\n<\/p>\n
James Carville<\/strong> is wrong. This is no time for Democrats to \u201croll over and play dead<\/a>,\u201d as he advised last week in The New York Times.<\/em> Sure, the veteran operative has a point that \u201cthe Republican Party flat out sucks at governing.\u201d But standing back as Donald Trump<\/strong> and company completely screw things up, in hopes of making the American people \u201cmiss\u201d Democrats, is a dangerous course of action.<\/p>\n If Democrats don\u2019t protect norms and intuitions, no one else will. You can\u2019t count on Senator Ted Cruz<\/strong> to defend<\/a> free and fair elections, or Speaker Mike Johnson<\/strong> to stand up<\/a> for LGBTQ+ rights. And it\u2019s unlikely Senator Susan Collins,<\/strong> despite her<\/a> many<\/a> concerns<\/a>,<\/em> will hold the line. The fact that Trump was able to muscle through controversial Cabinet picks like Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,<\/strong> and Pete Hegseth<\/strong> shows how the party will do whatever he wants<\/a>. While there is no serious resistance in the Republican Party, there is the pathetic hope that if you give Trump what he wants, he\u2019ll spare you a primary challenge. GOP elected officials seem to care more about keeping their seats in Congress regardless of whether the institution loses its constitutional authority.<\/a><\/p>\n Maybe wealthy people can stomach a period of playing dead, but try convincing Americans who will bear the brunt of the economic \u201chardship<\/a>\u201d Elon Musk<\/strong> warned about before the election. For them, a \u201cstrategic political retreat,\u201d as Carville suggests, looks more like abandonment in a time of need.<\/p>\n Republicans go on offense and play to their base whether in power or not<\/a>, while Democrats seem hostile to their own. Think of the 2024 election cycle when Kamala Harris<\/strong>\u2019s campaign bet big<\/a> that support from Liz Cheney<\/strong> was going to draw significant numbers of disaffected (non-MAGA) Republicans, even as there were warning signs about diminished support among core Democratic constituencies. In the end, Harris won about 75 million votes, a drop from Joe Biden<\/strong>\u2019s 81 million in 2020 (all while nearly 90 million<\/a> eligible voters stayed home). As The New York Times<\/em> noted<\/a> in December, data suggested \u201cthat most voters who turned out in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 voted for Biden in 2020\u2014but about half of them, and maybe even a slight majority, appear to have backed Trump this year.\u201d<\/p>\n The base of the Democratic Party is mad. They aren\u2019t going to be satisfied with cringe nicknames<\/a> and punching left<\/a>. They don\u2019t want to see leaders lying down, but out there making noise on TV and social media. Sure, there are electeds pushing back, like Senator Chris Murphy;<\/strong> governors Maura Healey, Janet Mills,<\/strong> and JB Pritzker;<\/strong> and representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett,<\/strong> and Maxwell Frost.<\/strong> And billionaire Mark Cuban<\/strong> is out<\/a> there offering support to laid-off government tech workers. But party leadership isn\u2019t meeting the moment and speaking to the deep frustration across the country.<\/p>\n This past weekend saw protests at national parks<\/a> in response to job cuts and layoffs. Between 1,000 and 3,000 people protested in the Vermont ski town<\/a> that JD Vance<\/strong> was vacationing in, according to protest organizers. Nine people were arrested<\/a> at a Tesla dealership in New York, while there were protests<\/a> against Musk at a SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Democrats seem more focused on getting their message right<\/em> and then getting a message out\u2014even as there\u2019s clearly a desire for the party to be more adversarial. According to a CNN poll<\/a>, \u201cNearly three quarters (73%) of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents surveyed said the party\u2019s caucus in Congress is doing too little to oppose Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not enough to put out a statement, either, as Democrats need to break through in today\u2019s fractured media ecosystem. Trump floods the zone with everything from social media posts to attention-grabbing moments on camera, such as last week\u2019s fight with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy,<\/strong> while Musk posts nonstop on X. Why aren\u2019t Democrats holding daily press conferences to spell out exactly what Trump and DOGE are doing to the federal government? (Andrew Cuomo<\/strong> found success<\/a> on this front in the early days of COVID.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n