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The Bleak Future of Democrats and Their Only Hope [1]

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Date: 2025-07-01

Democrats were brutally defeated by Trump in 2024; Trump, a candidate we all know to be objectively horrible for the middle and working class, won the presidency by both the electoral college and the popular vote. The Republican party, which has been grotesquely coopted by Trump’s cult of personality, won a Trifecta in the House, Senate and Presidency and continues to control the Supreme court as it has for decades. This is the most pivotal moment in modern leftism. We must now determine what can be done going forward so that such a defeat never happens again.

There are, unfortunately, many reasons why the Democrats failed and many twisting pathways forward. It is important to understand that Democrats leadership is largely made up of the exact same neoliberal shills who now dominate the far right and even populate Trump’s cabinet. They accept millions in corporate and SuperPAC donations, they are the worst culprits of insider trading from stock tips, their commitment to minority American’s issues has routinely proven to have been surface level at best and more likely a gimmick for coalition building. It was after all, Clinton who deregulated banks in such a way that enabled the 2008 crisis and Obama who bailed them out with nearly a trillion dollars of cash, and today, Elizabeth Warren who has lobbied for more and more banks and investment firms to be added to the “Too big to fail” list.

So let us look at the first and most likely option: Do nothing. Party leadership seems confident that due to Trump’s horrible management of the nation, the people will naturally swing back to the democrats as the adults in the room. In fact, they believe that this approach is so effective that some even wish to resist his policies as little as possible in the hopes that things get far worse far faster thus accelerating the right-wing demise. This ‘do nothing’ approach could also be fittingly called ‘accelerationism.’ It is the reason that democratic leadership (Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, etc.) have avoided public opposition as much as possible. Schumer has in this time instead gone on a book tour where he was deservingly heckled.

This barely left wing, genuinely neoliberal, accelerationist, sit-on-your-ass, let-Trump-destroy-America-just-to-claw-back-power-from-the-remains approach does have something of a platform. This Platform is described by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their new book: Abundance. This platform is sparce to say the least and has been covered in excess by a myriad of leftists already, but its desire is to deregulate several industries (specifically housing and energy) so that an abundance of resources can be created by the free market. It is a pro private sector and pro billionaire book. Such a platform does have a place in American politics especially local politics (It is undebatable that Construction and Nuclear Energy are overregulated), but beyond the consensus that measures like NEPA are excessive, Abundance also implies a desire to repeal the Clean Air and Water Acts as well as other objectively bad decisions. The authors have promoted the Abundance Agenda as THE answer to the MAGA platform of Project 2025, but the scope is too narrow, and they intentionally do not differentiate themselves in any way whatsoever from the very neoliberals who were resoundingly defeated in 2024 by the fascist right.

Another option, though admittedly farcical and uniquely championed by right wing propagandists, is that the Democrats should simply give up (at least on their cultural positions like LGBTQ rights and immigration policy) and become more right-wing. This is only inauthentically true, Fascists will never accept the people whom they despise as categorically forgivable for they do not hate what you believe but for who you are; once you have been the topic of their propagandistic smear campaign, you cannot be forgiven. This extended olive branch is a lie and any who take it will both never be fully accepted and also be betraying the Human Rights of those the left has fought to protect.

Finally, the best option: swing left. The people of America do not want a return to the status quo, for that status quo was Reagan’s Neoliberal project that has overseen 40 years of decay in quality of life; the people do not want to swing right, for Trump and his ilk are indubitably bad for the nation and their goons need billions of dollars and decades of propaganda filled with lies in order to convince anybody to vote for them; what the people want is an alternative to the neoliberalism that has failed them and the neoliberal techno fascist oligarchy that lays ahead of them. This alternative lies in Democratic Socialism. Polls show that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician still in office. Zohran Mamdani just defeated the incredibly big-name Democrat Andrew Cuomo and his dozens of millions in corporate donors. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, and Cory Booker are all young Progressives (or Democratic Socialists) and are the most popular Democrats in our congress. The People do not want MAGA-lite, Neoliberalism, a return to Pre-Trump politics or any other false alternative to the choices before them. They want real, tangible opposition to their communities’ harm and a ballot that isn't the lesser of two evils but a clear decision between right and wrong, beneficial and destructive.

Accelerationists, Abundance Agenda proponents, Democrat Doomers, and Democratic Socialists are the options we have before us. Accelerationism will likely win out between them, but it offers no tangible solutions to our most pertinent crises. Abundance is such a laughable alternative platform to Project 2025 some go so far as to call it controlled opposition. Doomers were likely never left wing to begin with and in fact have no credibility outside of shitpost right-wing outlets. This leaves us with the best pathway forward: a return to pre-Reagan policies mixed with modern progressivism. A platform of public healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, increased regulations on harmful industries and so much more have proven time and again to be both popular and effective. This is the way Democrats can regain their credibility, for Anti-Fascists will accept recovering Fascists, and this is the way that American can be healed from decades of abuse and Trump’s rule.

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