The Resistance Will Not Be Polarized

8 ways to build a bigger tent

“Democrats have a choice. You could say to those people, you’re racist, you’re Nazis, you’re fascist, you’re terrible. Or you can listen and be like, why is it that a steel worker in Pittsburgh who’s voted Democrat his entire life is voting for Trump?”

Though it sounds like something Bernie Sanders might say on his fighting oligarchy tour, the words belong to Charlie Kirk. And therein lies the problem for The Resistance: If it is more committed to thrashing Trump than to connecting with struggling and alienated once-were Democrats, those voters will continue to gravitate toward candidates who at least pretend to take an interest in their lives. Or they will, as they increasingly do, tune out and stay home, convinced that no one has their backs and that democracy is a sham, a game created and played by and for elites.

Polarization grows the ranks of the “exhausted majority” who are already 67% of the country. Outside of each side’s loyal base, most people are sick and tired of the neverending outrage spectacle that domimates politics. Polarization is good at firing up the base, but at the cost of repelling those who don’t mainline news and politics 24/7 the way us junkies do.

Toxic polarization is a little too good at firing up at the base, pushing extremists into insular bubbles that goad themselves into dehumanizing their adversaries to dangerous levels. At the tail end of that process, political violence can break out.

Resistance Democrats employ a non-violent but polarizing strategy. They’ve been attacking and ridiculing Trump and his base for ten years now, each new iteration promising to be the version that will once and for all vanquish the Orange Menace. What the diaper baby Trump blimp didn’t accomplish, maybe an ALL CAPS tweet from Gavin Newsom or a “dark woke” missive fired by Jasmine Crockett will.

I sported a “Not My President” t-shirt in 2017 but have come to see the folly in that. It’s not about Trump, it’s about the oligarchical system that produced him and others like him waiting in the wings.

RefuseFascism is an offshoot of the Maoist sectarian (and by most accounts crazy and cultlike) Revolutionary Communist Party

There are five things I believe Trump opponents should stop doing and three things they could start doing (in addition to joining the brand new Beyond Resistance campaign), that would make them more effective.

1. Stop letting Trump set the agenda by condemning every horrible word and deed without saying much about what they would do if given the chance to lead. Trump is the Troller-in-Chief and reacting in kind plays to his strength.

2. Don’t allow college-educated progressives to have outsized influence over party policies, priorities, and messaging. They are out-of-touch.

3. Stop protesting Tesla (still, why?) It’s a waste of energy and, with Musk gone from DOGE, makes us look petty.

4. Stop calling everything fascist to the point where the word has lost meaning and power and makes the Left look hysterical, preachy, and/or sectarian. Pre-election polls showed defending democracy rhetoric landing badly outside the Democratic base and underperforming economic populist messages by a lot. Has this shifted now that Trump’s fascist leanings are no longer mere speculation? I don’t know, but I do know most voters are still very distressed about the cost of living.

5. Put a lid on pious sadism. Too many liberals revel in the misery of Trump voters who “got what they voted for.” (See the comments below the NowThisImpact post for one of many examples of this).

Blue collar white men are often singled out for condemnation and blame.

Ally Sammarco is a Democratic Party consultant

If they complain, they are labeled racist crybabies who just can’t handle equality. The accusations trigger resentment which can look like voting for Trump, which leads to more vindictive recriminations. Ultimately, liberals deem them a deplorable lost cause and don’t bother trying to win them back, starting the whole cycle over again.

Democrats perenially find comfort in doing the very things that have failed to keep hold of the White House, Congress and most state legislatures. Progressives, it often seems to me, would rather be right and virtuous than win. They would rather get a thousand “likes” from inside their social media echo chamber than build trust and connection with those who vastly outnumber them. They would rather say unpopular things in unpersuasive ways than adapt their rhetoric to reflect public norms. They insist on meeting voters where they wish they were at instead of where they’re actually at. And that’s one reason why we have this:

Source: Multistate

And this:

As Jon Stewart quipped to DNC Chair Ken Martin after Martin described the party as a “big tent”…“If you were a big tent, we wouldn’t be in this position, would we now.”

So what should the Resistance be doing instead?

1. Talk normal

For activists inside a progressive bubble, it’s hard to see how applause lines that seem very laudable to them can seem cringey and alienating to “normies.” All I can say is that, once you’ve stepped outside the bubble and see it, you can’t unsee it.

I spend a lot of time now wincing at things that could easily have come out of my mouth just a few years ago. No one who lives in a progressive bubble should be writing talking points, no matter how many poll tests they’ve run.

2. Go hard on structures, soft on people

The problem is rule by the rich, not the unwoke masses’ thought crimes. Confusing the two risks alienating huge numbers of voters who generally don’t vote for people who hate or disdain them. David Sirota wrote recently, “We are encouraged to channel our anger at each other. Rather than at the entire system crushing us, it's so often an anger focused on hating our neighbors and people we disagree with, rather than on our collective failure to actualize the solutions that would reduce human suffering.” Amen.

3. Fight for everyone, not just specific identity groups

The Right plays at identity politics of an ethnonationalist variety, blaming non-whites and immigrants for the inequality, poverty and crime that inevitably arise under oligarchy. It’s a very effective sleight of hand.

Image: Dennis Lushch. Dividing-and-conquering the working class into opposing racial factions works both ways.

The Left comes in and tries to reverse engineer it, advocating for race-targeted policies that benefit specific “marginalized” groups. They explicitly or impliedly stoke resentment toward whites as somehow undeserving of assistance—if they’re still poor even with all that white skin privilege, they have only themselves to blame. For struggling whites demeaned in this way, MAGA offers a refuge.

Uniting working and middle class Americans across race and place is, in my view, the only way forward. I have to agree with Steve Bannon: Identity politics is a gift to the Right that keeps on giving. Meanwhile, working people of all races are seeing their real wages decline as the cost of living soars, and the only hope of reversing that is a series of electoral victories beginning next year. Working class Americans are key to those races and their votes must be earned.

The next election isn’t just a referendum on Trump, it’s a referendum on whether there’s a viable and compelling alternative.

What else could “we” — the big tent that would like to see MAGA replaced with something better—be doing differently? Please share your thoughts below.