition to Trump’s fascism has grown.
The first things that happened were lawsuits, a flood of them (which continue unabated). While Democratic-led states have brought a number of important lawsuits, members of Congress have little standing to do so. Unions have brought many key lawsuits, as have Democratic groups, as have other members of civil society, including the law firms and universities targeted. I keep noting that some of the key lawsuits challenging tariffs have come from Koch or CATO-aligned non-profits (and the Chamber just filed an amicus), a fact that may get them a more favorable hearing at SCOTUS.
The courts help to buy time. They can provide transparency otherwise unavailable. They force the Trump administration to go on the record, resulting in damaging contradictions. Trump has, thus far, selected his targets very poorly, and so his persecution has and will created some leaders or political martyrs.
But the courts will not save us.
The courts won’t save us because, after some initial pushback on Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag, SCOTUS seems to have fallen into line, repeatedly intervening to allow Trump to proceed with his damaging policies even as challenges continue. The courts won’t save us because we fully expect SCOTUS to bless a lot of what Trump is doing, including firing everyone short of Jerome Powell.
Protests and loud opposition at town halls have been growing since the beginning. But these protests weren’t affiliated with the Democratic Party. That’s useful for several reasons. You’re going to find it a lot quicker and easier to target a well-funded corporate entity like Tesla without such affiliation. And protests will be more likely to attract defectors — former Republican voters or apolitical independents — in the numbers that would be necessary if they’re not branded as Democratic entities.
Plus, movement activities include far more than protests, and there are a number of things being done by people who want no tie to the Democratic Party. Some of the smarter pushback to ICE in Los Angeles, for example, comes from Antifa activists who are far to the left of the Democratic Party and have been doing this work even under Democratic Administrations. Some of the witnessing of abuse of immigrants comes from the Catholic Church, and I would hope other faiths might join in. Some of the political activism is focused on particular interest groups, like Veterans or scientists, which don’t and should not derive their energy from the party.
The political movement is and should remain a big tent because it affords more flexibility and provides more entrance points for people.
And so, even if Jeffries or Schumer were better at messaging, you wouldn’t want them to lead it.
Which brings us to what we should expect from them. A lot of the hostility to both of them derives from the Continuing Resolution in March, in which Jeffries kept all but one (Jared Golden) of his members unified in opposition, but then Schumer flipflopped on whether to oppose cloture. In my experience, the vast majority of people who know they’re supposed to be angry at Schumer for that don’t know what the vote was, don’t know the terms of government shutdown (for example, that Trump would get to decide who was expendable), and can’t distinguish between the cloture vote and the final passage (in which just Angus King and Jeanne Shaheen voted to pass the bill). They sure as hell have not considered whether keeping the government open resulted in things — like the emergency filings that prevented wholesale use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to CECOT — that really were a net good, to say nothing of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s challenge to his deportation.
The point being, much of the frustration with Jeffries and Schumer comes without a sophisticated understanding of their day job. For example, many people were complaining that Schumer was messaging about the Big Ugly bill when they wanted him to be messaging about immigration, and then, once they understood the import, started complaining that there hasn’t been enough coverage of the healthcare cuts in the Big Ugly (in my opinion both he and lefty journalists should have been focusing on the dragnet funded by it, as both David Dayen and I did, and as other journalists are only belatedly doing). But they often ignored the efforts made to thwart the bill with Byrd Rule exclusions, which in some cases excluded really toxic things from the bill (like restrictions on judicial contempt).
Jeffries and Schumer will continue to disappoint people wanting them to lead the resistance, because to do their day job — to try to win majorities in 2026 so they can do more to hold Trump accountable and, in the interim, to try — however fruitlessly — to coax their Republican colleagues to stop rubber stamping Trump’s authoritarianism, they have to do things like recruit challengers and help them raise money. There’s a lot one can explain — such as why, in the wake of the crypto industry flooding the Sherrod Brown race with funding, too many Democrats would support a bill the crypto industry wants — without endorsing.
But there’s a great deal that Jeffries or Schumer do that doesn’t get seen; each week of the last five, for example, one of the people whining about one or both Minority Leaders non-stop has falsely claimed they hadn’t done or said something they actually had; they were, in fact, whining because what Jeffries and Schumer did wasn’t easy for them to see without their having to work for it. An expert on parliamentary procedure just showed that Dems have made their colleagues work far more hours than in recent memory; Democrats have been using tools to stall, often with no notice, much less anyone mining their public comments for good attack footage.
More importantly, though, there’s a great deal that other legislators are doing that serves both political and legislative opposition. Hearings with Trump’s cabinet members, for example, are astounding, both in terms of content and conflict. While lefties don’t understand the potential use of Congressional letters like right wingers do, some of the ones Democrats have sent lay necessary foundation for ongoing pressure on the Administration, whether on immigration or Epstein or DOD waste. I’ve seen multiple people assume that members of Congress only attempt to do oversight of ICE detention if they get arrested, but far more members have tried; I would like Democrats to have already sued regarding DHS’ serial efforts to change the law on how they do that oversight, but I hope that will happen soon.
There’s a great deal of content for adversarial messaging. The failure — and this is only partly a failure of Congress itself — is in doing that messaging, in using what is out there. If a Minority Leader said something powerful but pundits were too lazy to watch CSPAN, did it really happen?
Therein lies the rub — and the area where the complaints at least identify the correct problem (while often lacking the mirror necessary to identify the cure).
There is broad and growing opposition to Trump’s actions. For privileged white people, at least, most still have courage to step up in both easy and more challenging ways. All around the country Americans are standing up for their migrant neighbors.
Leaders are stepping up to do the most powerful work, the political movement. And Leaders in Congress, as well as rank-and-file members, are doing a lot that’s getting ignored.
What is missing, in my opinion, is the kind of online messaging to make stuff resonate, yoked with an understanding of what Congress can and should do and what activists are better suited to do.
We — and I include myself in that we — are part of the problem.
What is missing is, to a large extent, the same thing that was missing last year, during the election, and was missing before that where Joe Biden’s son was destroyed with no pushback. What is missing is a feedback mechanism that can mobilize shame and accountability, so all the outrage can have some effect, both political and electoral.
Love your table! Please elaborate on the 3 months timing.
Good question.
I guess I should split that line and talk about how long it took to get started and how long it takes to have an effect. The legal stuff started immediately, but will go on for years. Whereas the protests really started to have an impact, on Elon at least, within three months.
It’ll be harder to replicate with harder targets. How to target ICE safely or Stephen Miller effectively is a big question — though I think the latter is doable and important. But unless and until people grow terrified, that can continue to build.
Thanks!
Just heard about the upcoming Good Trouble Lives On protests on July 17.
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/plymouthwhitemarsh/good-trouble-lives-anti-trump-montco-protest-set-week
https://goodtroubleliveson.org/
One place I’ve found very helpful when searching for upcoming protests is the Women’s March website. Easy to navigate and best maps around.
With regard to category three, political movement. There is a website I recently came across, generalstrikeus.com. On their “Who is your leadership” FAQ they state:
“Two friends living in New York City made this website after Roe V. Wade was overturned in 2022, but the concept of a General Strike dates back centuries.
“The General Strike is a decentralized network of people and organizations committed to striking once we reach 3.5% of the U.S. population, or 11 million people. We don’t have a traditional “leader” or hierarchical structure, and no one gets paid to do this work. Instead we have an ever shifting network of organizers, all building towards the General Strike in their own ways. Check out our values for more info, and join us! ”
I have no idea who these people are. They have a fairly polished and sophisticated web site. They are asking people to sign “strike cards” and to be ready to join a general strike “at the right moment,” whenever that might be.
I wonder if anyone here knows anything about this effort and, more generally, whether the concept of a general strike against the egregious behavior of the Trump Administration at some point (when?) seems feasible or has any merit.
They apparently think that everyone has enough money that they can risk their job.
Wonderful post!
I’d add one more element to this discussion. You list as a possible legislative goal the impeachment of Trump, and I’d add the impeachment of various other senior administration officials. For example, RFK is already on shaky ground with respect to his support in both the House and Senate, especially since some of his appointments to various scientific advisory committees contradict what he told the Senate during his confirmation battle. Add in the mishandling of the measles outbreaks, and you know that Jeffries and Schumer are both quietly chatting up some of the GOP members about RFK’s danger and his lack of candor with Congress. At some point, RFK will be open to an impeachment charge, and the quiet behind-closed-doors work of Dems in Congress combined with loud-and-out-front anger from the science community and ordinary family docs back home could lead to his removal.
Similarly, a couple of ugly hurricanes made worse by FEMA failures because of DOGE could put Noem in danger. Over at DOJ, MAGA is already angry with Bondi, Patel, and Bongino over the failure to release the Epstein client list, which would make it easier for GOP members of Congress to support an impeachment over something more substantive and less conspiratorial, like illegal searches or otherwise violating constitutional rights despite courts ruling against them.
Even getting one cabinet member convicted and removed would cause the rest of the cabinet to take a breath before going full authoritarian. Making that happen, though, would require both public outcry and legislative organizing.
Good point. They’re easier targets, too, since they’re not Trump. That’s a principle I think of often. Don’t target Trump, just use the targeting of others to grow dissent in Trump’s base.
This “don’t target Trump” reminds me of John Nash and “A Beautiful Mind “.
The Republican record, policies, tactics (half-baked ideology rationalizing all of it) are their political vulnerabilities, and they know it.
Why bother methodically destroying the means of transparency if you’re genuinely convinced transparency is “futile”?
Making t it all about Trump (or Schumer) is authoritarian framing: ‘‘personalization’ of politics, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat puts it.
Aim at the TX congresscritters, in the districts most affected by the measles epidemic, and the Kill country where the floods have been.
Valuable analysis. My only quibble is third to last paragraph limiting feedback to online messaging.
I think I understand you and if I do I think that’s a really good point — not a quibble at all — but would like you to say more.
“An expert on parliamentary procedure just showed that Dems have made their colleagues work far more hours than in recent memory; Democrats have been using tools to stall, often with no notice, much less anyone mining their public comments for good attack footage.”
And in making the GOP overwork themselves to achieve fascist control, the Dems have weakened them: tired, irate pols do stupid PR and stupid process, and the results are going down daily now.
A strong, concerted attack the Dem pols should be making now, however (and I’ve seen no evidence of it so far), is filing a legal action for the Trump admin’s use of the SSA for campaign work, including a TRO and records subpoena: it’s as clear a violation of the Hatch Act as you can concoct, and the Dems are the most directly impacted victims.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/05/social-security-administration-email-trump-tax-bill
(Note: most copy I’ve seen so far on this focuses on the inaccuracy of the SSA statement, not its blatant and unambiguous political use (which the inaccuracies are in service of).
As to inaccuracy, Milman there at the Guardian reports, “the spending bill does not actually eliminate federal taxes on social security .” He cites an email that “circulated,” providing the below SSA (gov) link.
Check out the subsequent correction of that SSA statement. All it is, is an extension of a temporary tax deduction for those over 65 … on income OTHER THAN SS.
https://blog.ssa.gov/social-security-applauds-passage-of-legislation-providing-historic-tax-relief-for-seniors/
Another element of the pressure that is building up, and another set of actors involved in all this are the impact of the Big Ugly Bill Act on state and local budgets.
Here in MO and next door in KS, I know a lot of public officials were holding their breath, waiting to see what would happen in DC. Now that it has been passed and signed into law, the very specific cuts imposed on the states and on ordinary citizens are becoming obvious to governors, state legislators, and local officials like school superintendents and school boards. Some US Dept of Ed funds have been held back temporarily but schools expect to get them at some point, while other funds have been cut immediately. Changes to USDA regulations for food purchases by schools have driven up costs that are only beginning to be recognized and quantified. These didn’t really affect last school year’s budget, but are driving school boards nuts as they try to figure out how they need to adjust their budgets for next year. In state capitals, there is widespread fear over medical issues – insurance coverage for the poor, keeping rural hospitals open, etc. These were already tough questions, but Trump has made them exponentially worse.
Even GOP state legislators are not happy at the buck being passed to them, as they ponder questions like “How can we keep cutting taxes if we have to come up with the money to cover the gaps created by DC?” Hospitals are already signalling the danger they face, and no one wants the only hospital in their state legislative district to close. To the extent that Josh Hawley was spouting populist language, it wasn’t because he believes what he was saying as much as he was being leaned on by the GOP electeds (state and local) back home.
Call your state reps, because their work has now become that much more important — and they are much more vulnerable to public pressure. I never see Josh Hawley at the grocery store, but I regularly run into my state rep and state senator.
This bill was always going to hit red states, especially rural ones, especially hard. The states that receive more federal dollars than they pay into the system are almost all red, while those at the opposite end (e.g., Connecticut, New Jersey) are almost all blue. This bill strands each state within its own budget…Sucks to be you, Mississippi.
Elected officials are followers, not leaders. This is how it should be in a democracy. Often they run to the front and yell, “follow me”, but they aren’t generally leaders. It’s not the job.
It is the activists and the movement leaders that push things. This has been true on the right for the last 50 years.
Excellent post, very perceptive observations. We need all of what EW is talking about. But to me, something would still be missing — the persona and voice of a compelling leader, not separate from online media, but to galvanize and harness it. However you may loathe Trump (and I do), he was that charismatic voice for the GOP in 2016 and it got him elected. Hitler was a disgusting sociopath preaching hate — but he electrified his audiences. Both had what Katharine Hepburn and Old Hollywood called “star quality. She said it was “a kind of electricity, I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got it” and she was right. A patrician beanpole, not nearly that era’s idea of feminine beauty, she should never have been a movie star. But she had star quality and if an actor has that, they don’t need to be very talented or very beautiful — or in Trump’s case, very intelligent or authentic. The camera will “love” them and they will electrify (or galvanize) an audience. And if an actor/politician doesn’t have star quality, they may work, they may have a long, solid career, but they won’t electrify an audience. JFK had it, Obama has it and Clinton has it. Schumer? Jeffries? Hillary Clinton? No charisma in a carload. Kamala Harris is a beautiful, charming woman who’s passionate about what she believes. But even she didn’t have what it takes (especially for a woman) to galvanize (transfer electricity!) to voters. I think that’s why people are so stoked about Mamdani. He’s the first Democrat since Obama who might possibly be able to electrify the resistance, both in person and online.
We have “star quality” leaders within the party. I suspect the problem is bigotry, whether about race or gender.
I was opining that I wanted Pete B. to my very tuned in Alabama colleague and he laughed saying that he polls zero in South Carolina. I followed SC lead when they picked Biden, so listening to the base matters.
I would love for Dems to form up a team early focused on winning and if I cannot have my number 1, I can certainly have charisma and competence in one package. Crockett/Buttigieg 2028. Whats not to love? No NYC, California or Chicago….Texas and Michigan.
I wonder if Texas is going to try to gerrymand Crockett out of her seat?
I’d rather not have leaders with that much charisma. I want ones who can articulate their ideas and get people to support them, not people who sell themselves as saviors.
I don’t mean a “savior.” I mean a politician who has the skills to compete with a performer like Trump, plus the brains, open heart and moral compass to lead a country. For a true movement, scattershot activism isn’t enough. You have to intrigue, involve and inspire people. That’s how Mamdani won his primary. And I’d argue that the civil rights movement would have taken decades longer to change minds and laws without MLK. To save our democracy now, grass roots resistance is admirable and necessary. But unless there’s someone who can focus that energy for the really heavy lifting, soundly defeating Trump and MAGA, it won’t be as effective as we need it to be.
Where did you come by the notion that charismatic people can’t “articulate their ideas” or “get people to support them” or presume they are all out to “sell themselves as saviors”. Charisma is not a malady, and logic should conclude that possession of that “quality” may even improve their odds of gaining support.
They have BAD ideas, a lot of the time.
People like them and IGNORE the bad ideas – Newsom is a good bad example. He’s pushing the Delta tunnel, a watr tunnel that will ship a riverful of water to the southwest San Joaquiin valley, benefiting a major donor (multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars) and absolutely devastate the areas the water going to be taken from – which includes San Francisco Bay! It’s been explained to him, there are many many groups against it, it was removed from the state budget just a few weeks ago, and he STILL doesn’t get it. (He’s never been good on environmental issues, starting in 2019.)
Your definition of “charisma” is different from mine. Charismatic leaders need not be messianic. They just have to be good at attracting people to their cause(s) and mobilizing them to their ends. Mamdani does not strike me as a “savior” so much as a change agent who can improve NYC. I do agree that a “savior” by definition promises too much. No officeholder can transform a city/state/country by him/herself. Officeholders need help from the people who elected them to work for the change they campaigned on and, at times, hold said officeholder’s feet to the fire if said change is not transpiring. I think leader is a better word.
Star quality…I’ve mulled over this a lot in recent weeks. On the one hand, it could be helpful in growing the movement (think Martin Luther King, Jr.), but on the other it creates an easy target that can be smeared or assassinated. In the difficult, and potentially extremely dangerous, times we find ourselves, it is perhaps better to be leaderless (with some organizations like indivisible providing important guidance).
The Tesla protests were surprisingly effective.
Great start. 2 major tweaks:
1. Change Political Movement to Resistance or Resisters;
2. add a column for Citizens.
Participants: all residents of USA regardless of age, immigration status
Tactics: Register if eligible, be informed and/or active in precinct/neighborhood, register others, canvass, VOTE! (if eligible)
Timing: Year-round as long as you live
Outcome: Governing majority of fellow citizens with large hearts and level heads
Something overlooked in your chart is the success of Democratic members of Congress who have been going around the country holding town halls in Republican districts where the Republican Senators and House members have refused to. This has been very successful at garnering media attention and giving disaffected Trump supporters a place to vent and realize that those ‘woke’ lefties might no be so stupid after all. They must continue.
I also think that it has been very important for JB Pritzker to continue speak out, as he has been. Whatever you feel about Gavin Newsom, his vocal pushback is immediate and articulate and critical to helping balance the over coverage of Trump and his toadies. The rest of the country has to seen California standing in the breech. We are being targeted the way Harvard is, to try to scare the rest of the country into submission.
The other thing that I think should be in your sort-of-Venn-diagram, is the media. To not include it is to downplay the warped influence of Fox and the dearth of it’s equivalence on the left. I don’t see any media outlet with the potential to act the way the NYT and Post did during the Pentagon Papers, or Watergate. Both of those papers have been gelded, TV news is only watched by the 50 and above demographic and the internet is fraught with bots and disinformation. You said yourself “And Leaders in Congress, as well as rank-and-file members, are doing a lot that’s getting ignored.”
Lastly, I don’t see college and high school students taking to the streets as happened during the Free Speech movement and Viet Nam. This is a very big hole in the anti-fascism campaign. Any successful movement needs the passion of youth to keep driving forward.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop,” Mario Savio, December 2, 1964, during the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. Where are today’s young leaders ?
I agree about the state officials. I was going to add them, bc obviously they have different means to be involved, including standing to sue (as both have done). And obviously I wrote that whole post about Newsom’s messaging efforts.
Will add the countering town halls when I revisit this. It will also be good to have candidates (Rebecca Cooke in WI-3 and Osburn in NE) so they can start holding people accountable.
And I’ll return to the media.
I’ve been seeing more young folks at the protests recently than back in April, probably because school is out now and the weather sucked for those early ones. The organizers are NOT reading the room very well; our New Haven protests got off to a rousing start but have since devolved into a crowd of folks with signs milling around: no chants, no speeches, no marches, nothing to mobilize those who show up.
I keep hearing that “the main protest is in Hartford.” Lots of people can’t get to Hartford easily, including most kids. Organizers could delegate authority for hubs like New Haven.
Following Molly Pitcher, I would indict the media, legacy and/or mainstream, for creating the impression that Democrats have failed to respond to Trump by failing themselves to cover those very Democratic responses in real time. Instead they have relentlessly chosen to chase the Trump soap opera, pursuing whichever of his cabinet officers might have transgressed this week and dropping the more significant threads, such as the ways that Project 2025 and Stephen Miller’s agenda have been pursued under the surface, relentlessly and lethally.
“. . . having a Black guy and a Jew from New York leading your resistance will likely make it harder to do what you need to do, . . . to build a political movement big enough to undermine if not overthrow fascism.”
So, one can infer those same limiting characteristics apply to the Democratic Party as well, a black guy and a Jewish guy from NY inherently limiting the ability of the Party to grow it’s base. To get straight to the point, say having leaders for the last decade or so more representative of the population of the country, maybe the democrats wouldn’t be in the minority in either house right now, or staring at a Neo-fascist President. I never did understand Jeffries elevation by Pelosi, other than appeasing a black minority to precious a constituency to risk losing. Don’t tell me he’s such a dynamic speaker, he isn’t even close. Schumer has little “attraction” to anyone, outside of NY State.
Again, that’s a category error.
Jeffries and Schumer were picked for things that are not nationwide organizing.
Then please explain what they were picked for, and have they accomplished that, and, if not, will those ‘things” be more difficult now they are both minority leaders since their selection as leaders.
Sometimes leaders are chosen in legislative bodies because they want the job the others don’t. Being a leader is small parts leading, large parts putting out rivalries and fires within the caucus, raising money, legislative scut work and overall tedium. Schumer seems to have wanted it, my overview of the rest of the caucus see only a couple (Whitehouse, Durbin, Cantwell) who could probably do it and most of the rest down to Fetterman just wholly uninterested. Its also highly improbable to become President after being leader, lo many have tried, which keeps the list down. To the point of the post, they lead their caucus, not their party
A political party is historically the manifestation of compatible sentiments, philosophies, ethics, moral and religious beliefs, etc, across a spectrum of the populace and the territory they exist in, into a working organization seeking political power in a predetermined framework.
“To the point of the post, they lead their caucus, not their party.” And there’s the rub.
“And there’s the rub.”
You’ve come full circle from demanding Dr. Wheeler explain why Schumer & Jeffries were chosen to acknowledging what they were chosen to do.
Nicely done!
LBJ
(Sorry, Rayne, I can’t remember if that’s my user name here or not)
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Gephart, Dole, Baker, Gingrich, Mitchell, Ryan were leaders whose campaigns went absolutely nowhere
LBJ and Ford were leaders who became VP first
Great, great post. I’ve argued on Bluesky to the point of exhaustion that the kind of leadership progressives demand from Schumer and Jeffries never comes from Congress and never has. It’s up to us to identify and promote folks who can lead a movement. And you just explained why, beautifully.
Thank you!
In an hour and a half I’ll be listening to a Zoom with Indivisible on “Truth Brigade Campaign Launch, Orientation and Workshop” and, perhaps, another Thursday at 3pm EDT on “What’s the Plan? A Weekly Discussion with Indivisible’s Co-Founders.” You can learn more at https://indivisible.org
In my mind there are two wrinkles to applying Chenowith’s arguments here, though neither are insurmountable.
1) our particular brand of federalism is used almost nowhere else in the world and certainly not by the vast majority of the cases supporting the arguments. And it is has both an institutional and cultural weight to it that will hamper the “sweeping” impact. If most of that 3.5% comes from just CA and NY, I don’t think we see the change. Conversely, if you told me that 3% from every single state in the union were mobilized, I’d be watching the news hourly.
2) In almost all of the cases of successful nonviolent change, the United States was either supportive of the movement or at worst ambivalent to it. We knew the people replacing Marcos were as sympathetic to US interests (and if anything, less vulnerable to bribery by China or its proxies). And America could not have been handed a better gift than nonviolent resistance movements building up in Russia in the late 80’s. A resistance movement here would, by definition, face the full opposition of the executive branch of the US Government. A president who sends Marines to LA will have no problem mobilizing the CIA to assist the NSA. This is, after all, the same branch that got Cesar Chavez himself to support Operation W [censored since it’s a slur]. When accounting for the damage CI efforts could do to such a movement, I would imagine the threshold would need to be raised.
Both good points.
“… and was missing before that where Joe Biden’s son was destroyed with no pushback.”
What specifically was missing and from whom and when? The mainstream media? Democrats? During the 1st impeachment scandal? During 2020 election? After the election?
In my view, there was a lot missing from the media of just basic fact checking when the laptop became a story. In the ensuing years, right wingers were left free to report inaccurately whatever they wanted.
Watching NBC national news tonight they had a segment on a BIG development in congressional hearings today. Start in with Biden’s Doctor of 16 years being asked if he ever was instructed to lie about Biden’s health. Tape of the Dr. with an extended I take the fifth on advice of response. Cut to Comer in the Hall, nothing ever as bad as this nefarious stuff in history. Close with the Dr. would take the fifth for any patient following his oath of confidentiality. That is a hell of an information campaign to counter, and that is how the enemy of the people framed it, not NewMax. The commitment to ICE in the BBB has me thinking the resistance will be “managed” before it gets any traction.
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The only journalist who significantly and factually covered the entire Hunter Biden saga was Marcy Wheeler, here at EW. Yes, legal experts supplied important commentary on the case, but no one delved into as deeply as EW.
This would not have been necessary had not the Washington Post dived into the deep end of the pool with its own big splash, which contained misleading quotations and hide-the-ball descriptions of how the laptop was verified. But the Post’s story on the laptop (like their story on Merrick Garland’s DOJ’s reluctance to pursue Trump) won the day. (Along with Garland and Biden’s disastrous attempts to appear bipartisan by keeping Weiss in place.)
The rightwing disinformation machine blasts its lies around the globe many times before the so-called “liberal press” shows up…only to repeat them.
“The rightwing disinformation machine blasts its lies around the globe many times before the so-called “liberal press” shows up…only to repeat them.”
Yep, right down to the liberal press’ ignorant and reckless use of the word “laptop.”
Thank you for this. I have been explaining again and again that the Ds have very very little power in DC. Expecting them to make miracles or do anything much more than delay and obstruct is just not going to be possible. Organizing is not their job. Messaging is possible.
I spent some time at our legislature this year watching committees where the Rs have absolutely no power (because of the strong, not weak, numbers the Ds have in our state government). The only things the Rs could do were delay and obstruct committee work–shaping and passing bills the Ds wanted to pass (and of course there were D bills that the D leadership/D governor did not want, so there is that). The R tactics were incredibly lame, but they did waste a LOT of time with inane questions and theatrics. The difference in DC is that Ds do regularly bring the goods on the damage being done, and there are numerous Ds who bring game too. We see them on all the alternative media like Bluesky, Insta, and FB, YouTube, as well as on Substack, etc. Jasmine Crocket, AOC, Melanie Stansbury, Raskin come to mind.
I agree with Rayne, the Ds do have a deep bench, and we saw some of that at the D convention last summer. But again, many of these are also elected officials who have urgent matters on their plates in their states. Organizing is not what we should expect.
I think Indivisible has been doing a good job with organizing, and as it turns out, 50501. We do need more activists, and as the Big Ugly rolls out, we may see more people waking up. (We are grateful for the work of anarchists who have demonstrated a lot of courage.) Individual Indivisible groups do have the power to shape the narrative in their communities, it is not a top down organization. Our group has broken in some important ways with the Ds–specifically on Palestine. Our community is in support of freedom for Palestine, and our organization has been loud on this issue.
Discussion of the need for a national organizer is valid. But I think it is around issues that we will coalesce. Framing the issues, mobilizing around focused ideas, messaging, and building momentum across alternative platforms will be helpful. We are finding a big umbrella, and it seems that pushback against ICE/immigration is compelling as people see their friends/neighbors/community members disappearing. The budget for fascism is stunning and should be broadcast bigly.
Never Give Up.
One of the problems I see is that organizers absolutely miss working-class areas – people don’t have time to go to meetings, and probably not to demonstrations, when they’re miles away. (Also, the older you are, the more likely it is that you can’t do demonstrations because pain.)
Thank you for this, bg. I keep trying here to deflect those “blame the Democrats” blows, but you did it better than I could–with details about the committee work, which the public never sees but the media could provide some window into.
“The budget for fascism is stunning”–THIS! The bill just passed in fact will de facto increase that very budget, because the people with a vested interest in fascism now are those benefiting from it: the oligarchs who just got a tax break. Why *wouldn’t* they funnel their new funny money into making fascism / MAGA permanent?
Riffing a bit from the 6 July post about the different use of language by the left and right, could there be a different relationship between the political movements of the right and congress? This post looks at (correct me if I misstate) the difficulties, usefulness, desirability, and viability of Democrats in Congress taking on leadership of an oppositional political movement. But, didn’t the political movements of the right develop “outside” of congressional leadership? Possibly starting with the Fundamentalist Christian entry into politics in the 1980’s. From there the early anti-tax movement — later Tea Party, the NRA, abortion, anti-government sentiment, neo-conservativism think tanks, and others each had their leaders who mostly came from outside congress. Republican political leaders noticed this, then cultivated and used these “civilian” leaders to keep power. They might now be a Chimera, but it wasn’t always so.
If my thoughts are valid, could this “outside” strategy be useful for forming a “left” political movement?
I absolutely think that outsiders could and should be the nut of forming an oppositional political movement. It doesn’t even have to be defined as left.
It absolutely should not be identified as left. Or liberal. Or, God forbid, Damocratic. Not in a world where those words have been coded deep in the subconsciousness of at least 40% of the country as literally demonic, at the very least communist. (“I call them Demon-Rats,” Jeannine Pirro announced on her late-night Fox News show with the grin of a middle-schooler just SO pleased with her cleverness.)
The trend I’ve observed relies heavily on “We”/”us” phrasing. This has always appealed to me. A “We the People” bumper sticker from the 1992 Jerry Brown campaign still clings to the spare tire cover on the back of my 2002 Honda, long faded like the Cubs sticker beside it. I waver on the metaphor status of either.
“Us” has bliblical echoes, as in “the least of us.” Both are inclusive, which is the most important criterion right now. We need them. In time, they may very well realize that, yes, they need us too.
I agree wholeheartedly with GdB. One thing that strikes me is that the focus on identity politics divides us more than it helps us. We need to establish a ‘we the people’ mentality that includes all people, of every stripe. We shouldn’t be focusing on trans rights and black rights and women’s rights. It all boils down to human rights. When we push for better health care, it should just be health care that we focus on. Of course that should include women and black people and trans people- we shouldn’t even bring those up. Pronouns are not the hill to die on.
Let the other side try to divide us that way by breaking the argument into pieces. They want to fracture the arguments into little pieces that have no cohesion and that’s when the distractions work in their favor. If we can keep the argument in one piece, we stand a much better chance of winning the argument. We the people will have everyone’s backs- we want health care for everyone; we want better education for everyone; we want better infrastructure for everyone, etc.
The division that we should focus on is that one between the owners and the workers- between the billionaires and the common folk. And billionaires are very convenient (and deserving) scapegoats. That’s the us vs them that matters.
I know your premise is correct. But emotionally sometimes I get reactive due to my own personal abuse by an authoritarian father and I forget what I know to be true.
May I add, that we really don’t have a strong empirically supported strategy to combat the power and control, the actual brainwashing component of this problem.
As a Domestic Violence therapist for 12 years I would add that in order to create more effective rhetoric on the liberal side there are 2 important components and lots of examples of effective messaging against power and control, all of which are slower persuasion than power and control.
One, we need to focus not on our anger (I know I know). Attacking back always puts you in a one down, optically unless you wipe out the opponent. And our side has been ineffectual in creating any change in his footsteps or plans. Nothing has landed or knocked him off his feet. That makes him look invincible and people who worship power and control get excited by this. He looks like super man to them.
Instead we need to focus on how he changed his step. TACO had some effectiveness for that reason. We are still responding reactively. With emotion validates his power. He’s trying to make us feel fear, defeat, powerless. So when we are highly emotional we actually validate his power. You all have stated this and you are right when we turn our emotions on each other it’s the narcissist splitting that is highly effective. United we stand divided we fall.
We need to have lots of round table discussions (and I am sure they are happening) studying the effective rhetoric against power and control. Jesus, Buddha, Mahatma Ghandi, MLK Jr, and many others, have been effective in disempowering power and control paradigm.
We need to develop communication strategies that continue to damage the paradigm. Our founders. We really need to study these communication strategies because they all worked to make behavioral shifts. They were caused true change and movement.
In my view democrats continue to look passive because we cannot move people. Sure Jesus had to claim he was God but he led a revolution that moved people’s behavior for thousands of years.
We need to study the strategies because all these leaders were able to persuade against the power and control paradigm.
Thanks as always for the discussion.
Jesus spoke to the poor, not to the rich. Which is why he’s getting mostly lip-service from people now.
Poor people are neither more or less virtuous than rich people.
Most of the people in the world Jesus lived in were poor. So that’s where your message goes.
Rich people are less receptive to a message to change their ways.
Nicodemus was not poor, not by any stretch of the imagination. He was devoted, and provided the tomb they put Jesus in, as well as all the enbalming materials.
Thief: Deliberate and motivated action, stealing for personal benefit or monetary value.
Kleptomaniac: Lack of self-control, inability to resist the strong urge to steal, items stolen are not needed for personal use or monetary value.
Only the rich are defined as Kleptos, never the poor as they are thieves.
Emotions move people, facts not so much.
I wonder if its time to speak more of moral outrage.
I saw a sign at Hands Off demo: It’s not right vs left, but right vs wrong.
That simple message stuck with me. It’s wrong to kill school children with assault weapons.
It’s wrong for women to bleed out for lack of reproductive health care.
It would be wrong to send Medicaid recipients out to harvest our crops.
The list goes on.
Love this post. Thanks, Marcy! Really valuable insights into what we need to do, and what we realistically should be expecting from our electeds and the courts. We need to harness our power in collective citizen action. I’ve been a member of Indivisible.org for quite some time. It’s a group with over 2000 local chapters and it’s a good fit for me and my talents, such as they are. There are hundreds of excellent groups doing important work like Indivisible. No Kings Day, for example, had over 250 different partner organizations. That’s the sort of tent we need to construct to contain the millions of us that will be required to win control of our country back from the authoritarians. We can argue about policy and legislative strategy AFTER we win back power.
I’m very excited and registered for the first training session of ONE MILLION RISING – “Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism.” That will take place July 16, 8-9pm ET. Register at Mobilize here: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/803953/
We all have gifts we can bring to the struggle. It’s up to us to find out what they are, find a group and share them.
As for online messaging, well, some of us are better at that than others. I try. I’ve been putting out a free weekly political cartoon essay on Bluesky and FB, and to a diverse email list. You can see samples and sign up for free here:
https://bradveley.com/cartoon_category/the-anti-tyrants-almanac/
Feedback is welcome. You’re some of my favorite people and I really value what you have to say.
Finding a group of like-minded people and getting active has saved my sanity over and over. Authoritarians want us to feel alone, hopeless and afraid. That’s a lie. We’re the solution to the crisis we’re in.