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kt: If you were in charge of a group like Indivisible, what would you do right now, and in the next few months, in response to everything happening?
Let me preface my answer by noting that I didn’t spend my beat-reporting years covering progressive activism, except insofar as it overlapped with Congress, elections, policy, and intra-branch conflict. So I don’t have a big breadth of experience observing what works, what doesn’t, etc. to draw on for an informed critique.
And if I had that kind of experience, I’m fortunate enough that I could just brainstorm my ideas with them directly, rather than backseat drive resistance leaders on my blog.
But I was asked, so I will answer, with the understanding that these are not criticisms or even necessarily wise suggestions. I’m mainly imagining victory, and thinking backward.
So the way I see it, American politics needs regular, visible reminders of how thoroughly a sustainable majority of the country rejects fascism. We need incumbent Democrats to fight harder, and we need readiness to engage in the kind of civil disobedience that might actually bring this regime (or at least its worst abuses) to an early end.
No Kings addresses the first need.
I think it could be constructive to see smaller, more consistent action against the Senate Democrats who aren’t fighting. Primaries for those in cycle, and pressure campaigns aimed at people like Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, et al—the ones who orchestrate surrender—with a simple message: get out of the way, or resign effective immediately.
In the civil disobedience realm we could use mass work stoppages and a citizen-led campaign coordinated with blue-state governors to starve the federal government of as much tax revenue as possible. (The latter effort might be tricky legally.)
Lastly—and this is the big one—we need the capacity to flood the streets of Washington, DC, perhaps surrounding the White House, with a durable presence of a few hundred thousand people. More the better, but I do believe a color revolution-like descent on the capital would eventually bring this government down.
I don’t know when the optimal moment for a final showdown, but it’s achievable. And I’d err on the side of sooner than later. As I’ve written here in other essays, American politics is bedeviled by the the fact that mass resistance tends to materialize only after disaster has struck. But this administration needs to end before World War III.
Henry: I wish I shared Jamelle Bouie’s (and Josh Marshall’s) optimism that the structures of federalism would stop Trump at a practical level from canceling an election, but I have by now seen Trump get away with too many previously inconceivable things to feel safe. If, a few weeks before the midterms, Trump posts on Truth Social that the midterms are hereby postponed until they can be protected from fraud perpetrated by illegal immigrants brought in by the Democrats, which of the 23 states with Republican trifectas stands up to him? If anything, it seems like state Republican parties are more MAGA than the national party. Someone asked Jamelle what would happen if Trump issued an executive order canceling the election, and he responded that Trump isn’t the “boss” of governors and secretaries of state. But ... most elected Republicans do act as if Trump were their boss! They’re all gaslighting us about Greenland now! It just seems to me that the Raffenspergers have mostly been purged.
As someone aligned politically with Josh And Jamelle, and who knows both of them personally, I don’t know that I’d call their views on this “optimistic.” At least insofar as the term “optimism” is often freighted with negative connotation—naivete, idealism, etc.
I shouldn’t speak for them, but my sense is all three of us are optimists in terms of personal ethic—in a forward-moving, fight-to-the-bitter-end sense. And I suspect when they say Trump can’t practically cancel an election, it isn’t because they naively assume Trump won’t try, including through the use of shocking, bloody tactics. It’s that we have the stronger hand here, and will thus proceed as if the thought of him canceling or overturning the election is ludicrous.
On the specific notion that he might subvert the election in conspiracy with GOP-trifecta states, consider a few glaring issues: ...