Fighting for the American Democratic Experiment and Against Trump: Practical Steps and Best Practices

Politics & Elections
1

Trump is flooding the zone with various illegal practices, occasionally walking them back, other times not. What should friends of US democracy do?

Set aside some time for constructive behavior, as opposed to doom-scrolling. You don’t have to do everything: this will be a team effort. You don’t even have to do that which is most important: there will be others better positioned to do that. Just put your shoulder to the wheel.

So what do we do? I say step one would be to hook up with Indivisible.org. It is headed by former congressional staffers who have a good sense of what politicians care about and what they don’t. Poke around their website and sign up. I highly recommend reading their guidebook. The link has an audio version if you’re into that, as well as a google docs link that provides an array of formats.

Page 14 of the guide contains these gems. Remember: team effort. If you have a Democratic Rep, “Your job is to support, cheerlead, or berate your Democratic Representative and/or Senators to be active fighters for every battle we fight on the Trump agenda. That work should be loud and public — whether positive or negative”

If you have a vulnerable Republican Rep, “Demand your swing representative and/or senators show up in public. Make them explain where they stand at this moment of great divide. And make clear to them, and the broader community they represent, that folks paying attention in their district/state disagree with the MAGA agenda and want to see them vote against it. …They don’t want to be seen as too out-of-step with their district.”

If you have a safe Republican Rep, well I guess you should focus locally or on the long term nationally.

The whole guide is 28 pages. There’s a lot to dig in to. But you don’t need to read it all at once. Lessen doom scrolling and pace yourself. There’s plenty of work to do for everyone, plenty of opportunities to defend democracy and the US constitution.

Broader discussion: Now what should people on the left do?

Donation thread: People on the left: who are you donating to?

2

Thanks for this, @Measure_for_Measure! Heartily seconded!

My wife looked for a local Indivisible chapter right after the election, didn’t find one, so she started one herself. She works full time, and was hoping that someone else would step up to be the leader, but now she’s co-chair with another woman. We started out with 24 members, about half of whom participated in a startup Zoom call in December.

We had our first in-person meeting, with 17 people, last Saturday, and are now up to 43 members.

We’re using Signal for internal communications, with separate threads for general chat, action items, and articles, and some of our members are working on setting up a website for the chapter.

It’s heartening to take action and to be among like-minded people. If you’re feeling despondent and hopeless, know that that is the goal of fascists: to make you feel afraid and alone and that there is nothing you can do. Don’t give in and don’t give up!

Even if it’s not Indivisible, find a group that fits your values and outlook, and do something, anything, to fight the good fight.

It’s not hard or time consuming to call your congressmen or local and state reps. Put their numbers in your phone contact list so you can call whenever you need to. Even if your reps are Dems and likely to vote the right way, or do the right thing, it’s good for them to hear what issues you and others are concerned bout. All the more so if they’re not Dems.

I called my congressman and senators the other day about Trump’s horrible nominee for OMB and RFK, Jr. It took less than five minutes to leave two messages and talk to one live staffer. It’s easy! And if couldn’t be more important.

3

There are a couple of points I see often online in my circles; though alluded to above, and mentioned elsewhere by me (I think), it’s still worth saying directly.

First, remember that trying to overwhelm the enemy and make them lose hope, and thus motivation to act, is a deliberate political strategy. Don’t obey in advance.

Second, thinking and acting locally can have great effect, including on your capacity to hope. Being able to take direct action and see the results for yourself is a great motivator.

4

Step 1 would be actually starting to do shit.
You couldn’t be more accommodating to Trump if you tried.

5

If you’re saying that you’d like to see more (media coverage of) protests, strikes, and rioting, you should be explicit about it. Then we can discuss whether that would actually do any good and if so, how they can be effective. (See subject line.)

6

I see lots of people spending a lot of time expressing their recreational outrage. Their posting it is about as effective as me reading it 5000 miles away.

7

Great, so since this thread is about “practical steps,” we can get into talking about what the average American can actually do effectively.

8

Step 1 - fuck off from twitbook.
Step 2 - stop using Amazon.
Step 3 - make owning a Tesla as uncomfortable as possible. Let us get the resale value to 0.
Step 4 - turn off Fox, CNN and all others who provide sane washing services. (I don’t have to tell you to cancel your WP subscription?)

This you can do even if you don’t want to confront people.

9

Step 0: actually acknowledge something bad worth fighting against is happening

A lot of posters here and Americans at large are having trouble with this step here.

10

I agree that Republicans and other cowards don’t see anything worth fighting against or fighting for. Kevin Drum:

Pardoning all the J6 insurrectionists? Meh. Shutting down the NIH? Yawn. Huge tariffs on two of our most steadfast allies and neighbors? Whaddayagonnado? Firing everyone associated with investigating or prosecuting J6ers or Trump himself? Well, he’s the president. Halting funding for programs that you yourselves authorized a few months ago? Everyone does it. Elon Musk and his crew mysteriously taking over the Treasury’s payment system? It’s all fine. We trust Elon. Threatening Denmark over Greenland? Boys will be boys. Removing mpox from the CDC site because it’s mostly a virus of gay men? Huh. Starting up a scam crypto empire right before the inauguration? Man’s gotta eat. Opening the floodgates on two California dams in winter and sending billions of gallons of water south to soak into a dry lakebed and be wasted—all on a whim? I’ll have to get back to you. Pardoning the founder of the most notorious online drug trafficking site on the planet? Uh huh. Nominating half a dozen singularly unqualified nominees to run critical government departments? The president should get the staff he wants. Ending Secret Service protection for a few people he personally dislikes? Whatevs. Gulf of America? Why not?

11

This. After all these years, I still see the criminally naive claiming that something will stop him.

12

And this thread is supposed to be about discussing ways for people to do that. There are a dozen other threads in which to lament that others aren’t doing enough, and I don’t see why we have to make this thread another.

Maybe some of those people you’re shaking your head about will feel inspired.

13

Congressional staffers know what scares their bosses and what does not. Many such actions are mild effort, though they involve a substantial shift in gears. Commasense gives examples upthread. Your local Indivisible group should help.

Trump won by 1.5% of the popular vote. Obama and Biden had higher margins. We’re only 2 weeks into the administration. Now is a good time to lay the ground work to flood their zone when the time comes. US citizens don’t need to feel hopeful or inspired.and they don’t need to join the military. They just need to do their patriotic job.

14

There is a rally at the Treasury Dept to protest Musk’s takeover tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb 4, at 5 pm.

15

Another vitally important step Dopers can take is to call their Senators, R or D, and insist they vote against the confirmation of Russell Vought as head of OMB. He is the architect of Project 2025, and if confirmed, he will break the US Government in ways that may just be impossible to fix.

This is no exaggeration. The professional civil service has been in place since the massive corruption an cronyism of the Gilded Age, and Trump, under the guidance of Vought, wants to remove anyone who won’t slavishly do their bidding. They literally want government employees to swear loyalty to Trump, not the Constitution.

Margins in the Senate are razor thin, but Trump’s nominees can, and must, be stopped. Dems must do everything in their power to stop, slow, and impede Trump’s efforts, especially his appointments to the cabinet.

Call your senators today! Here is a link to a toolkit from Indivisible with details on what to do and why.

16

My representatives were unable to be reached by phone. Voice mails were full or no one answers.

I was able to email.

17

I have to agree that a single 5 minute phone call to your Congressional Rep or Senator is worth more than 100 hours of screwing around on social media. Unless you have 100,000 followers. And even then, I’m dubious.

But while doom-scrolling is a waste of time, we need some kind of helpful information sources. I’ll list my top 5.

  1. Match the media outlet to the times. If we were at war, I’d recommend War on the Rocks a site I rarely visit because I’m not a military guy. If we faced a megadeath terrorist threat I’d recommend and open source intelligence outfit such as bellingcat. If we were in financial crisis I’d recommend Nobel Laurette Paul Krugman, and whomever he recommended at the time, such as Simon Johnson. Crisis in the housing market? Try Bill McBride at Calculated Risk.
    But the crisis of the day involves US democracy, so we need a trustworthy and reliable US political observer. A guy or gal that will walk through their thinking, stating what they know and don’t know, and the financial firepower to run a multi-person investigation when needed. Most newspaper journalism is access journalism, whose focus is scoops rather than policy and involves negotiation with sources. Under this model the reporter isn’t the reader’s representative, but rather an intermediary between sources with information and an audience that can be manipulated to some extent. Because without manipulation, the reporter has little to offer the source. WAPO and the NYT operate in this fashion and they do some fine and not so fine reporting. What they are not is wholly trustworthy, though their ethics will block outright deception (NYT more than WAPO), unlike the propagandists at Fox News, who traffic in reassurance.
    Why is honesty and candor with the reader important? Because it entails the analyst being honest with themselves. It encourages them to report what they know, what they don’t know, and what they might know but haven’t figured out yet. The alternative is to be funneled into an ideology, or barring that a fixed point of view. If you don’t doubt yourself and challenge your own thinking, you may have a reliable and predictable perspective -good for accruing a certain kind of readership- but you won’t be a reliable analyst.

I’m describing Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. Much of their content is free to the reader, but not to the writers. Membership is $50 a year, a bargain and a patriotic gift in these times.

As for numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5, I’m going to postpone that discussion in order to emphasize the quality of Marshall’s organization. They are all great, but not in a way that fits the day.

18

Time to write your Democratic Senators, if you have one. The Dems have a couple of leverage points, one of which is the continuing resolution. I say there should be no cooperation until the lawbreaking stops.Otherwise, the GOP can negotiate with the freedom caucus.

Josh Marshall

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/red-alert-now-is-the-moment-folks

I just sent this via my Senators’ contact form:

Republicans control 2 legislative branches. They should have no help with the March 14th continuing resolution until Trump stops breaking the law. For example, Doge and Musk should either be authorized by Congress or shut down entirely. Illegal changes to computer systems need to be reversed. Congress decides what to spend money on, not the President.

No more criminal conduct. Obviously this needs to be enforced in some way, giving Democrats some sort of investigatory power.

Thanks for your service,

MfM

Maybe I’ll make a phone call at some point.

If you have a GOP legislator in a purple or red area, there will be opportunities moving forwards to fight for demcracy. Different politicos, different playbooks.

19

Done. Thanks for reminding us about 3/14 and also for the example.

20

Marshall clarifies:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-to-tell-your-member-of-congress

I also posted this to Bluesky which felt great, but was worth far less than the 10 minutes it took to submit my opinions to my 2 Senators.