There was massive discontent following Trump’s first election, expressed in protests on election night and huge Women’s marches held the day after his 2017 inauguration. Liberal politics dominated those movements, and Democrats rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to win the House in 2018 and the presidency in 2020.
So far, there has been little notable resistance to Trump’s second presidency. The Democratic Party, once able to capitalize on Trump’s lack of popularity, is itself less popular than ever and in a total mess.
Record-low popularity
According to a January 17 Wall Street Journal poll, the Democrats have a 60% unfavorability rating against 36% favorability—the lowest since the poll began in 1990.
These results reflect the same mood that led the Democrats to defeat in November. The party was in power for 12 of the last 16 years. It’s associated with the falling living standards and economic instability of that period. While the Democrats promised more of the same, Trump tapped into anger at the political establishment and promised major changes.
Trump’s first election gave liberals a certain lease on life. The pro-Democratic “resistance” was new and untested, but it was doomed to fail. They tried protests, two impeachments, countless legal actions, and election campaigns. None of it kept Trump from retaking the White House. Now, many no longer see Democrats as a viable option for fighting Trump.
Ultimately, Democrats can’t defeat Trumpism because they are a capitalist party tasked with defending a system in decline. Their inability to provide economic stability and improvements for the working class created a political vacuum which Trump could fill. A real struggle against Trumpism must, at the same time, be a relentless struggle against liberalism and the Democrats.
A genuine working-class party could tap into the same anger as Trump does, expose both parties as servants of the ruling class, fight for issues that affect all workers, and thereby, split Trump’s base along class lines.
A genuine working-class party could tap into the same anger as Trump does, expose both parties as servants of the ruling class, fight for issues that affect all workers. / Image: RCA
Decline of identity politics
To distract from having nothing to offer the working class, the Democrats spent years leaning on petty-bourgeois identity politics and the “culture war.” Many American workers now associate them completely with identity politics. They see the Democrats as out of touch, focusing on issues that don’t actually matter to most people.
A recent NYT-Ipsos poll asked Americans to list the political issues that they care about most and the issues that they believe the major parties prioritize. The top five issues people cared about were the economy, healthcare, immigration, taxes, and crime. The five issues they most associated with the Democrats were abortion, LGBTQ policy, climate change, the state of democracy, and healthcare.
The 2024 election results reflected this disconnect. Millions of Black and Latino workers turned away from the Democrats, choosing instead the candidate who focused on economic issues and promised to shake up the establishment that has crushed the working class for decades.
As for trans individuals, the liberals failed abysmally to address any of the serious problems and discrimination they face. This is because they limit themselves to performative bandaids and tokenism within the limits of capitalism. As a result, there has been a political backlash, leaving trans people more vulnerable than ever to the vicious policies of Trump and his reactionary cabal.
“Mediocre white boys”
Some liberals want to stick to identity politics. Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas, told CNN in February: “The only people that are crying [about DEI cuts] are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that have historically had to work so much harder.”
Crockett’s statement reportedly caused much frustration among a circle of Democratic politicians who want to distance the party from the rot of identity politics. Others are even trying to make a half-hearted pivot toward the same anti-elite language that Trump has used so successfully.
During his farewell address, Biden cynically “warned” of “an oligarchy [that] is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom” and “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people.”
More recently, the Democrats have focused on Elon Musk being an “unelected” billionaire. At a Democratic Party rally with signs reading “Nobody elected Elon,” Elizabeth Warren cried, “Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people!”
But who are the “people” Musk is trying to wrest power from? American workers have no power to lose. In the struggle between Musk and the liberal establishment, millions won’t take a side—and many will even sympathize with Musk.
Even workers with a healthy class instinct against the billionaires are unlikely to put much stock in Warren. Most people correctly see the Democrats as a party of the rich and the elite, so statements like hers come off as hypocritical and self-serving.
At a Democratic Party rally, Elizabeth Warren cried, “Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people!” But who are the “people” Musk is trying to wrest power from? / Image: Gage Skidmore, Flickr
“Leaderless, rudderless, and divided”
Discredited and unable to lean on identity politics as they did in the past, the Democrats are divided and without a coherent strategy for Trump’s second term. Recent New York Times interviews with Democratic leaders paint a picture of chaos and panic:
In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless, and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future …
More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party that is struggling to define what it stands for, what issues to prioritize, and how to confront a Trump administration that is carrying out a right-wing agenda with head-spinning speed. Governors, members of the Senate and the House, state attorneys general, grassroots leaders and DNC members offered a wide range of views about the direction of their party.
Fractures among Democrats are ultimately an expression of the instability and decline of American capitalism. Republicans were deeply divided after Trump stormed onto the political scene in 2015. Now Democrats are going down the same path—yet with nothing yet to take their place.
Both capitalist parties face the impossible task of managing a system in decline. They’re running out of options for stabilizing the situation, leading to tensions and fractures in their own ranks.
Impotence of the reformists
Despite the party’s weakness, soft “left” reformists like DSA, Bernie Sanders, and AOC have doubled down on their support of the Democrats.
The Democratic party is not a neutral institution, but a capitalist party that defends the interests of the enemy class. Communists fight for complete political independence of the working class and are 100% against operating within the Democrats.
But the reformists deny the class nature of the Democratic Party and the need for working-class political independence. They have worked within the party for years, believing they could use it to build the socialist movement.
By aligning with the Democrats, they blur the class divide in society by advocating for political collaboration with the capitalists. Simultaneously, they have tied themselves to an institution that was inevitably going to be discredited due to defending a system in crisis.
Far from pushing the Democrats “left,” the reformists have been pulled further to the right. Bernie Sanders voted to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and defended USAID, a reactionary tool of American imperialism, as an innocent operation to “feed the poorest people in the world.”
The softness of the soft left is not a matter of personality. It flows from their reformist perspective. Their political horizons are limited to what can be achieved under capitalism.
Even now, when the Democrats are the weakest they’ve been in decades, the liberal socialists refuse to break with them. In fact, DSA recently called on New Yorkers to change their party affiliation from independent to Democrat, so they can vote for DSA’s mayoral candidate in this year’s Democratic primary.
The reformists could have instead spent the last eight years building an independent working-class party, capitalizing on the popularity of Sanders’s 2016 campaign and DSA’s explosive growth during Trump’s first term. Instead, they tied themselves to the Democrats, leaving the “anti-establishment” field wide open for Trump to step into.
Far from pushing the Democrats “left,” the reformists have been pulled further to the right. / Image: Nathan Congleton, Flickr
Build the revolutionary alternative
Decades of declining living standards have created an enormous amount of anger, distrust, and dissatisfaction among American workers. In the absence of a genuine class alternative, Trump was able to tap into some of this anger. But millions are still enraged by the system and fearful of a Trump presidency.
The potential for channeling this discontent into a class-independent revolutionary party is enormous. Thanks to the class collaboration of the reformists, it has been left to the communists to build this revolutionary alternative.
The RCA is not afraid or confused about what to do during the Trump administration. Our task is crystal clear: to build a communist party that can lead the working class to power, tearing down not only Trump, but also the liberals and the entire capitalist system.