Every Democratic leader who's unprepared to step up must step aside

It's long past time for our politicians to stop pontificating and start punching

According to new polling by CNN, Democrats’ favorability ratings have hit a record low. That’s not surprising given that Democratic leaders have yet to unite around a unified message and strategy to push back against the Trump administration’s insidious and dangerous agenda. And after last week’s failure to coalesce and communicate during the budget discussions, voters, pundits and even some Democratic leaders are expressing extreme frustration with the party’s lack of direction and a leader.

Donald Trump continues to exploit Democrats’ weaknesses. Since taking office, his administration has unleashed a daily barrage of hundreds of outlandish executive orders, brutal mass firings of governmental employees, and threats to hostiley take over allied nations. This torrent of trolling is intended to overwhelm the opposition and make it difficult for Democrats—the party’s leaders and its constituents—to respond. Unfortunately, it’s working: just two months into the new administration, and too many politicians and pundits, from Sen Chuck Schumer to Rep Jared Golden to James Carville, seem to be waving the white flag. “We can’t fight every battle” is one of the more troubling refrains that is emerging among flatfooted elected officials.

This metaphor is meant to convey the Democrats’ deliberate decision to refrain from stooping to the Republicans’ level and to conserve their energy for the big battles that lie ahead (which battles, specifically, remain unclear). But this wrongheaded and anachronistic approach of keeping our powder dry predates social media—a time when the public’s attention was abundant, and information was limited. In today’s digital age, when you can tweet your outrage directly at your representatives or fire off a TikTok rant before your morning coffee, the Democrats’ selective strategy gives the impression that they are unprepared to meet the moment, making one wonder if they even understand the rules of the game.

What would Trump do if he was the one in the opposition party? He’d concoct some kind of stunt to harness public attention and anger. He might draft resolutions, show up at lawmakers’ offices accompanied by cameras, or bring cancer patients and doctors to a press conference. In that same vein, Democrats should stop faxing wonky statements into the ether and start showing up where Americans are paying attention. Every outrage is an opportunity to communicate why the public—including Republican voters—should oppose the Trump administration’s agenda and how they can act to stop it.

I know this firsthand. Back in 2012, when I founded Moms Demand Action—the largest grassroots organization in the United States working to end gun violence—the NRA was at its zenith as an organization. But their peak happened to coincide with the advent of social media. Because the average gun owner back then was a white man over age 50, the NRA was not prepared to go up against an army of angry women who harnessed the power of social media platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, to shine a light on every misdeed and every misguided policy they put forward. Moms Demand Action volunteers didn’t just focus on one or two of the NRA’s priorities at a time; we constantly highlighted the absurdity and danger of the gun lobby’s agenda every single day. The more they threw at us, the more fodder they gave us to demonstrate how extreme and out-of-the-mainstream the organization had become, from fomenting antisemitic conspiracy theories to threatening media outlets to outlandish policy proposals.

The NRA would float an idea online, like supporting the open carry of handguns and semiautomatic rifles in public, and Moms Demand Action volunteers would call it out. They tagged their elected officials and asked, “Is this what you support?” They converted social media outrage into earned media coverage. And they turned the NRA’s overreach into opportunities to pressure their elected officials to oppose the organization’s agenda. Time and again, this pressure would make the NRA back down, and then their ideas would vaporize. Fighting these seemingly small battles every single day was what helped Moms Demand Action make actual progress in the bigger war against the NRA. Slowly but surely, the public—and even the NRA’s own members—began to turn against them.

During the decade I led Moms Demand Action, people would often tell me that we were wasting our time or that we should stop giving the NRA the attention they craved, as if the most powerful, wealthy special interest that’s ever existed would go away if we simply ignored them and their dangerous agenda. We knew that wasn’t the case, and we were right. The 100-year-old organization was forced to file for bankruptcy. Longtime NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre recently resigned in disgrace. And their political spending and clout have declined precipitously. Once a powerbroker, the NRA is broken, thanks to the vigilant work of volunteers who brought their destructive behaviors to light.

Meanwhile, Moms Demand Action volunteers convinced hundreds of restaurants and retailers to prohibit open carry; we passed over 500 gun safety laws in city councils and statehouses; and we got 15 Republican Senators to vote for the first federal gun safety legislation to pass Congress in a generation—wins that were unimaginable back in 2012. We won at the ballot box, in state legislatures, and in corporate America. Turns out, the NRA’s firehose of misinformation and absurd policies weren’t a distraction but an opportunity for its opposition to create campaigns that animated, energized, and activated an army of angry mothers who didn’t want the dystopic vision of America they were pushing.

To be clear, some Democratic leaders are stepping up, from Sen. Cory Booker’s “Shit Ain’t True” series on TikTok calling out misinformation to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett’s Instagram and YouTube issues explainers to Sens. Chris Murphy and Elizabeth Warren’s diatribes on the floor of the Senate. And the more these elected officials speak out, the more it’s inspiring the public to do the same. In recent days, citizens have finally started to pull their own levers of power, including showing up at townhalls, filing lawsuits against the administration and signing up to run for office themselves.

But too many Democratic leaders still seem to believe the same political strategy that got us into this crisis will get us out. They’re hoping the norms that kept democracy on track for decades, if not centuries, somehow still apply under a lawless administration. They’re clinging to the idea that by not engaging or by letting people suffer, voters will eventually see the light and put Democrats back in power. But dismissing the behaviors of would-be dictators and the warning signs of a waning democracy as distractions is exactly what got us where we are today.

Democrats will not win the news cycle, let alone the next election cycle, by ignoring what’s happening. When our leaders write off Trump’s daily acts of corruption, cruelty, and chaos as irrelevant distractions, they’re communicating to the public that they’re content to sit on their hands until something truly horrible, even irrevocable, damages American democracy. And that is not a motivating or winning strategy, especially when you’re trying to garner the support of the 90 million Americans who didn’t bother to vote on Election Day because they already believe the system is impotent.

The time to fight back is now, and no battle is too small. And any Democrat who’s unprepared to step up must step aside.

Here’s how you can encourage your lawmakers to become part of the opposition:

Call first, email second: Call your Senators and Representatives every single day to thank or shame them. If the lawmaker you call is a Democrat who’s aiding and abetting the Republican agenda, say this: “As a rank-and-file voter and an American, I feel exposed, unprotected, and unsupported by Democratic leaders. It feels like [NAME OF LAWMAKER] is in hiding. I want to be given a plan for resisting and assurances that [NAME OF LAWMAKER] will stand up and fight.” If the lawmaker you call is a Republican, say: “I am being harmed by the Trump agenda and I demand [NAME OF LAWMAKER] stops kowtowing to the President and starts caring about his constituents.”

The number for the US Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121.

Post online: Too many progressive people and groups are leaving social media spaces where they could be challenging Republican policy. After leaving Twitter/X in the post-Elon Musk era, groups like the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, and Planned Parenthood have ceded important ground to their opponents. My posts this week on Twitter and Bluesky went viral and led to calls from lawmakers, fellow activists, and reporters from major publications. People are paying attention and looking for someone to say what they’re thinking.

Make a video, write a Substack post, do an interpretive dance and TAG your lawmakers. Anything to keep the conversation going.

Show up: This week is Congressional recess and an enormous opportunity for all of us to use our power to pressure Republicans to break from Trump, to insist Democrats fight back, and to cheer on the Democrats who are already leading. Tell your lawmakers how this administration’s actions are impacting your and your community and tell them that you expect them to be transparent, to communicate, to show emotion and, most of all, to have a strategy to fight back.

Show up your lawmakers’ in-district offices, at protests, in our communities and in Washington, DC.

Join an organization: I started and led a single-issue organization, but the truth is that none of us lead single-issue lives. There are so many organizations galvanizing voters and turning their anger into action right now; my personal favorite is Indivisible, and I’m certain there’s a chapter near you.

Sign up for Indivisible’s educational emails and seminars, attend in-person meetings, and volunteer for a leadership position. There’s strength in numbers.

Run for office yourself: If you’re fed up with the status quo, shake it up. Women only hold 25 percent of the 500,000 elected positions in America. I’m on the Board of Emerge America and I’ve seen firsthand that women who are compassionate and concerned make amazing elected officials.

If you’re elected office curious, join an Emerge seminar.

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