Some Democrats Must Do Something. Some Democrats Must Do Nothing.
Here is an action plan for Democrats to end this madness as soon as possible.
by Julie Roginsky
We are forty-eight hours into the Trump presidency and the horror show has already begun. Rather than lament it, here is an action plan for our own leaders to end this madness as soon as possible.
There are two types of high-ranking Democratic leaders right now: the executives and the legislators. It is imperative that the executives do something. It is imperative that the legislators do nothing.
Let me explain. Democratic governors and big-city mayors have to deliver — and deliver big. By that, I mean that that they must bring about transformative initiatives that truly change people’s lives. Build housing, both to get homeless people off the streets and to provide working and middle-class families with affordable places to live. Get transportation projects going that get people to and from work faster. Invest in schools and provide tangible benefits, like all-day kindergarten. Protect open space and build parks. Get rid of the red tape, stop the incessant studies and railroad through deliverables that people can see. When the projects from Biden’s infrastructure bill come to fruition, use your bully pulpit to take credit for them, because it’s Democrats who delivered them. Put your name on everything, so voters know whom to credit. Be everywhere.
In other words, don’t be a Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY), a Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ) or a Mayor Eric Adams (for the moment, still D-NYC). New York and New Jersey swung harder to Trump than any other states in the nation, in part because voters on either side of the Hudson can’t name any tangible accomplishments that these Democratic leaders delivered. In both states and in New York City, infrastructure is a mess, housing is a fortune and the middle class is being priced out. These issues predate these particular elected officials but none of them has done anything to bend the curve, other than a few performative gestures that don’t begin to address the scope of the problem. Each of them is also an awful communicator, totally incapable of speaking to people about the issues that matter in ways that resonate. Last November’s results on both sides of the Hudson tell the tale.
On the other hand, Democratic senators and members of Congress must do nothing. They should not deliver one vote to help Republican majorities succeed. Republicans have reached the promised land in unprecedented ways. They control the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. But their majorities are minuscule, which means that they will be hard pressed to accomplish anything without Democratic support. Let them flounder. In two years, if Democrats play their cards right, voters should experience serious buyer’s remorse. The only thing congressional Democrats need to do is learn how to communicate both to high- and low-propensity voters like normal people, and not like legislators who have focused-grouped their every utterance. If you can’t explain it to your Aunt Milly in sixty seconds, don’t bother. And the only thing you should be explaining to her, and to everyone else, is that whatever happens is the Republicans’ fault.
Read more on The Banter:
In other words, don’t be a John Fetterman or a Ruben Gallego. Don’t give Republicans the votes to sanitize their most sadistic policies, like the Laken Riley Act, which will allow ICE to incarcerate undocumented kids who have merely been accused of shoplifting. This horrific bill is on track to be the law of the land because congressional Democrats forgot how to fight for the most vulnerable among us and decided to cave instead.
Last week, I interviewed Jon Long, a Canadian filmmaker who produced and directed the chilling movie “Fight Like Hell” about the events leading up to and encompassing January 6th. (I strongly recommend that you watch the interview here because his message needs to be heard.) What struck me was not the footage of the now-pardoned insurrectionists ransacking our Capitol but the meticulous planning that MAGA leaders put into ensuring that Donald Trump would be back in the White House one way or another. When it didn’t happen in 2021, they made sure it happened in 2025. Watching the movie and speaking with Jon, I could not help but think that Democrats were completely outplayed. We still thought elections had the same cadence as the old days. These people understood that times have changed and they adjusted accordingly.
Trump has done nothing since he re-entered the oval office to bring down the price of groceries, as he vowed to do repeatedly throughout the election. He has had time, however, to pardon the criminals who tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, spring free a drug lord who had been serving a life sentence for running what the FBI once called “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet” and strip healthcare from millions of Americans. He has had time to subvert the Fourteenth Amendment by moving to strip Americans of birthright citizenship.
Yet, where is the coordinated Democratic response to these outrages? Democrats in Washington have alternately worked with Trump to confirm his nominees and advance his legislative priorities and put out weak statements ranging from mild rebukes to silence. The void has been filled by the most able communicator in my lifetime, a president so committed to retribution and anger that he issued an executive order on Day One to “End the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” According to the New York Times, “The order instructs federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the intelligence community, to dig deep to demonstrate the alleged weaponization and then to send reports of the misconduct to the White House. The order sets up what will be, at a minimum, a name-and-shame exercise.
More likely, it will provide a road map for prosecutions.”
I invite you to check out Chuck Schumer’s and Hakeem Jeffries’ social media pages to determine whether you think they are rising to the challenge of communicating this crisis to the American people. In their absence, the usual cast of characters of House and Senate Democrats has been flooding cable news (median viewership age: around 70) with the finger-wagging and long-winded explanations. It didn’t work prior to November 5th, so no one should be surprised that it won’t work now.
If history is any guide, Trump will get voters acclimated to the horror bit by bit. The first raids will only target undocumented criminals, until Americans get used to seeing ICE rounding up their neighbors and shrug as agents move on to peaceful migrants. The first political prosecutions will be shocking but once MAGA starts flooding the zone with other outrages, it will be hard to focus on any single one. If January 6 was not enough to shock the conscience of the nation into rejecting Trump, the White House must reason, what could?
And this is all before the inevitable unexpected tragedies happen, whether a terrorist attack, a devastating weather event or another pandemic.
Democrats should not participate in any of this. Where they are actually able to govern, they should deliver. Where they are in the minority, they should stand back and effectively point out Republican failures, no matter how exhausting.
Trump has two years to produce real results before voters go back to the polls. Give them something to vote for — and something to vote against.
If you would like to support The Banter and our mission, you can get 50% off a membership here:
Read the latest for Banter Members:
Trump 2028?
If you think Trump can't, or won't run in 2028 you haven't been paying attention.
by Ben Cohen
The Curse of Political Fortune Telling
Making predictions in politics is a very risky thing to do. You get it right, you are a genius and people hang on your every word. You get it wrong, you are a hack shilling for whichever candidate you want to win.
Allan Lichtman, author of ‘The Keys to the White House’ is perhaps the best known prognosticator in America and has a stellar track record of picking presidential winners. That was until he picked Kamala Harris to win in 2024 and lost almost all of his credibility over night.
Dick Morris, the former Bill Clinton political consultant turned right wing commentator wrote an entire book predicting a presidential contest that was quite obviously never going to happen. In his 2005 book ‘Condi vs. Hillary’ Morris set the scene for a 2008 contest between Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton:
Her [Clinton’s] victory is not inevitable. There is one, and only one, figure in
America who can stop Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State Condoleezza
“Condi” Rice. Among all of the possible Republican candidates for
president, Condi alone could win the nomination, defeat Hillary, and
derail a third Clinton administration.
Condoleeza Rice was about as likely to run for president as Jerry Springer was, but the notoriously greedy Morris knew he could sell books to political junkies hyping an all women political knife fight.
I made a pledge not to pick presidential winners after 2024 after getting it wrong, but I think there is still some value in discussing potential scenarios that could play out in the near future. One of those scenarios that I can’t get out of my head is Donald Trump running for a third term — a scenario that is not as far fetched as you might think.
The purpose of this piece isn’t to make a bold prediction about who will be running in 2028, or who might win, but to discuss a deeply worrying possibility that would have devastating consequences for the United States.
The 22nd Amendment's Fatal Flaw
If you think Donald Trump can’t or won’t run for president in 2028 then you don’t understand what is happening to America right now…
This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only piece. To continue reading get 50% off a Banter Membership and go here:
 | A guest post by
|
This is truth. We need to deliver big at the state and local level and the representatives and Senators to life not a finger.
One of FDR's lines of attack in 1932 was that he started the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to provide aid to the unemployed in New York while he was governor -- as the GOP did nothing while the country slid further in to depression because they considered relief to be the responsibility of state and local governments.
"Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action, and action now."