Paul Garver on beefing up Democrat opposition to Trumpism
On April 5, I joined some 90,000 people in Boston for a Hands Off! Rally called by a motley coalition of some 150 progressive organisations. Rallies in all 50 US States drew an estimated 5.2 million across 1200 cities and towns. Participants carried homemade signs espousing a wide spectrum of causes and expressing anger and derision against Pres. Trump and Elon Musk. We marched and chanted, listened to protest music, and applauded orators, including the mayor of Boston and Massachusetts Senators Markey and Warren.
This echoed the marches against Trump in 2017, but the mood was more sombre and angrier. Many appeared to be preparing for a long struggle against assaults from the administration that directly affected themselves, their families and communities, such as the firing of federal workers and the resulting chaos in the social security system. One unifying theme of Hands Off! was “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All”. Many signs referred to attempts to deport international students, sometimes coupled with demands to deport Musk instead.
Rumeysa Ozturk, an international student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, had been snatched the previous week by six masked men identifying themselves as federal agents and whisked away to a detention centre in Louisiana to be processed for deportation. Her “crime” was to co-author an open letter to University administrators advocating for the rights of Palestinians. As with the better-known case of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, mild-mannered and rational public proponents for Palestinian rights are targeted for arrest and deportation, raising fears and feelings of powerlessness among critics of US policies.
Defending them both supports their free speech and tries to blunt the MAGA spear aimed at us. Boston area universities heavily depend on income from international students, and also face threats to federal spending for universities that resist the line against diversity and inclusion. Markey received loud applause at the rally when he demanded that Rumeysa be released.
One good day does not dispel the all-pervasive clouds that menace the USA. Three months into Trump 2.0, we still confront a daily blizzard of executive orders and legislative initiatives that follow the Project 2025 playbook for shock and awe tactics designed to cripple opposition to the MAGA agenda.
Only a few Republicans have questioned the Maximum Leader for fear of being primaried in the 2026 midterm elections, and only a slightly larger handful of mainstream Democrats have offered more than token and ineffectual opposition. (Even Sen. Cory Booker’s recent 25-hour filibuster was more a heroic gesture than a plan.) Their political mavens and advisors still advocate “lying low”, “hunkering down”, or “rope-a-dope” tactics intended to lead to electoral success in 2026. But what if much of the Democratic base is increasingly angered by the failure of politicians to rise on their hind legs and fight back?
The Hands-Off! rallies are not the only evidence that many normally Democrat and Independent voters are demanding more spine from the Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders (nominally an independent) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, DSA) have drawn huge and enthusiastic crowds on their “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” in “purple” states. Incumbent Republican legislators increasingly fear showing up at their own “town hall” district meetings on account of the reactions of their constituents; when they fail to show up, local groups hold “empty chair” forums for them.
A recent poll of the 2028 New York Senatorial race by Data for Progress found AOC led incumbent Sen. Chuck Schumer by 55 to 36 per cent of likely Democratic voters. “This poll really does show that Democrats are united in just wanting to stand up, wanting to fight, wanting to see someone taking a stand for them”, said executive director Danielle Deisenroth of DfP, whose previous poll gleaned that 72% of Democrats and a large majority of Independents wanted Democrats to show greater resolve in opposing Trump and Musk.
It is premature to speculate whether such massive dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party’s lack of leadership will lead to substantial reform or to the disintegration or even implosion of a nearly two-century-old political party. Entrenched habits are hard to change. The Left around the Democratic Party is led by the ageing, though still vigorous Bernie Sanders and by a small Squad in Congress, exemplified by 35-year-old AOC, with various progressive but not formally socialist organisations. Most “socialist” organisations retain the antiquated sectarian traditions that have kept them small, irrelevant, and isolated from most working-class people. As a “big tent” organisation, DSA contains organised caucuses either influenced by, or actually, “entryist” offshoots of these sects, alongside many pragmatic democratic socialist activists engaged in electoral and non-electoral campaigns. Most DSA chapters joined Hands-Off! events, and the National Political Committee belatedly endorsed them, encouraging local chapters to participate and to organise meetings to encourage those who attended to join in ongoing political work. It is unclear whether national DSA can foster the broader process of creating a majoritarian new political voice of the US working class capable of supplanting the Democratic Party.