Will Democrats Figure Out How To Take Trump On?

Trump is counting on his opposition’s deeply ingrained fear of being divisive to give him the room to break the country. So far he’s getting what he wants.

Everyone I know is complaining about the Democrats. They’re weak. They’re divided. They’re letting themselves get steamrolled. And on and on.

In this case, “everyone” is right. Even allowing for some degree of shock at the sheer scope of the onslaught in these first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, they should have found their sea legs by now. And not for the shallow purpose of “winning the day,” but for a very real one: Millions of Americans have a foot—or a leg—caught in Trump’s ideological bear trap, and they need a political party that will fight this illegal and indiscriminate rampage with everything at its disposal to help people pry themselves loose.

Naturally, we should have realistic expectations about what a minority party can achieve as far as parliamentary maneuvers. But you know what happens as soon as I type a sentence like that? I imagine too many elected congressional Democrats just nodding in agreement and exhaling in relief. The truth is simple: Far too many Democrats don’t want to think of themselves as fighters. This is a self-conception that has some deep historical roots; but far more importantly, it’s a potentially self-fulfilling prophecy of passivity that will have grave consequences for tens of millions of Americans, and for the Constitution and the republic, if they don’t get over this fast and come to terms with the reality they are in.

The historical roots go back to the late 1970s, when this new thing called “movement conservatism” was afoot in the land. Movement conservatism’s intellectual roots go back to the 1950s; but it wasn’t until the 1970s, when the “religious right” began to assume its form, that this movement started electing a critical mass of politicians and having a big impact on the country’s political culture.

Movement conservatives had a vanguardist mentality—they were insurrectionists assaulting the liberal establishment’s castle. Newt Gingrich embodied and advanced this outlook more than anyone. The outlook set in train a dynamic that still holds true today: Conservatives are disruptors who constantly question the status quo; liberals are defenders of the existing order.