As the nation absorbs the new post-election reality, we’re getting a stark reminder of the of the chaos and incompetence witnessed during Trump’s first four years in the White House – with the convicted felon’s announced list of new cabinet nominees. A frightening preview of the disastrous next four years can clearly be seen in the parade of Trump’s nominee misfits, that includes unqualified sycophant Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. to lead Health and Human Services, both accused of sexual abuse, and extremist conspiracy theorist Kash Patel for director of the FBI.
With half the country alarmed about the damage Trump and his regime may cause over the next four years, many are looking for advice on effective ways to oppose Trump’s campaign pledge of revenge and retribution targeting his perceived enemies, which include Democrats, Never-Trump Republicans, the free press and leftist dissidents.
When David Pepper, former chairman of Ohio’s Democratic party received a letter expressing despair and fear of Trump’s commitment to form a repressive, authoritarian government, he replied with a hopeful piece he called, “Resolve: 8 Reasons That Keep Me Going,” suggesting constructive methods to wage effective resistance over the next four years, which he summarizes here. Pepper is also author of Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual for Every American.
DAVID PEPPER: My goal in life is not to share a sort of naively optimistic, unrealistic hope. I don’t think that serves us well. I mean, I wrote a book, as you describe, called 2025, which is “Here’s what will happen if Trump wins.”
So I’m not afraid to look reality in the eye when it’s bleak. And I don’t feel it’s my job to spread false hope, but I also was alarmed by her. This is someone I know. Well, this is a real professional expert on democracy. So to get this email from her, was quite—you know, alarming is too strong a word—but really kind of, to me, caught my attention about where people are if she was there.
And so I tried to share, you know, what I think is true, “Yes, it’s very sobering.”
It’s very, disturbing. At the same time, I won’t go through all them. But, you know, this country has been in worse places, people in worst places than where we are now overcame it. You know, situations more bleak, people with far fewer rights than we currently have, without the ability to even vote, with neither party wanting them to be able to vote on and on and on.
And so I do think history tells us we can do this. I think that it’s important, as I say, that we do it quickly.
I’m very worried about younger generations, that they only have seen the worst of politics. And their memory right now is going to slowly become the majority memory of this country about politics.
And so those of us who are a little older who remember it or think of it as better, we’ve got work to do now to make sure that this country’s memory of democracy is not erased. And one of the ways that the worst of American sort of the darkest moments have set in for decades or longer is because at a certain point — if the only people around never remember better days, they accept it as okay and normal, something that a generation before would have been horrified by.
So I think there’s a real responsibility on our shoulders for future generations to not let the memory disappear of the let’s say, the post-Voting Rights Act America, that was actually, it’s always a back and forth, but it was a very high achievement when it came to finally getting close to a broadly inclusive democracy.
Right now, there are people who need our help and that should keep us going. But just to close on a couple, though — I do think now everything’s unpredictable, everything’s unpredictable. But there are certain cycles that do happen. And my hope is and this doesn’t just happen, we have to make it happen. My hope is that this becomes the second term in a way that Bush’s second term became an opportunity in ’06 and ’08.
In a way, Covid and Biden interrupted what the Donald Trump right-wing agenda actually does for everyday people.
Well, that is about to become very clear. Their mandate is very narrow. They really isn’t a mandate, but they’re claiming a huge one. And from Kash Patel to all these other nominees, RFK, they are way, way overreaching from a very thin mandate that we explained earlier comes a lot simply than because Biden was an unpopular incumbent.
In them showing their fangs about what their agenda and their sort of oligarchy-based agenda actually is, I think they give Democrats an opportunity to push back very hard and say, this is what — we start to see the higher prices and the economic disruption of the crazy trade policies and the erratic daily pronouncements and the corruption and the mass deportation, you know — they’re going to have a chance to put their policy issues in place.
I think their policies are going to hurt most Americans, including many who voted for them. And we need to go on offense about that. And the timing of ’26 actually is the right timing to take advantage of their bad policies, just like we did in ’06 and ’08, where we swept. I think, the alignment of their bad policies with the midterm of what is essentially Trump’s second term gives us an opportunity.
So my attitude is, and I’m going to write more on this in the coming days, people should be gearing up to get people on the ballot all over this country in way more than just the narrow areas we’ve been campaigning, because if Trump does what he’s saying, I think it will hurt people. I think it will offend people. I think it will scare people. And I think that could lead to a turnout that’s in our favor in ’26. And all of a sudden we have opportunities to win up and down the ballot.
So those are some of the things I tried to communicate. Again, not trying to be blasé or naive about it. I think we have to make this happen.
This is not sort of naively naive optimism, but I do think it’s realistic that there could be opportunities amid this sort of dark moment.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with David Pepper (27:14) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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