To win, Democrats should chuck their leadership [View all]

[Mr. Sparkle]

The past year since Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, has completely discredited any claim that choosing between the Democratic and Republican Parties would be merely a matter of “pick your poison” with the same end result. In countless terrible ways, the last twelve months have shown that the GOP is bent on methodically inflicting vast cruelty and injustice while aiming to crush what’s left of democracy and the rule of law.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s leadership persists with the kind of elitist political approach that helped Trump win in 2024. Hidebound and unimaginative, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have been incapable of inspiring the people whose high-turnout votes will be essential to ending Republican control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections and the White House in 2028.

The Democratic establishment shuns the progressive populism that’s vital to effectively countering bogus right-wing populism. And so the struggle to defeat the fascistic GOP and the fight to overcome the power of corporate Democrats are largely the same battle. Advocates for progressive change will remain on the defensive as long as the Trump party is in power. With the entire future at stake, social movements on the left should focus on organizing to oust Republicans from control of Congress in the midterms.

The point isn’t that Democrats deserve to win — it’s that people certainly don’t deserve to live under Republican rule, and ending it is the first electoral step toward a federal government that serves the broad public instead of powerfully destructive and violent elites. Like it or not, in almost every case the only candidates in a position to defeat Republicans for the House and Senate this year will have a “D” after their name.

Democratic Party leaders have dodged coming to terms with reasons why their party lost the White House in 2024, preferring to make a protracted show of scratching their chins and puzzling over the steep falloff of support from working-class voters of all colors. The Democratic National Committee’s refusal to release its autopsy report, assessing what went wrong in the election, underscores the party’s aversion to serious introspection. Cogent answers are readily available, but top Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries refuse to heed them. If the party wants to regain and expand support from working-class voters, it must fight for programs that they clearly want. Extensive polling shows strong public support for major progressive reforms, such as raising taxes on big corporations and the wealthy, lifting the Social Security tax cap, boosting the federal minimum wage and greatly expanding Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing coverage.

more... https://www.salon.com/2026/01/20/to-win-democrats-should-chuck-their-leadership/