(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Protests are Ongoing and DNC Leadership is Moving: What to do and Keep Doing [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-06
GoodNewRoundup just posted this story on the TRO (temporary restraining order) levied by a judge against Elon Musk and “DOGE”: www.dailykos.com/…
The TRO requires, essentially, that Musk and his DOGE cronies be barred from being able to manipulate and control the Treasury Department. Ability to manipulate the programming? Illegal and prohibited. Of course this is just a TRO preceding action that stops any Defendants’ actions until a full trial/lawsuit can be hashed out. That a TRO was granted however, is a fantastic sign — it shows that the court system takes this fiasco as a serious problem.
What is an even more important development, however, is that the Trump Admin (via the DOJ) has said that they WILL comply with this court ordered TRO.
Why do we care/why is this important?
If you haven’t seen it already, I would refer you to this video by Ezra Klein:
The gist of the video, in the context of Musk’s attempted takeover of the Treasury:
Trump is trying to fool us into believing that he is already King — he is trying to overwhelm us.
This is why Trump/Musk are doing everything that they are. Throw out garbage to distract people, while they act like they are already the Authoritarian leaders.
The protests, the lawsuits, and us pushing the DNC into action is all of us calling Trump/Musk on their bluff — much the same way Canada and Mexico just stood up to Trump on tariffs.
And like with the Tariffs, Trump/Musk just blinked before we did.
See, if Trump/Musk subconsciously believed they had a mandate and that they had the political capital to be dictators, they would not STATE they are going to comply with the court orders. Forget what they actually do — Trump wants to be dictator, Elon wants whatever — this is not going to change.
This is the important point:
If they actually believed they had the capacity to take authoritarian power, they would openly flout these court orders.
Just observe what has happened in other nations with authoritarian regimes, such as what has happened in Latin America and Poland — the courts say “hey don’t do this,” and the authoritarians reply, “screw you, I will do what I want. I am in charge.”
For an authoritarian, power projection is everything. Bullying is the norm. Here, we just had the bully told “no no no” with a wagging finger by the courts, and the bully vocally agreed to back down. That is huge. This is a projection of profound weakness — just as backing down on the tariffs was.
To quote Rachel Maddow:
“They’re taking as much ground as they can, as fast as they can. They’re seeing what gets them pushback. You know what gets them pushback? All the things they thought would be easy.”
Do you know what is enabling all of what I am saying? We are. We are the ones enabling the pushback and blowback against what Trump/Musk are trying to do, and we are wasting their time — time that they do not have before the upcoming special elections, the 2026 midterms, and the ticking clock on Trump’s own personal health/age.
That is how important and impactful our resistance and these protests are.
So
All of that said, here are three things that I believe we should do/keep doing to continue to raise the pressure on all Congressional Representatives and continue to fight against what is happening under Trump 2.0:
1) Keep up the protests and keep up the barrage of phone calls/messages to DNC Representatives, but also expand that barrage to include Republican representatives.
We have awakened our DNC representatives and forced them into action. GOOD. We’ve seen them start doing everything they can do to gum up the cabinet nomination process — including holding the Senate floor for over 30 hours and vowing to do everything in their power to stop Vought from being appointed. We have to bear in mind, however, that this is the part of the struggle where Republicans really do not need DNC assistance — they can get all of the cabinet picks through with or without DNC help, it’s just a matter of how quickly (which again wastes more of Trump/Musk’s time).
Indeed, it is likely that Trump will get the remainder of his cabinet appointees eventually. The goal here is to slow that process as much as possible and waste as much of Trump’s time as possible. If we shoot down a few nominees (like Matt Gaetz), that is just a bonus.
TIME is the objective here.
It is after the cabinet nomination period is over that DNC resistance will become more impactful and noticeable. The cabinet nomination period is supposed to be the easy part of this whole picture in Trump 2.0, yet it’s generated some of the largest protests in American history.
What we have to do is continue to mount pressure against our representatives to maintain and expand upon this level of resistance.
This is how we gum up the Republican party whenever they want to pass legislation. This is partially why Trump has been trying to do his whole agenda via Executive Orders (it betrays his poker hand); he knows he probably will not be successful if he tries to pass his agenda through Congressional Legislation (recall McCain rejecting the abolition of the ACA). It betrays the lack of political capital that the RNC has.
Likewise, we also must start pressuring Republican lawmakers to resist Trump’s agenda.
Do not give me any bullshit that they are all in a death cult with Trump. This is patently untrue.
Republicans are with Trump only because they believe, among their own constituents, that Trump is popular — Trump is, after all, the only populist RNC politician. So long as they feel MAGA is their only ticket to reelection, they will stick with Trump.
It is incumbent upon us to not give in to the temptations of “FAFO.”
Yeah, there is a lot of FAFO happening, but “FAFO” is our opportunity to make inroads into the Republican base.
Republican lawmakers do not care what Democrats have to say to them, but they will listen to their own Republican voters. If we can get Republican voters to start calling their lawmakers and make noise, we will see Republican support for Trump disintegrate (just as it did in 2019-2020).
Trump will make this easy for us — we know that his policies are overwhelming unpopular across the board, including among Republicans.
If you have friends/family that come to you in shock about what is happening, tell them to contact their Republican congressmen and just say “this is not what you guys (Republicans) promised, and this is not what I voted for.” Easy as that! Forget about the fanatics that have worn golden diapers in public — those people are lost to us forever. Those fanatics are not the majority of the people who voted Trump.
Again, which would you prefer? Laugh to the faces of Republicans who regret their choices, or build a coalition against Trump in the name of democracy and solidarity?
I am not a fascist.
I am not so blinded by pride.
2) We need to give covering fire for Ken Martin to be able to work to reform and rebuild the DNC.
It is becoming common knowledge that wealthy donors of the DNC and members of the establishment DNC (Schumer, Pelosi, et al) lobbied heavily to keep Ken Martin from being elected as DNC Chair:
www.politico.com/...
www.cnn.com/…
www.dailykos.com/...
“Outgoing chair Jaime Harrison touched on some of those tensions at the top of the elections, when he condemned reports that some DNC members had been intimidated, pressured or threatened by donors who said they would withhold funding over their votes.”
These are the same centrist-establishment Dems who do not want reform to occur within the DNC, and these are the people who acted to prevent new blood from taking leadership positions in the party, like barring AOC from being the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee (www.politico.com/...). These are the people within the DNC that think everything is hunky dory and that the DNC does not need to change — “working for the working class” be damned.
Martin’s election as DNC chairman is a snub to those “powers that be” within the party. Party members were so much as threatened, yet Martin was elected anyway.
At the top of Martin’s agenda is reforming the DNC, namely 1) reorganizing it to be a 24/7 campaign machine and 2) reorganize the party to once again be a party for the working class (Progressives and Bernie fans rejoice).
Ken Martin will be working against DNC billionaire donors and establishment Democrats to fulfill this agenda — they will do their best to thwart him and maintain the status quo.
This is where we come in.
We must continue to press our thumbs into the DNC. Let them know that we are upset with how they are running things, protest, and continue to blow up their phones — on and on going forwards.
It doesn’t take a lot to write up a pre-written message, email that message to several (or all) representatives and make some phone calls. 30 minutes a day, tops.
Let the DNC know that you demand change.
Let the DNC know that you want the party to move more progressive, that you want reforms to be done to fight against Trump.
Let them know you are pissed off!
This will help give Ken Martin the political capital he needs in order to make reforms to the party.
3) We have to start including the legacy (mainstream) media in our protests
Damn near everyone here and in the non-MAGA media sphere hate the legacy media. It is common knowledge now that many, if not most of them, are in bed with Republicans and Trump — the stench of their capitulation rank in the air.
We cannot allow them to help in silencing us.
Notice how they are trying to hide the protests from their news reports? Notice how they are not showing the protests on film, or showing as little as possible?
Yeah, fuck that.
Most people are being made aware of the protests via social media, and the politicians themselves are acutely aware of the protests too, but more still can be done.
I do not know if any of you have noticed, but most news stations have big windows behind where reporters are reporting. Protest in front of those windows during airing hours. This can easily be done in front of local news stations, and this will eventually force them to acknowledge the protests whether they want to or not.
Alright, that’s all I have for this DK piece.
Pace yourselves and let’s keep fighting.
Remember, it’s not the intensity of the flames that necessarily makes a difference, but the longevity. This is not a 2026, or a 2028 battle.
The fight for liberty is a lifelong cause.
There are, at a minimum, 70 million of us that stand united to one cause, and our ranks grow every day.
There is no army in Heaven or Hell that can conquer the fanatical resolve of an angry American fighting in the name of liberty and democracy.
We have made several victories and we are going to continue to fight on until ultimate victory.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/6/2301969/-Protests-are-Ongoing-and-DNC-Leadership-is-Moving-What-to-do-and-Keep-Doing?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
