What Americans want and need

Robert Reich
27 March
Supporters of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) listen to him speak during his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour in Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S. March 7, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska

I’ve asked this question before. Now I’m SHOUTING it.

Where the HELL are the Democrats?

It should be the Democrats’ moment — the time when Democrats are everywhere, on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s eyes.

But Democrats are nowhere. AWOL. Almost invisible.

They’re squandering this opportunity.

Can you imagine a more important moment for Democrats to sound the alarm? At the request of a Republican president, the richest person in the world is taking a sledgehammer to Social Security, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, the entire Department of Education, and much else that Americans need and want.

He’s doing all this so the president can give a huge tax cut to the wealthiest members of our society and the biggest corporations in America.

Worse, the president chose this man for this job because he sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting the president elected. And this man, already one of the government’s biggest contractors, is salivating over the prospect of turning even more of government into his or other corporate hands.

It’s everything Democrats could possibly want — the prime example of America’s raging inequality and the corruption it has spawned; the disgusting power of huge wealth and of the giant corporations it controls; billionaires running Washington; a tsunami of big money and legalized bribery.

All the while, average Americans, whose real wages have gone nowhere, are being shafted.

That same Republican president is turning himself into a dictator — usurping authority that the founders vested in Congress to decide what to fund. Threatening judges who are trying to constrain him and urging their impeachment — even eliciting a rebuke from the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Attacking freedom of speech at American universities, in the media, in science and the arts, among law firms and lawyers who have tried to hold him accountable.

On top of all of this is the regime’s utter incompetence (e.g.: “Signalgate”).

This isn’t what Americans who voted for Trump wanted. Most voted for him because they thought he’d fix the economy and lower prices.

But the economy is going to s---. Consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level in 12 years. Signs point to a coming recession.

Democrats should be all over this — stopping all official action until they get answers to what’s happening and why, not allowing a thing to move through Congress, yelling from the roof beams of the Capitol, conducting rallies across America. YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN INEQUALITY GETS OUT OF CONTROL? WHEN THE BILLIONAIRES ARE PUT IN CHARGE? WHEN BIG CORPORATIONS AND BIG MONEY TAKE OVER FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT?

A Fox News poll published last week found that 56 percent of voters think that “the job the Trump administration is doing identifying and cutting wasteful government spending” is “poor” or “only fair” and 65 percent say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned that “not enough thought and planning has gone into the government spending cuts.”

Democrats! Some 34,000 people just turned out at Civic Center Park in Denver to hear Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.” Hours later, the two spoke before a crowd of about 11,000 at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

Sanders and AOC lashed out at the most extreme concentration of wealth in a century, at Wall Street’s greed, at corporate welfare. They pushed for a wealth tax to finance better schools, paid family leave, free public university education, universal health care.

This is what Americans want and need.

On Tuesday, Democrats flipped a Trump-voting seat in the Pennsylvania state Senate. “This is how it’s done,” celebrated AOC. “Run everywhere. Run down-ballot. Focus on local elections ASAP … We build from there.”

Yet some Democratic political operatives counsel Democrats to “play dead.” Let Trump and the Republicans overreach, they say. Give them enough rope to figuratively hang themselves. Besides, the midterm elections aren’t until November of 2026. Keep your powder dry.

Rubbish. Tens of millions of Americans believe there’s no real Democratic opposition to Trump. They hear and see nothing. They feel demoralized and defeated. With the Democrats playing doorstops, many voters worry there might not even be free and fair elections the next time around.

Democrats are now less popular even than Trump: An NBC News poll this month found that while Trump has a 47 percent approval rating, Democrats are a whopping 20 percentage points behind him.

Democrats! Get yourselves out of Washington and talk to the people!

Explain why so many people are struggling — not because of immigrants or the “deep state” or any other Trump bogeyman but because of how the wealthy and giant corporations have rigged the economy, and how Trump and Musk are rigging even more of it.

Be loud! Condemn what’s happening! Run everywhere! Run down-ballot!

Get yourself a new generation of Democratic leaders! (I have standing to say this at the ripe old age of 78.)

Make good trouble! Rally Americans! Give them hope! Give Trump hell!

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

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