In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, Democratic super-consultant James Carville boldly called for “the most radical thing [Democrats] can do” – nothing at all. Standing over the putrefying carcass of three-day-old road kill, thinking we don’t notice the fur sticking to the bumper of his F-150, this man is pointing at the rotting heap and screaming “Don’t move!”
His argument is simple and incredibly dangerous: give the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves and they will do it. Their inability to govern, he argues, is self-evident and when they shut down enough social programs, people will notice and Democrats can swoop in and save the day.
Here’s the thing: it is not true, and it is a massive, world-historic error to think that it is. (Ask the post-first world war German Social Democrats – they also believed that the Nazis would disgrace themselves and be rejected by the public once their true colors were shown. It didn’t end like that.)
The rapid-fire destruction of institutions that we’ve seen from the Republicans since Trump’s second inauguration should tell any thinking person that these are not the bumbling incompetents that the pundit class claims. Republicans and the billionaires who fund them are consolidating power right in front of our eyes. This isn’t simple looting; it’s state violence against the most vulnerable sectors of our society and a final, the decisive evisceration of every gain made during the civil rights movement and every social welfare program that somehow survived the Reagan era.
But here’s the other thing: James Carville knows this. He knows that no competent army would take a “tactical pause” when they’re about to lose an entire war, and he knows that rope-a-dope requires you to be willing and able to throw the right cross in the eighth round.
There is no guaranteed Republican self-destruction coming down the pike; we cannot simply wait this out. By abdicating their responsibility to the working class, the Democrats (and their mega-donors, so often shared across the aisle) are telling on themselves. Their commitment to privatization, neoliberal imperialism and their corporate donors – to capitalism – means they cannot be credible opposition to a political movement that stands for all of these things (but without the paint job).
So what does this mean for the working class? We have to build that credible opposition ourselves. There is no one coming to save us – we are the cavalry. We are already seeing examples of this – from the rapid and effective response of the Federal Unionist Network against Elon Musk’s Doge’s layoffs to the massive and effective community rallies at hospitals and universities which had absurdly decided to comply in advance with anticipated anti-trans orders.
We see it in the growing number of municipalities following the lead of local organizers to divest from companies profiting from Israeli war crimes, declare sanctuary status for undocumented people, protect local tenants with good cause eviction laws, raise minimum wages and enshrine reproductive rights locally and statewide across the country. We see it in mutual aid programs that see neighbors buying and forgiving medical debt, offering food and supplies to unhoused people after tent city raids and providing on-the-ground help after natural disasters when the federal funds run out.
When we organize, we keep ourselves, our neighbors and people we don’t know safe, housed, cared for. We, the working class – nurses and teachers and farmworkers and letter-carriers and parents that make the world turn – have the power to be agents of change and the protagonists of our own story, and now is the time to exercise that power. We fight not just to end the tyranny of one billionaire overlord over the headlines, but also for the ability to control our own destiny as a class and do with our time, energy and resources what we will. That power is socialism – and we will only achieve socialism by taking the class struggle on directly.
What does that mean for you? It’s time for you to get organized. If you’re a labor union member, get involved and learn how socialists are strengthening the labor movement. If you’re not, form a union. If you’re a renter or otherwise do not control your own housing, learn how tenant unions are taking power back from the landlord class and learn how to form one.
Join a democratic member-led organization like mine (the Democratic Socialists of America) and help build the grassroots movement that can and will build our protagonism. Joining and forming member-led and member-driven organizations is how the working class can fight back against the Trump agenda. Rolling over and playing dead is not an option for anyone whose class interests don’t revolve around million-dollar consulting contracts. The Democrats may not do anything, but we can.
“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year,” WEB Du Bois once wrote. We would be wise to listen to history and not James Carville.
What’s giving me hope now
I tend to find hope in acts of collective courage, and there is incredible bravery everywhere you look these days, and it’s not just coming from people fighting for their own rights or the safety of their own families and loved ones, but really taking on big fights together that challenge the system itself on behalf of everyone who suffers from oppression – and because they’re fighting in organized, collective ways, they’re winning. We have the numbers, we just need the organization. This is the pathway to liberation for everyone.
Megan Romer is the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America
