Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president for his second term on Jan. 20, the twice impeached, convicted felon — along with billionaire Elon Musk — have unconstitutionally attempted to eliminate entire federal agencies, fire hundreds of thousands of government workers, frozen the funding for life saving programs here in the U.S. and abroad. They have also launched a witch hunt to fire and defund any individual or institution that worked to combat racial, gender and other discrimination or promoted diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
After pardoning all 1,500 of his insurrectionist supporters that were convicted of crimes, including vicious attacks on police officers on Jan. 6 2021, Trump and the Republican Party are now attempting to cut $880 billion mostly from Medicaid that provides healthcare to more than 90 million Americans, in order to pay for $4 trillion in tax cuts primarily benefiting the rich and profitable corporations.
In a recent commentary titled, “Democrats Irritated by Voters Who Elected Them Need an Attitude Adjustment,” Norman Solomon, co-founder of the activist group RootsAction.org, maintains that too many Democratic party elected officials haven’t adequately responded to the serious threat to democracy posed by the Trump-Musk administrative coup. Here Solomon advocates that Democrats who have failed to put up a fight against Trump and the GOP, normalizing the president’s authoritarian power grab should face primary challenges from grassroots progressive candidates.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The vast majority of the Democrats in the House and Senate, they have proceeded as though this is more or less normal, one party butting heads against the other. There are exceptions of members of the House and Senate who are speaking out, who are making very clear that it’s not just a battle of rhetoric, it’s a battle of whether democracy is going to be crushed by the Trumpists, by the current fascistic Republican party.
One of the reasons I wrote that article is that there have been a number of members of the House and Senate who have publicly complained that their constituents are giving them a hard time. These are constituents who elected them, who are flooding the phones, the faxes and the emails, and demanding that these members of Congress stop normalizing the administrative coup, as you properly called it, and say that we need to pull out all the stops to push back.
It’s about tonality. It’s about the way in which these members of Congress do or don’t use all the tools at their disposal. And particularly in the Senate, there are ways to block legislation. But we’ve seen an unwillingness by almost every Democrat in the Senate to do it, because often it requires three-fifths or two-thirds of the Senate for legislation or judges or others to move forward.
Sometimes a single senator can stop a move by the administration. But there’s this phony politeness and normalization that has to be challenged. And I wrote the piece because it’s absurd when members of Congress pretend that they’re doing all they can, when actually they could be doing much more.
SCOTT HARRIS: What’s the effectiveness of the response by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer?
They’ve certainly been spotted at press conferences. They’ve signed press releases. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what they’ve done so far as the leaders of both the House and Senate and the “opposition party,” and what more they could be doing.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, unfortunately, Hakeem Jeffries, as the minority leader in the House and Chuck Schumer as the minority leader in the Senate, have both pretty much hewed to the usual line.
And I’ll give you an example where Hakeem Jeffries, soon after the second Trump inauguration, made a beeline to California and met with some big donors around Silicon Valley. And according to a report in the Politico magazine, he assured them that Democrats were going to move toward the center. And that is a way of saying that the Democrats in Congress will endeavor to move toward the direction that Trump has been moving — Trump moving ever rightward.
And it’s pretty clear that the prescription that is being promoted by this very powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill is we shouldn’t have too much daylight between us and him.
The Yale professor Jason Stanley, the professor who has been an expert for many years on fascism, points out that this is a way to normalize and continue to move the goalposts.
So the more fascistic that Trump becomes when you have “leadership,” like Hakeem Jeffries saying, “Well, we’re going to move to the centers so we don’t seem that different from Trump and we’re going to stay away from a strong progressive opposition,” that’s a way of normalizing the fascistic policies and authoritarian government that we’re seeing increasingly.
So I think part of it is to move in the other direction and say, “We’re going to put up a fight, if not only in terms of procedural measures, such as demanding roll call votes and doing filibusters as much as possible in the Senate and so forth, which are important measures and doing walkouts at times and trying to deny quorums.” Those are all tactical measures that can be used on Capitol Hill. It’s about the tone. It’s about the attitude that’s transmitted to the base of the party and the people in this country.
And I think we need the change in tone to go way up in terms of the not just so much the decibels, as the communication of urgency and also naming what this is. This is a dictatorial takeover of the U.S. government and we’ve got to recognize it and fight against it.
SCOTT HARRIS: Norman, I did want to ask you about primaries. How do you see the threat of primaries being used against these incumbent Democratic legislators who aren’t doing much or enough to oppose the Trump regime? How effective do you think that could be?
NORMAN SOLOMON: There are opportunities in many districts across this country now represented by very feeble, weak, equivocal Democrats, where the voters in that district are to the left of the incumbent.
I don’t think it’s really too soon at all to do a grassroots campaign, the kind that AOC did several years ago in New York City. That requires a lot of groundwork because it involves progressive grassroots organizing a year ahead, more than a year ahead to really do it. So I would encourage people not as an impulse item later on, not as just a fun, frivolous thing to do.
If we’re serious about taking power away from those who want to give it to corporations in this country, that means planning ahead and organizing in communities. Primaries can make a big difference and I think it’s important to prepare for them.
For more information, visit Norman Solomon’s website at normansolomon.com org Roots Action at rootsaction.org.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Norman Solomon (26:36) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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