The Two Tracks of American Politics Over the Next Two Years

Trump has stopped caring about elections, which gives us big danger and big opportunity

Between now and Election Day 2028, America is going to have a strange, dangerous, and potentially exciting political environment, unprecedented in American history: the president has stopped caring about electoral politics.

The First Track: Revenge and Repression

If, as Carl von Clausewitz famously said “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” Trump has shown by his appointment of Stephen Miller to be Chief of Staff that he has lost interest in the other means and wants to focus 100% on the war part. Trump is like the spurned suitor who goes the route of harassment, intimidation, and rape if he can get away with it, rather than trying to win over the person by wooing them.

So on one track of our country’s political life, expect and prepare for the worst. I believe that the reason he is not contesting the election is because he no longer plans to pay attention to getting things done through normal governmental channels. As long as the Republicans controlled Congress, he could do whatever he wanted because he knew congressional Republicans wouldn’t try to stop him. Now he will try to roll over all other forms of government and do whatever he wants.

It will be the Revenge and Repression Tour. I predict we will see him ignoring court orders, doubling and tripling down on using the DOJ to prosecute Democrats and progressive leaders, doubling and tripling down on ICE violent aggression, and even trying to invoke some form of martial law.

Democrats and progressives are used to focusing all of our attention toward elections. We are not going to have to spend time studying how South Korea stopped an authoritarian coup by its president, reading about the non-violent resistance strategies of Gandhi, and most of all re-learning the strategies of the 1950s and 1960s American Civil Rights movement. People forget that Jim Crow was as fascist as you can get: Blacks in the South had no voting rights or legal rights, and were threatened with arrest or vigilante violence if they protested against the system. Because of the courage and strategic brilliance of the Civil Rights activists who put their bodies and lives on the line literally every day, they overcame, just as the song promised they would.

To Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, Bull Connor was the hero of Selma, not John Lewis. Those of us who have the opposite view need to be prepared.

The Second Track: Making Life Better for Working Families and the 2028 Elections

While Trump and Miller are trying to set the American political system on fire, the rest of us need to be prepared for the next election.

The best way to do that is by showing that Democrats want to make real progress for the American people. Trump still has his veto pen, and Republicans in the Senate still have the ability to filibuster, but Democrats need to come right out of the gate with strong legislation that will be hard for Republicans to vote against, and will make Trump look like shit if he does veto.

I think the first thing they should do is the bill that practically every Democrat — and even some Republicans — ran on this year: no stock trading by members of Congress. We need to make sure the president and his cabinet are included in that ban on trading. Trump can sign that bill or look terrible not doing it.

We need to push a minimum wage that is high enough to have an impact on a much bigger percentage of workers, one that includes an automatic cost of living adjustment, and one that applies to restaurant workers and farm workers as well as everyone else. We also need to force corporations with contracts with the American government, or ones that get tax subsidies from the government, to pay a prevailing wage or even higher minimum wage.

We need to pass a bill to stop price gouging.

We need to have paid family and medical leave.

We need to pass legislation that more heavily regulates Big Tech, AI, and data centers, and we need legislation that will help regulators break these massive monopolistic companies up.

We are not going to have the votes to pass constitutional amendments, but we should put amendments to end Citizens United and pass the ERA up for a vote and make the Republicans explain why they don’t want to vote for it.

We need to finally pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and to pass a bill that will end gerrymandering.

We need strong labor law reform to make it easier to organize and empower workers.

In our budget bill, which we can pass with only Democratic votes:

• We need to end the cap on Social Security taxes so that rich people the same percentage that everyone else pays, and so that Social Security will be fully funded and benefits don’t have to be cut.

• We need a wealth tax and other taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations.

• We need to restore the cuts in Medicaid and the ACA subsidies, and to cap the price of many pharmaceuticals.

• We need to heavily subsidize child care costs.

There is so much more we need to take on, but I will stop there, with this added note. Here’s the deal: with margins like this, there are no excuses for Democrats not swinging for the fences. There’s no more Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to have to wheedle and beg for half-ass compromises, and block what the Democratic Party says it wants to do. The House should be passing really strong legislation every week; the Senate should be forcing the Republicans to vote on what the House passes soon after.

Whatever we can get Trump to sign and enough Republican senators to vote for will be great. Whatever they oppose, they will have to explain their opposition. But we also have to acknowledge the reality that we can’t yet get much legislation done at the federal level. However, Democrats now have a trifecta in states with over half of America’s population. Everywhere Democrats have a trifecta, they need to be passing state level versions of these kinds of laws. Progressive advocates should make it a priority to try and get as much done as possible in the states, and then create a plan to spread the word far and wide about all the progress we are making in those states. Voters are understandably highly cynical about politics right now, so everything we can do to get things done, we should work to get people excited about it.

The Next Election

With Trump on his Revenge and Repression Tour, and Democrats moving forward great legislation for the American people, we have an incredible opportunity to build on the massive 2026 landslide and create the atmosphere for another one. In 2006, we picked up 31 seats in the House and six in the Senate; in 2008, we picked up another 20 in the House and an incredible nine in the Senate, giving us 60.

The Republican presidential candidates are going to have to deal with the constant crazy side show from Trump and Miller, and I think it’s fairly certain that voters will still feel like the economy sucks. We will undoubtedly have a contentious presidential primary to go along with many state and local primaries that are tough, but if we do our job on legislation, we will go into 2028 with a strong track record.

It won’t be easy to pick up more House districts in 2008 — we are already at our peak in terms of seats since 2008, and a lot of new members won in R+10 or more districts. We have to be prepared to make an all out effort to defend those seats. However, there is enough of a margin that even if we lose some seats, we should have plenty of running room to keep a strong majority.

In the Senate, with a decent Democratic year, we have plenty of room to make gains. Among the states that are up next year that have a Republican incumbent are Florida (where Ashley Moody has to stand for election again, and she almost lost to a way underfunded Angie Nixon), Iowa (where 93-year-old Chuck Grassley is almost certainly retiring), North Carolina, and Wisconsin. If it’s another strong Democratic year, South Carolina and Louisiana (where we almost won this time) are up. In Alaska, Lisa Murkowski is up; we aren’t going to beat her, but if she retires, we have a solid shot there.

If Democrats win a strong victory, and then pass some great legislation in 2029 and 2030, this could be the start of a long-term Democratic electoral majority like the days of the New Deal. But we have to prove we are going to deliver on making lives better for working folks first.