Trump is Winning and the Dems Need to Flip the Table.

Yeah, more politics. What can I say? I am an American and this stuff matters to me.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are winning their war on the government. The courts, even ruling in favor of the American people, have been too slow to stop the assault. The few Secretaries that take their jobs seriously (Sean Duffy at transportation, of all people, kept Musk from firing air traffic controllers.) Even if the idea of throwing trans people under the bus to win in 2026 works — and it will not — the damage will be impossible ot repair while a Republican is in the White House. Whatever can be done to stop it, must be done.

Too bad the Democratics as a party are not doing pretty much anything.

Individual members are, of course. AOC and Chris Murphy, for example, and I am sure that you can find others. I do not mean that the party is not trying. But it is trying within the confines of its old playbook. The consultant class really believes that throwing trans people under the bus and letting Trump implode will work. It won’t. The Trump admin will not stop at pushing anti-trans propaganda — they will target gays, black people, woman in general, liberals, etc. one at a time, knowing that the Democratic consultant class will fold and hand those people to them on a platter.

That is the problem — the Dems as a group do not realize that the information environment is completely different than it was even five or six years ago. Private equity has destroyed the local news. Billionaires now own the majority of national newspapers and corporations own the entirety of the television news. The GOP has spent a decade or more pushing its propaganda through internet channels, especially ones that are not focused on politics. Nothing bad that Trump and Musk do will penetrate that bubble.

No, if the Democrats want to preserve a democratic government, they need to fire all the consultants and flip the table. They need to take real actions that will seem ot the consultants radical but are actually just the kinds of things that democracies have done since time immemorial.

First, they need to put a local, free newspaper staffed with real reporters in every congressional district. Fund them via a trust fund so that the Democrats cannot interfere with their reporting and let them loose. Probably irritate some local democrats, but it will be better to have news not controlled by social media algorithms and right-wing propaganda. They should spend money supporting internet native news sources and not be afraid to go on those shows just because they may not entirely follow the party line.

It has been reported that some members of Congress won’t stand up to Trump because of threats to them and their families. Have the democrats offer to pay for security for those people. If that is too expense, introduce bills to create a Congressional Security Force for every member. No, it won’t pass, but Democrats need to learn how to start losing well. It might stiffen some spines, and it would highlight the fact that Trump and Musk encourage violence against their enemies.

We need to ban stock trading among Congress people. Not only is it potentially corrupt, it creates an environment where Congresspeople join the wealthy class, or at least find their interests aligned. It creates a systematic problem for people interested in ending the oligarchy.

They should introduce bills outlawing Super PACS and limiting individual political donations to a couple grand. Will it pass? No, of course not. But that’s the point — make the other side defend buying politicians.

The issue in this country is fundamentally one of the uber wealthy versus regular people. The uber wealthy are trying to tear down government in order to line their own pockets and make the lives of everyone else so precarious that they have no choice but to live life on the oligarchs’ terms. The democratic party needs to lean into that, hard.

Nothing I have suggested is especially unusual or unique. But our current leadership is too paralyzed by the needs of the donor class and their own sheltered lives to understand that simple truth. The game has changed, and the Democrats need to change with it.

It would be a shame to lose our democracy because Democrats didn’t want to upset their consultants.