How To Reclaim Power from the Right
Why claiming agency and taking action are urgently required during this crucial moment — plus an exclusive excerpt from my new book, 'The Day After'
Maryland Democrats are moving to eliminate the state’s only Republican congressional seat, and they’re doing it by changing the state constitution to make it permanent. The establishment reaction has been predictable: this is too radical, this is norm-breaking, this is stooping to their level.
Good.
The right has spent fifty years building toward this moment. And they didn’t do it by offering blind deference to process or norms. They won by being ruthless. Republicans drew 191 congressional districts in 2024. Democrats, with all their votes and procedures, managed to draw only 75.
Eight months ago, I sat down with Colorado Governor Jared Polis and asked if he would follow California Governor Gavin Newsom’s lead on redistricting. He said no. I pressed him multiple times. He wouldn’t budge.
Newsom recognized what needed to be done, and how. “We’ve got to fight fire with fire,” he told me when I sat down with him to talk about Prop 50, his effort to counter Republican redistricting. “This is an existential moment. We have agency.”
That’s what wielding power actually looks like. Not a press release. Not a fundraising email about how appalled we are. Action.
Maryland, under Governor Wes Moore, is doing the same thing now. And if you’re uncomfortable with that, I’d ask you to think about why, because the other side isn’t uncomfortable at all.
Below is an exclusive excerpt from my book, The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World, which takes a closer look into how we arrived here, and how best to move forward.
Why are Democrats so far behind when it comes to playing this kind of politics? It may be distasteful, but it certainly works. Just look at the two times Democrats played hardball: during Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996 and Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012. Their campaign staff worked hard to diminish their opponents, and they both sailed to victory. However, in normal times, Democrats are too busy believing their own myths about their ability to unify a fractured nation with good policies and good government. Surely that must lead to good poll numbers, right?
Once in the White House, Team Obama did not spend a whole lot of time blaming the Great Recession on Republicans for relaxing financial regulation to the point where nobody knew what risks they were playing with. At the very start of his first term, Obama had attacked Wall Street bankers — not Republican deregulation — for what he called “the height of irresponsibility” for paying themselves huge bonuses after receiving emergency bailouts from taxpayers. If you think “the height of irresponsibility” would barely count as fightin’ words, you’d be wrong. The backlash from Wall Street was deep and enduring, as the banks threw their support behind his Republican rival in 2012. “It’s personal,” explained Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman. “They feel insulted by President Obama.”
It wasn’t just the financial crisis that dodged real accountability; the same was true for the darkest corners of Bush’s war on terror, especially the use of torture on detainees. Obama released the legal memos that approved torture by CIA operatives but opposed the prosecution of those responsible. He even opposed an independent inquiry. “Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” he said in April 2009, using language that has never crossed the mind or lips of Donald Trump. Even well into his second term, he admitted that “we tortured some folks” but said we needed to understand what the CIA had been going through at the time, so we should not “feel too sanctimonious” about the torture.
Long before we reached the 2024 election, strong and wrong was already beating weak and right. You could say that demonizing the opposition is bad for the country. But you can’t say it’s worse than Donald Trump’s presidency. The cold, hard truth is that Republicans have been playing the long game, while Democrats have been playing the wrong game.
The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World — my new book on exactly what that looks like — is now available for pre-order here.
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Really Louisiana has help from the Supreme Court to eliminate the seats of black congress people but Maryland can't do likewise and eliminate a Republican seat? This is war. All rules are off or the dems are toast. Nothing at this stage is too radical!!
The weakening of oversight laws is not only the republicons' fault. Over the years, time and again, there were way too many Democrats who voted with republicons to take down necessary guard rails. The orange dumpster is now taking full advantage of what these Democratic traitors have been enabling him to do. They must have done some pretty good collecting of funds over the years.
The only concrete example I can think of right now, was Biden's vote for banks to raise interest on credit cards above 18%, which had been the rate in effect for decades. Some banks are now charging over 30% from what I read. Don't get me wrong, I thought Biden was a decent president, but that vote was plain wrong, just like his vote for Clarence Thomas. That's two major things he screwed up royally, along with naming Merrick Garland his AG.