Don’t forget news sources are siloed now. In the current legacy media environment, it’s trivial for the Trump administration to disincentive coverage of Democratic pushback.
How do you take in information? Start there and work back. Consider whether any of your sources of information are positioned to resist the Trump administration and promote their coverage accordingly.
As an aside: Do you read any liberal Substack writers? Simon Rosenberg, Robert Hubbell, Jay Kuo, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, etc.? There is much written about Democratic pushback on those pages. The respective Comments sections of those sites also serve as virtual “bulletin boards” for grass-roots Democratic pushback efforts to “advertise” and accumulate suporters (front-line support and otherwise).
I know and am aware of grass-roots pushback and vocal opposition. I do read many of the sources you named. Why aren’t our Democratic LEADERS speaking up loudly and in public more-- calling trump out? Pointing out over and over that the emperor has no clothes (sorry for the visual ). Besides Bernie, AOC, and Tim Walz.
I’d say the answer is “Yes”, because one of the major problems the Democrats have is their reputation as passive weaklings who never even try to stand up tot he Republicans. From a political perspective it barely matters if it’s true or not, it’ s what people believe; they don’t expect the Democrats to be anything but doormats. Making a lot of noise would at least help convince their own base that they are something other than indifferent lumps of flesh.
The problem is the independent media is in a tough spot. Trump is doing multiple deplorable things a day, things that can’t be ignored. So the media needs to cover those. But that gives little time for opponents to get their opposition publicity.
I understood what you meant, but wanted to amplify exactly what it means to avoid a “circular firing squad”.
So true. Trump is always in the headlines because “if it bleeds, it leads.” The trouble is it’s the country that is bleeding. Not him personally. Although I’ll wager that would get a headline, too.
How to get publicity and headlines-- Democrats have never figured that one out. Until opposition to trump gets loud, ugly, and bloody, it won’t attract headlines (or whatever passes for headlines when newspapers are mostly dead).
There’s more going on among Democratic politicians than what Bernie, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and Tim Walz are doing. Admittedly, I don’t have a bunch of examples at the forefront of my mind, but I can rattle off some quick ones:
Senator Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) 25-hour floor speech in the Senate
There’s never going to be one big conclusive smackdown of the Trump administration (possible down-the-road exception – conviction in the Senate after impeachment). More likely is that the admnistration will get to the point where it’s trying to run at breakneck speed through chest-deep sand. The tough part right now is that the sand is only getting scooped in a teaspoon at a time. At least, though, it’s getting steadily scooped in. Maybe before long, it’ll be by the cupful. Longer still, by the bushel.
Dropping in here to point out that the next one of those is this Saturday, April 19 2025. And at least locally the number of them expected to be held is increasing.
I’ve got some faint hope that a few million more people in the street may have some such effect.
And the current administration is giving us so many such to choose from.
They may well encourage continuation of such other activity, though.
I hold the same hope and consequently my feet will be voting on Saturday~complete with my big IMPEACH TRUMP sign. “To the ramparts!!’ (Local protest gathering at my state Capitol)
I have few delusions, I know it’s incremental, we just have to keep doing it and outlast the bastards. I’ve been doing it since 1968 and progress has been made.
In a letter sent to Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators demanded information as to why the visas are being revoked without due process, a means of seeking recourse or even a notification to the students or their schools.
…
They noted that if international students violate criminal or immigration laws, they should be removed. But revoking students’ visas or terminating their records without any notice to the students or their schools undermines confidence in the DHS and State Department – and erodes people’s trust.
“The chaos caused by your actions is not acceptable. We believe in the rule of law and that immigration laws should be enforced. That starts with the Constitution and its guarantees of free speech and due process,” the senators wrote, in part. “These Constitutional protections apply to noncitizens in the United States, including people in nonimmigrant status.”
I think that sending letters to Administration officials, even strongly worded letters, is pretty much the opposite of what the OP is looking for. Senator Van Hollen’s physically going to El Salvador to look for the guy is more like it.
To be clear, I give the example to ensure that the concept is clear, not to dismiss the complexities of the issue nor to demean any person.
Let’s say that I enjoy calculating my monthly budget in my favorite spreadsheet application. This is a very serious and very worthwhile activity, and no one would fault it. I can go around the house and proclaims its worthiness and trumpet how good a thing it is. I can go to my pup and shout, “Excel! Math! Budgeting!” My dog will become excited and frolick with me.
My dog is excited about monthly budgeting in Microsoft Office-based products!
Or… Maybe he’s not?
Again, this isn’t to impugn anyone. I’m just saying that the observation of excitement isn’t equivalent to proof of excitement. But certainly it’s possible for some non-zero level of it to be illusory. My dog’s excitement is the excitement of being part of the team and happy that the team is winning. He doesn’t give a rat’s fuck about budgeting.
In the age of Trump, we have the unfortunate ability to calculate the numbers on people who actually care versus those who are team players.
Hotelling’s law ensures that the political positions in a two party system will be evenly split across the population. Trump is demonstrably a poor choice from the political vantage of either party:
There’s no party that believes against the Constitution
There’s no party that believes in corruption
And from the vantage of his own party:
He’s a worker protectionist/anti-globalism candidate in the pro-Business party, free market party
He’s an appeaser of tyrants and invaders, in the party of “Never negotiate with terrorists”
He’s an advocate of secession, as the leader of the party that went to war with the South to denounce the right of secession
And so for quite some extended list.
And yet, we see that 40% of the country has found no issue in going against 200 years of history on the basic beliefs of their country, and of the basic beliefs of their political party. And there’s no reason to think that the split between the parties has any deeper meaning than Hotelling’s.
The safest bet is that 80% of people are just along for the ride, cheering where they see others cheering. I mean, maybe every individual has the capacity to connect to something deeper and more arcane than a sports-fan mentality of politics. I’m not saying that they couldn’t, just that they haven’t. All of them could do their monthly budgets but the reality is that 2/3rds of people - up to and including doctors - have no emergency savings. And you go back a hundred years and the average person was quite happy to string up black people, light them on fire, and buy postcards of the event - with no knowledge of what those people had done, nor reason to think they’d been properly judged and prosecuted.
Pointing to the predominant viewpoint of the majority and calling it a demonstration of the individual consideration and logic that went into the decisions of each and every person around ignores that, in history, there’s no shortage of examples of people changing their morality and viewpoint on a dime.
The average Russian went from watching Zelensky on TV and cheering for him when he came on their evening talk shows, flipping on a dime to now believe the guy is a genocidal maniac that wants to exterminate the Slavs (ignoring that he’s the president of a nation of Slavs). Your average Republican flipped from being pro-business to pro-worker. Your average Democrat went from being opposed to Robert Mueller under George Bush, spying on Americans, to being the greatest ever fans of that famous Republican violator of civil liberties. Young folk refused to vote for Harris, even though she refused to meet with Netanyahu and denounced the actions of Israel, because the Internet tied her to Biden and his choices as an entirely different human being.
Demonstrable reality and reason are not the basis for the decisions of the majority. They go along with what they believe is expected of them, based on looking around and observing what others are doing. And those others are looking up to the leaders to decide.
If the leaders are not trustworthy then that whole system falls apart. If you end up with Washington then good. If you end up with Robespierre, then genocide.
When someone goes through a college putting up posters for Trans-Rights or to decry Trump, how much of that is the sort of excitement that I feel for Excel? How much of it is real? Seeing support around you means that the people in your region see someone that you agree with as their leadership. Does it mean that that sat down and wrote a mental essay, complete with citations and mental arithmetic, in support of and against each value that you hold?
Did you do that? After all, when and how did you change your opinion of Robert Mueller? Was it based on the evidence or was it based on the team he seemed to support at that moment in time?
In 2024, just two House Democrats lost their primary races, progressives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. As a moderate, this was fine with me, but I do not think it helped the party. I hope my moderate House member, Chrissy Houlahan, isn;t primaried, but I’m pretty sure she would win. IMHO, off-internet Democratic voters will not be impressed by claims that anti-Trump incumbents are doing it the wrong way.
Populism vs populism is just back to the great divide between the commies and the nationalists. The winners were the countries that avoided both sets of crazies - and they still had to deal with the madness that was unleashed in the war between those factions.
). Besides Bernie, AOC, and Tim Walz.
