Democrats Need to Find Their Strength

They're beginning to get the picture, but this should be only the start.

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

Democrats on Capitol Hill are, remarkably enough, showing some spine in the conflict over funding the government, though this condition may be temporary. They do seem to have clued in that what their supporters want, apart from any particular positioning on policy, is for them to demonstrate conviction, determination, and strength.

In a happy coincidence, that is also what persuadable voters like to see in politicians. But after a few decades of (mostly) conducting politics from a defensive crouch, Democrats have plenty of work to do; a recent CBS News poll found that when asked to describe the parties in one word, the most common response for Democrats was “weak,” while the top response for Republicans was “extreme.” Correct on both counts.

Bill Clinton, who knew a thing or two about how politics works on a gut level, famously observed that given a choice between “weak and right” and “strong and wrong,” voters will choose the latter. And this, I am willing to predict, is going to be the central question of the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries.

Before you say “Seriously, we’re talking about the 2028 presidential race?”, bear with me for a moment. I have no interest in handicapping the primary campaign; there will be plenty of time for that. But even as all of us try to cope with the nightmare we’re living through, we need to start planning for the aftermath. It would be a disaster if Democrats took back control of the government in 2029, then flailed around for four years and were unable to undo the damage Donald Trump and Republicans have caused.

What campaigns are about

Every presidential primary contest has a central theme or question, the axis of disagreement between the candidates. The candidate who prevails is the one voters choose as the answer to that question. In 2020, the question Democrats asked was about ideology: How liberal did they want to be, and how important should it be to appeal to voters in the center? After a lot of discussion about single-payer health care and other issues, the answer they settled on was Joe Biden, whom they thought (correctly at the time) would be reassuring to the center.

Going back further, in 2008 the Democrats argued about which “theory of change” they wanted to commit to, because there was very little ideological distinction between the top candidates. In 2016, Republicans argued about whether they should broaden their tent or appeal to the resentment and racial animus of their base; Donald Trump was the answer to that question. You get the idea.

I’m willing to predict that in 2028 the question for Democrats will be how fast and aggressively they are willing to move when they take back power. The willingness to “fight” is one part of it, but it’s not just about direct conflict with Republicans. It’s also about whether they’ll be willing to use the broadened executive power the Supreme Court has carved out for Donald Trump to the maximum extent possible (and yes, I know that the court will revert to a severely constrained view of that power as soon as there’s a Democrat in the White House, but we can assume there will be at least some widened space for unilateral action).

It’s about whether they will, for instance, commit themselves to a sweeping reorganization of government to reverse the damage of the prior four years (and maybe construct something even better). It’s about whether they will put actual political capital and not just lip service into making D.C. a state. It’s about whether will walk into office on January 20, 2029 and start firing all the thousands of MAGA apparatchiks Trump installed throughout the federal government. It’s about whether they are willing to move with something resembling the speed, ruthlessness, and policy ambition that Trump and Republicans have displayed.

If they are to show that they are ready to do all that, they will have to say something clearly to voters: The period we are living through right now is both an aberration and an abomination, and it will be undone. If they communicate that with strength and not hesitancy, they will find more people agreeing with them on the substance of their arguments than they think.

A case study: ICE reform

Let’s take an example to illustrate. Here’s what I’d like to see a 2028 Democratic presidential candidate say about the horrors unleashed by ICE:

When I take office, the time of enforcing immigration laws by empowering gangs of masked thugs to terrorize Americans and immigrants alike will be over. This administration hired every sadistic bully they could find, told them to hide behind masks and refuse to identify themselves, then set them loose in towns and cities all across the country. That reign of terror is done.

So we will undertake a wholesale and desperately needed reform of ICE. It has gotten out of control, and it’s time for the agency to start acting with professionalism again. No more showing up to arrest a housekeeper kitted out like you’re invading Fallujah. No more masks — American law enforcement officers at every level have shown their faces for 250 years, and you can too. No more refusing to identify yourself, or wearing jeans and t-shirts on the job. If you’re a law enforcement officer of the federal government, you wear a uniform and a badge, you show your face, and you act like a professional. If you can’t do that — or if you joined ICE because you get off on handcuffing children, beating people up, and generally acting like part of a street gang — you’re welcome to seek employment elsewhere. But you won’t be working for the United States government.

When Republicans say “Those libs want to abolish ICE!”, as they surely will, the answer is not “You are mistaken, I want a sensible approach to immigrant enforcement that’s both tough and smart, please don’t hurt me.” It’s something more like this:

There is no more room for fascist goons here in America, and it is sickening that Republicans would defend the kind of violent thuggery and abuses of power we’ve seen during the Trump years. But that’s about to end, and I invite them to join with us to create an immigration system we can all support, one that prevents illegal immigration and still allows us to cultivate what has made the U.S. a magnet for the most talented and ambitious people from all over the world for our entire history. Republicans have a chance to put aside the hate and fear they spent so many years stoking, and do something good for the country for a change. If they want to do that, I’ll welcome their help. But if they’re too weak to take the opportunity, they can get out of the way.

There is an anti-fascist majority in America, and even on this narrow question of ICE thuggery, most Americans don’t like what they’ve seen. So what if Democrats put themselves on the side of the voters, and did it in a way that will make them look strong for a change?

Substantively speaking, this is an incredibly important issue for the next president to tackle. Republicans made ICE into a monster, almost tripling its budget and turning it into a kind of brownshirt militia of Trumpism, unaccountable to the law and encouraged to terrorize as many communities as possible. It is not a problem that will be solved with new leadership and a few memos asking officers to act with more restraint. The place is going to have to be stripped down to the studs and remade.

This is just one issue; there are going to be different debates and different approaches when it comes to foreign policy, health care, taxes, climate change, and so on. But Democrats who want to lead their party should start thinking about how they’re going to demonstrate strength to the voters. If they can’t do that, they aren’t going to get very far.

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