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HOW TO SAVE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FROM ITSELF  
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Jeet Heer
March 7, 2025
The Nation
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_ The flailing and unpopular party elite needs to be replaced with
fighting economic populists. _

Democrats protest with signs (“Medicaid,” “Musk”) as
President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress in the
Capitol building’s House chamber in Washington, DC, on March 4,
2025., Jack Gruber / USA Today

 

 After only seven weeks, Donald Trump’s second go-round as
president is already shaping be an even bigger fiasco than his first
term, which ignominiously ended in 2020 when the largest electoral
coalition in American history tossed him out of the White House.
Unfortunately, unlike his first term, the opposition party is
currently showing zero skill at harnessing anti-Trump anger to create
a disciplined and effective resistance. The combined force of these
two dynamics—Trump’s rising unpopularity and the fecklessness of
the Democrats—creates the opportunity for a third force in American
politics: a grassroots movement that can take over and reshape the
Democratic Party in a more populist direction, in the manner that the
Republicans were remade by the Tea Party Movement and Donald Trump.

The evidence of Trump’s collapsing political support is all around
us: After a fleeting honeymoon period, his approval ratings are
sinking
[[link removed]] and
are now net negative, following the trajectory of his first term.
Significantly, he is polling low on his handling of the economy, an
area where voters had previously given him credit because of the
robust job growth they remembered enjoying from 2017 to early 2020. In
handling the cost of living crisis, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows
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Trump now has the approval of only 31 percent of voters, and the
disapproval of 54 percent.

Trump’s erratic trade policy—which has seen him twice threaten to
raise tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners, Canada and
Mexico, only to twice back down after the stock market went into a
nosedive—is only making the economic news worse. Trying to put a
positive spin on continued inflation, Trump’s treasury secretary
made the remarkable argument
[[link removed]] that “access
to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream.” This might
be a politically plausible argument if it were also accompanied by a
rapid rise in working-class wages, but otherwise it smacks of
political suicide—especially since inflation was one of the major
factors that defeated Kamala Harris last fall. Trump himself said
[[link removed]] the sinking
stock market is due to “globalist companies”—another excuse that
is unlikely to sooth spooked voters.

Equally in trouble is the other major Trump economic initiative,
putting Elon Musk in charge of spending cutbacks via an agency created
by executive fiat—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The courts have been ruling against
[[link removed]] DOGE’s
ability to make unilateral cuts, setting the stage for a
constitutional crisis if Trump disobeys the law. More importantly in
political terms, Musk and his efforts are exciting a massive public
backlash.

Musk is already one of the most unpopular figures in American
politics, with only 34 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval in
a _Washington Post_/Ipsos poll
[[link removed]].
Public anger is especially focused on the potential use of DOGE as a
weapon to gut Social Security and Medicare. After a spate of
disastrous encounters between voters and GOP lawmakers, the National
Republican Congressional Committee is telling
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members in Congress to stop holding town halls to avoid having to face
their enraged constituents.

While the disarray of the Republicans should delight progressives, the
prospect for Democrats is no brighter. Democrats under the leadership
of Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House have
adopted the strategy advocated
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James Carville, a consultant who last won an election in the Bill
Clinton era: “roll over and play dead” in order to “allow the
Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American
people miss us.”

In theory, Democrats could “play possum
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(to use another colorful Carville colloquialism) and just win by
default in the midterms as the Donald Trump crashes the economy and
alienates America’s traditional allies. But winning by default gives
you no clear identity as a party and only reinforces the sense that
Democrats are feckless, opportunistic, and weak. In truth, the
“strategic retreat” advocated by Carville and presently being
carried out by Schumer and Jeffries is leading to the party’s
sending out wildly conflicting messages that only confuse voters. In
response to Donald Trump’s first address to Congress, Representative
Al Green of Texas staged a forceful act of resistance that got him
ejected by the House and censured on Thursday. Ten Democrats in the
House joined in the censuring, as my colleague Joan Walsh noted with
dismay
[[link removed]].
Conversely, the official response to Trump’s address was given by
Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, whose weak-tea attempt to win over
moderate Republicans by praising Ronald Reagan
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the failed strategy of Kamala Harris’s centrist campaign.

The upshot of this confused messaging is that the vast majority of
voters rightly feel like Democrats are offering no real challenge to
Trump. As _Politico_ reports
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Voters still have a sour view of Democrats six weeks after President
Donald Trump and Republicans swept into Washington with control of all
branches of the federal government, according to a new poll.

A plurality of voters—40 percent—said the Democratic Party
doesn’t have any strategy whatsoever for responding to Trump,
according to the survey by the liberal firm Blueprint
[[link removed]] that
was shared first with POLITICO. Another 24 percent said Democrats have
a game plan, but it’s a bad one.

A paltry 10 percent said that the party has a solid technique for
dealing with Trump. And that’s coming from a Democratic outfit’s
survey.

The leadership of the Democratic Party has earned these dismal polling
numbers the hard way—through many years of ceaseless work being
cowardly, ineffectual, unimaginative, dishonest, and self-serving.

American politics is spiraling rapidly downward, and only a radical
intervention can fix the problem. The equation is simple: Trump is
failing and becoming more unpopular—but the current Democratic Party
leadership is even less popular. Given these two facts the most
logical solution is for a third force to emerge, challenge the
existing leadership of the Democratic Party, and replace it with a
forceful alternative to Trumpism.

The most important fact of American politics—indeed, of global
politics—is that we are living in an age of anti-system rage. Since
at least the economic meltdown of 2008, the American electorate has
consistently rewarded politicians who speak to their anger at the
established order: Barack Obama, the Tea Party movement, and Donald
Trump. The one exception is Joe Biden in 2020, but his victory was due
to the fact that under Covid and amid widespread protests against
police violence, Donald Trump became the establishment. Once Biden was
president, his brand of ancien régime restoration and bipartisan
comity became rapidly unpopular, setting the stage for Trump’s
return. Elissa Slotkin shows that Democrats have still not given up on
unpopular centrist establishment politics.

The only path forward for Democrats is a hostile takeover by their own
brand of anti-system politics. Writing in _The New Yorker_, Jay
Caspian Kang makes a good case
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such a hostile takeover:

But there is still hope for the Democrats because they, like the
Republican establishment in 2016, are primed for a hostile takeover.
In the midterms, will we see candidates crop up across the country who
express anger at liberal institutions, at internal corruption in local
Democratic governance, and at the selfishness of leaders such as Joe
Biden [[link removed]] who have put their
own egos and legacy over the good of the Party?

I myself have little taste for celebrity candidates with nebulous
politics. I do think that in an anti-system age, it’s possible that
Stephen A. Smith or Tom Hanks could make it to the White House. But
celebrities by definition are winners in the current order, making
them unlikely to push for the deep structural changes America needs to
address entrenched economic problems.

As Kang notes, the anti-system takeover could take two forms: It could
be a Bernie Sanders economic populist, or it could be a centrist
celebrity running as a post-political pragmatist. In a subsequent
article, Kang advocates
[[link removed]] for
the sports television personality Stephen A. Smith. It’s true that
Smith has the requisite charisma, unorthodox politics, and social
media virality to make a plausible celebrity candidate. Jon Stewart,
Oprah Winfrey, or Tom Hanks are some other potential candidates in the
same mold.

Politically, I prefer the option of economic populism. In effect, this
would be a third Sanders run. Sanders himself is one of the few
anti-Trump political voices who is gaining a wide and appreciative
audience. Over 8 million Americans watched
[[link removed]] Sanders’s
response to Trump’s speech on social media.

Sanders twice ran strong anti-system campaigns in the Democratic
presidential primaries, coming in second both times. Sanders fell
short because a critical mass of Democratic voters still trusted the
party establishment. Crucially in 2020, Joe Biden’s success over
Sanders owed much to the party elite’s coalescing around Biden, with
moderate candidates dropping out and Biden winning the endorsement of
Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina as well as the
backstage advocacy of Barack Obama. It is highly unlikely that
Democratic primary voters will be so favorable to establishment voices
in 2026 or 2028.

Bernie Sanders is still, at age 83, the most important voice in the
anti-Trumpist resistance. His brand of economic populism is the only
plausible path to a post-Trumpist future.

Aside from Sanders, there’s also a model and infrastructure for
committed left-wing candidates challenging more conservative Democrats
in primaries, developed by groups such as Justice Democrats. The
emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad on a congressional
level along with many lawmakers on a state and municipal level have at
the very least created a voice for the left that didn’t exist
before.

But Sanders is too old to run again. Still, can we imagine a Bernie
2.0, someone who can build on the impressive insurgencies of 2016 and
2020 to launch a final victorious battle to seize the citadel of power
in the Democratic Party?

The most important fact of American politics—indeed, of global
politics—is that we are living in an age of anti-system rage. Since
at least the economic meltdown of 2008, the American electorate has
consistently rewarded politicians who speak to their anger at the
established order: Barack Obama, the Tea Party movement, and Donald
Trump. The one exception is Joe Biden in 2020, but his victory was due
to the fact that under Covid and amid widespread protests against
police violence, Donald Trump became the establishment. Once Biden was
president, his brand of ancien régime restoration and bipartisan
comity became rapidly unpopular, setting the stage for Trump’s
return. Elissa Slotkin shows that Democrats have still not given up on
unpopular centrist establishment politics.

The only path forward for Democrats is a hostile takeover by their own
brand of anti-system politics. Writing in _The New Yorker_, Jay
Caspian Kang makes a good case
[[link removed]] for
such a hostile takeover:

But there is still hope for the Democrats because they, like the
Republican establishment in 2016, are primed for a hostile takeover.
In the midterms, will we see candidates crop up across the country who
express anger at liberal institutions, at internal corruption in local
Democratic governance, and at the selfishness of leaders such as Joe
Biden [[link removed]] who have put their
own egos and legacy over the good of the Party?

I myself have little taste for celebrity candidates with nebulous
politics. I do think that in an anti-system age, it’s possible that
Stephen A. Smith or Tom Hanks could make it to the White House. But
celebrities by definition are winners in the current order, making
them unlikely to push for the deep structural changes America needs to
address entrenched economic problems.

As Kang notes, the anti-system takeover could take two forms: It could
be a Bernie Sanders economic populist, or it could be a centrist
celebrity running as a post-political pragmatist. In a subsequent
article, Kang advocates
[[link removed]] for
the sports television personality Stephen A. Smith. It’s true that
Smith has the requisite charisma, unorthodox politics, and social
media virality to make a plausible celebrity candidate. Jon Stewart,
Oprah Winfrey, or Tom Hanks are some other potential candidates in the
same mold.

Politically, I prefer the option of economic populism. In effect, this
would be a third Sanders run. Sanders himself is one of the few
anti-Trump political voices who is gaining a wide and appreciative
audience. Over 8 million Americans watched
[[link removed]] Sanders’s
response to Trump’s speech on social media.

Sanders twice ran strong anti-system campaigns in the Democratic
presidential primaries, coming in second both times. Sanders fell
short because a critical mass of Democratic voters still trusted the
party establishment. Crucially in 2020, Joe Biden’s success over
Sanders owed much to the party elite’s coalescing around Biden, with
moderate candidates dropping out and Biden winning the endorsement of
Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina as well as the
backstage advocacy of Barack Obama. It is highly unlikely that
Democratic primary voters will be so favorable to establishment voices
in 2026 or 2028.

Bernie Sanders is still, at age 83, the most important voice in the
anti-Trumpist resistance. His brand of economic populism is the only
plausible path to a post-Trumpist future.

Aside from Sanders, there’s also a model and infrastructure for
committed left-wing candidates challenging more conservative Democrats
in primaries, developed by groups such as Justice Democrats. The
emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad on a congressional
level along with many lawmakers on a state and municipal level have at
the very least created a voice for the left that didn’t exist
before.

But Sanders is too old to run again. Still, can we imagine a Bernie
2.0, someone who can build on the impressive insurgencies of 2016 and
2020 to launch a final victorious battle to seize the citadel of power
in the Democratic Party?

American labor, besieged under Donald Trump but also energized by
anger at the cost of living crisis, could be the perfect base for such
a hostile takeover. Imagine if the major labor leaders got together to
support a plan for seizing the Democratic Party from its current
leadership (heavily based in college-educated consultants) in order to
return it to the working class. A Labor Popular front could make its
first move in the midterms, supporting economic populist candidates in
primaries. With the preexisting infrastructure created by groups such
as the Justice Democrats, plus the new anger of Democratic voters at
their party establishment, the 2026 primaries could be a growth
opportunity for left expansion in the Democratic Party. Winning over
the institutional support of labor, which shares in the
disillusionment with the party elite, could provide the extra level of
strength for this push.

In 2028, this Labor Popular Front could field its own candidate
(selected in an internal primary before the Democratic primary): Two
potential candidates are Shawn Fain (president of the United Auto
Workers) and Sara Nelson (the international president of the
Association of Flight Attendants–CWA).

Fain or Nelson could run a terrific Bernie Sanders style campaign, one
that would be all the stronger because anti-system rage—including
anger at the decrepit Democratic Party leadership—will only be
stronger after four more dismal years of Trump. Like Sanders, their
strength would be that they are not regular Democratic politicians,
not beholden to the donors and consultants who have led the party to
disaster after disaster. They could run a small-donor-funded campaign
and openly advocate the economic populism that more mainstream figures
like Kamala Harris shy away from. The situation for the Democrats is
dire, but it’s not too late to save the party from its own
self-destructive impulses. A hostile takeover organized by a populist
insurgency, one rooted squarely in the labor movement, could be the
last, best hope for saving America from the current nightmare: an
endless cycle of right-wing Republican rule alternating with Democrats
winning ineffectual default elections.

_JEET HEER is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and
host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters
[[link removed]]. He also pens
the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms
[[link removed]].” The author
of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with
Art Spiegelman [[link removed]] (2013)
and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles
[[link removed]] (2014),
Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New
Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American
Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe._

_Copyright c 2024 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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* Politics
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* Democratic Party
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* Democrats
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* Donald Trump
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* Trade Policy
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* DOGE
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* Elon Musk
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* Labor
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* unions
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