Activism
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April 29, 2025
The American people can smell a rat. If we want to be trusted partners, we have to show we are worthy of the trust and be willing to do what it takes to engage, explain and bring people to us.
As Democrats and millions of Americans across the country stand up to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of the MAGA Republicans, we must make sure we’re clear about what this fight is about—and what our vision is for the future.
We need to be clear about what we are standing up for, fight hard for that vision, and invite everyone who wants to be in our tent to come in.
Most importantly, we need to fight for a true Democratic vision, not a Republican-lite vision that makes people question whether we stand for anything at all. That means we should proudly be for living wages that allow you to work one job instead of three, allow you to make enough so you have a roof over your head, food on the table, a good education for your kids, healthcare you can afford, and retirement with dignity.
We should proudly be for genuine social and economic opportunity that respects every person for who they are and respects our differences, but also our common vision of how we can thrive, not just survive.
And the Democratic Party must stop courting those billionaires who are simply pouring money into defeating us, destroying unions, and all organized power that seeks to resist them.
This embrace of billionaire megadonors, corporate PACs, and powerful special interests is precisely what led to the disastrous 2024 election. But anyone who thinks we just lost this election is missing the point.
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We started losing more than a decade ago when Democrats knowingly abandoned working people across America to push for free trade instead of fair trade during NAFTA. We reinforced that by bailing out big banks and Wall Street instead of working people and Main Street during the 2008 recession.
And all along, it took way too long to get the Democratic establishment to rally around raising the federal minimum wage or designing a universal system that doesn’t just subsidize private insurance companies to provide healthcare to a few while raising the rates for everyone else. We keep defending economic and political systems that are rigged against the people, instead of being willing to boldly call out what needs to change.
Let’s change the script. It’s time to respect Democrats’ natural base of voters and potential voters, and work to win them over.
Instead of constantly being tied to ever-changing polling, Democrats should be leaders in shaping public opinion towards an inclusive and equitable vision that gives every working person and poor person a place to stand. Abraham Lincoln understood the need to use our powerful platforms for good when he famously said, “Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”
Our opposition agenda must push back boldly on the MAGA-extremist and fascist efforts to strip away the things we need to survive. We need to stand up against economic and nativist cruelty and inhumanity—whether directed at poor people across this country or Trump’s program of mass deportations. And we need to be willing to lead the fight back at every level against Trump’s outrageous agenda that gives $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and betrays working people and poor people by slashing every program and benefit that we need to thrive in America.
But we also need to have a very clear proposition agenda that draws people in—and that speaks to the need to redesign our institutions from healthcare to education to jobs and wages.
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We must fight against Trump’s attacks on healthcare coverage while also standing up for a true universal healthcare program that doesn’t put the more than 100 million Americans with over $220 billion in debt even deeper in the red.
We must stand up to Trump and Elon’s taking a chain saw to our economy and also detail our plans to lower housing, grocery, and childcare costs.
We must do everything we can to stop Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich and provide the clear alternative of making the ultra-wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.
And as we do this, we must remember that hypocrisy doesn’t work: You can’t be in bed with corporations, take their money, and then tell people you are fighting for working folks over big campaign donors.
The American people can smell a rat. If we want to be trusted partners, we have to show we are worthy of the trust and be willing to do what it takes to engage, explain and bring people to us.
Democrats need to stop dithering about process and rules. We have to be clear that we will upend this rigged system and do what it takes to make good on our promises for living wages, affordable housing, universal healthcare, and expanded Social Security. We need to actually invest in our power base of organized labor by expanding the right to organize and investing in domestic manufacturing.
It’s not a coincidence that my home state of Washington is the only state to barely shift red in November. We have one of the most union-dense states in the country and, together with community organizations, have utilized both elected bodies and the ballot to show who we stand for.
The city I represent, Seattle, was the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage back in 2014—and our economy is still one of the strongest in the country. We were among the first states to raise our state minimum wage to one of the highest in the country, and to tie it to inflation so it balances out higher costs. We provide the strongest paid family leave program and the most generous college aid program in the country. And when Republicans tried to repeal the capital gains tax, even the voters in counties that went over 90 percent for Trump rejected it, agreeing that the wealthiest should pay their fair share in taxes.
Voters in Washington state were less likely to abandon us Democrats because we never abandoned them.
Consider the stunning statistic that 90 million eligible voters did not register in 2024. That’s on top of the 9.1 million registered voters who did not vote at all in 2024. Those numbers absolutely dwarf Trump’s popular vote win of just 2 million voters.
Even in key swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan, the populations of eligible-to-vote people who did not vote are significant enough to change the trajectory of the results in those states.
What would happen if we abandoned the conventional “establishment” thinking and redefine who our “swing” voters are—focusing on these 90 million people? Our path to victory is to be clear about our opposition and our proposition, to speak directly to people, and to fight for them. Not more of the same centrist platitudes that don’t offend anyone yet fail to win anyone over.
The good news is that this is not an ideological fight within the Democratic Party, whatever corporate-backed Beltway groups pushing tired centrism think. Progressives, moderates, independents, and even some Republicans just want a system that isn’t rigged against them.
We can win people back with a clear populist agenda that resonates in red and blue districts. We can refuse to listen to the same corporate interests that killed our coherent party identity by embracing anti-union free-trade agreements, relentlessly lobbying Senate Democrats against multiple pro-worker policies, or abandoning immigrants, trans kids, or poor people.
Democracies fall in a matter of months, not years, so this is urgent. But we can do it. Let’s start now.
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.
In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.
We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.
This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.
In solidarity,
The Editors
The Nation
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