As Trump and Musk bulldoze democracy, the Democratic Party is MIA. While Republicans use government to cripple the opposition’s ability to compete, Democrats whine about “norms.”
Democrats have officially hit rock bottom. An NBC News poll last week put the party’s approval at just 27 percent among voters—the lowest ever recorded. Yet Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries insist the party doesn’t need a new direction. Minority leader Schumer even hopes to solve America’s political crisis in a congressional gym, suggesting bipartisan compromise might happen “when you’re on that bike in your shorts, panting away next to a Republican.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are systematically dismantling American democracy—targeting ActBlue, revoking security clearances from law firms that opposed him, gutting federal agencies—and the Democrats’ response? Total silence. They’ve completely disappeared from the national conversation.
After Trump’s first victory in 2016, Pelosi was asked if Democrats needed to rethink their approach. Her response? “I don’t think that people want a new direction.” And she’s still saying it. Days after Trump’s reelection—after he won the popular vote, despite being indicted and convicted, and after voters delivered a clear message—Pelosi sat for a New York Times interview and flat-out rejected any suggestion that Democrats need to change. She dismissed Bernie Sanders’s criticism that Democrats have abandoned working-class voters, saying, “I just completely disagree,” insisting that they’re still “the kitchen table, working-class party of America.” That’s beyond delusional—it’s political malpractice.
We aren’t just talking about Pelosi or Schumer being out of touch. It’s a party-wide problem—and there are consequences. Democrats have lost ground among working-class voters of every race. They’ve watched Americans desperately searching for something different, swinging from Obama to Bernie to Trump to Biden, and now back to Trump again. And still, the party clings to the delusion that they don’t need to change.
There are Democrats that are making a lot of noise right now. Bernie Sanders and other representatives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have been rallying thousands on an anti-oligarchy tour; even Senator Chris Murphy has started channeling some Bernie-esque fire in interviews.
Last week, Bernie and AOC were filling arenas in red states on weeknights, bringing people out by the tens of thousands. People want something real, something bold. These rallies are visible proof of genuine hunger for change, and that’s hopeful. But huge crowds, rallies, and tours aren’t by themselves a solution. Those thousands gathered in Denver and Greeley await leadership ready to direct their energy into real, lasting political transformation.
Right now, I’m not aware of a plan beyond these rallies, no concrete strategy to change a party that is fundamentally broken. The assumption seems to be that the voters alone, by sheer force of frustration, can reshape the Democratic Party—spontaneously, from the bottom up, without clear leadership or a new vision. History shows us that’s a dangerous fantasy. Real political movements require leaders brave enough to admit that Democrats have been complicit in America’s decline right alongside Republicans.
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(Recent polling from Quinnipiac puts congressional Democrats’ approval among their own voters at a devastating 40 percent—sharply down from 75 percent last year. Voters know they’re being failed.)
My friend Saikat Chakrabarti, with whom I cofounded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, has argued for years that you must directly fight entrenched incumbents and challenge the party’s status quo. Now he’s running against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. If Bernie, AOC, and others are serious about change, they’d be publicly backing insurgent candidates like Saikat. So far, they’re still playing it safe.
Bernie, AOC, even Murphy—all of them—are still operating within the ideological boundaries of neoliberalism and globalization that created today’s crisis. They powerfully critique billionaires and oligarchy—but they haven’t articulated a coherent new economic vision to replace the one that’s failed us. MAGA at least gives people a clear narrative, however twisted or false. Democrats haven’t offered a vision of what a rebuilt America looks like—one where the government doesn’t just lightly regulate corporations but actively competes with them by building public housing, manufacturing medicines, providing broadband, and rebuilding infrastructure. Without a new vision and a clear strategy, all the passion and energy in these rallies risk becoming frustration and disillusionment.
For a decade, Democrats have run the same failed playbook against MAGA. First, they laughed it off, certain their brand of polite politics would prevail. When they lost in 2016, they blamed everyone but themselves—progressives, Bernie Sanders, the FBI. When they managed to beat Trump once, they convinced themselves he was just a fluke, a bizarre glitch in the system that would correct itself.
He’s proven them wrong—winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Trump openly talks of seizing Gaza, ending birthright citizenship, gutting federal agencies, “annexing” Canada—and the Democratic response? Another round of strongly worded letters and reluctant votes for Republican budgets they claim to hate. How many times will they try the same thing and expect different results? Democrats still seem to believe that if they just explain why this isn’t how things are supposed to work, Americans will eventually rally behind them.
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Here’s the truth Democrats won’t face: Americans have lost faith in a system that has failed them. Working people don’t believe our institutions work for them anymore—and they’re right.
The Democratic Party used to stand for bold ideas and big building. It electrified rural America through the Tennessee Valley Authority, created Social Security, and mobilized industry to win World War II. But today, its biggest “wins” are a tangle of tax credits and bureaucratic incentives so complex that even the industries they’re supposed to help can’t figure them out.
When working people ask why their wages don’t go as far as they used to, Democrats respond with graphs about inflation slowing. When they ask why homes are unaffordable, they get a lecture on lattes and avocado toast. When they demand real economic security, they’re told to fill out a means-testing form. Are Democrats even listening to what people actually need?
Meanwhile, Trump tells a simple story about American decline and promises renewal—however fraudulent his solutions may be. Democrats won’t even admit there’s a crisis. They’re so busy defending broken institutions that they can’t imagine transforming them into something that actually works for most people.
Take their response to Trump’s tariffs. For weeks Democrats have warned about inflation and supply chain disruption—legitimate concerns, but completely disconnected from why these moves resonate with voters. While China builds purpose-driven institutions linking research, manufacturing, and development toward clear national goals, Democrats cling to the fantasy that market incentives and regulatory tweaks will somehow restore American greatness.
We’re watching Democratic leaders, instead of offering a real alternative, rush to prove they can out-Trump Trump on immigration and crime. They’ll champion anything except what Americans actually need: a government that works boldly and simply for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected.
The Democratic Party, as it is, fundamentally doesn’t want transformation. It doesn’t see the moment it’s in. Democrats believe they barely lost the presidency, barely lost the House, barely lost the Senate, and so the strategy should be to claw back a few seats, squeak out a win, and return to business as usual. But business as usual is exactly what got them here. They aren’t trying to build an overwhelming majority because they don’t believe they need to—and worse, they don’t even want to.
It’s not just the budget capitulation that proves Democrats aren’t going to change. Pelosi says we don’t need a new direction. Jeffries shrugs and asks, “What leverage do we have?” James Carville is openly saying the best move is to play rope-a-dope, let Republicans run the country into the ground, and hope voters crawl back to Democrats in 2028. That’s the whole plan. Just wait. Let the cycle play out. Hope the other guys screw up even worse.
And that’s how we know they don’t really want to change—because they don’t see this as a moment for reckoning. They don’t see this as a time to face what got us here politically, economically, socially, globally. They can’t even recognize the elements that led to this crisis in the first place. They have no message because they don’t see a problem. Why would they? Their donors are fine. Their portfolios are soaring. The system works perfectly for them.
This is why Democratic messaging fails. Not because their policies are wrong—but because they’ve lost the ability to tell a story about what government is for. They can’t offer a real alternative to decline because they’ve accepted its underlying premises: that the market knows best, that government’s role is to nudge rather than lead, that process matters more than results.
It’s not just fear keeping Democrats stuck—it’s their devotion to a failed economic system. They’ve spent decades defending the same free-market orthodoxy that has gutted working communities and created the desperation Trump exploits. How can they offer an alternative when they won’t admit that skyrocketing housing costs, medical bankruptcies, and crumbling infrastructure aren’t accidents but the predictable results of their own economic policies? They refuse to acknowledge that their worship of markets and regulatory tweaks has delivered nothing but decline for half the country. Democrats can’t tell a different story because they still believe in the same broken system—they just want to manage it more kindly or competently than Republicans. They’ve discarded the language of economic transformation so completely they can’t even remember how to speak it. No wonder they sound hollow when they claim to be the party of working people—they’ve spent 40 years helping dismantle the very policies that once made that claim true.
While Trump openly dismantles democratic safeguards, deliberately targeting the financial and legal infrastructure of progressive politics, Democrats respond with procedural objections. The Republican playbook is clear: use government power to cripple your opposition’s ability to compete. Meanwhile, Democrats are whining about “norms”.
The greatest threat to American democracy isn’t Trump’s bulldozer—it’s the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to confront its complicity and articulate a genuinely transformative alternative. Until Democrats rediscover their courage and offer a vision worth fighting for, all the passionate crowds in the world won’t save us.
Six years ago, I warned about exactly what we’re seeing today. Speaking to The Washington Post in 2019, I said bluntly: “Leadership is driven by fear. They seem to be unable to lead,” and identified the fundamental problem clearly: “The greatest threat to mankind is the cowardice of the Democratic Party.”
Today, that cowardice has left a void precisely where bold opposition is needed most. And as Trump’s bulldozer tears through what remains of our democracy, Democratic leaders are nowhere to be found.
Donald Trump’s cruel and chaotic second term is just getting started. In his first month back in office, Trump and his lackey Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?) have proven that nothing is safe from sacrifice at the altar of unchecked power and riches.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
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