Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (who is making a persuasive case for leader of the free world) promptly ended negotiations and slapped similar tariffs on the U.S. Trump responded in his usual spiteful, juvenile manner by “renaming” Lake Ontario Lake America.

The result is higher prices for Americans, affecting consumers, workers, farmers, and others. The Canadian targets encompass dairy, aluminum, appliances and a host of other products.

This is an extreme example of what happens when you declare a trade war. The targeted countries are compelled to respond in kind and everybody is harmed. Trump does not understand or doesn’t care that many products are made in both the U.S. and in Canada. Goods begin there and are finished here, and vice versa. There is no apparent provision for such products, and the predictable result will be chaos.

Trump possesses a mindless, destructive obsession with tariffs. Despite his dubious degree from Wharton, he learned nothing from Smoot-Hawley or other ruinous trade wars from our past. It is doubtful he even knows what they were.

The outrage that characterizes this terrible policy is that Canada has been one of our closest allies and trading partners. Despite this, Trump greeted the Canadians upon assuming office with a threat to make Canada the 51st state.

By now Carney, who tried humoring Trump for a spell, has probably come to believe that Trump is what he is: mentally unfit and divorced from reality. He is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the bully. It is difficult at the moment to divine the ending of this sorry saga, but there is no doubt that Carney is doing the right thing.

Companies will respond differently consistent with their size and wealth. Large and some medium-sized companies will pass the increased cost onto consumers. Depending on how long this situation lasts, some small companies will go out of business.

Trump fails to grasp that the damage will extend beyond the economic. Consumers, already furious with him will take their anger and disillusionment out on Republicans in November. By all appearances, Trump doesn’t care. It’s all about him, his whims, his obsessions.

The effects will be far-reaching. What is happening with Canada is happening with trading partners all over the world. The damage of these mindless fights will reverberate. The EU, China, Mexico all will retaliate and the global economy will be in jeopardy because of these mindless actions.

Nobody who knows history will fail to appreciate what happened across the globe in the wake of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. They were not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but they were a major driver.

Lost in all of this is the Supreme Court’s effective grant of permission for these ruinous actions as a result of their establishment through its decisions of an all-powerful unitary executive vested in a crazy man.

Congress determines tariffs, not the president. Not with this court and Congress. Powers have been willingly ceded by terrified Republicans and Trump runs amok as a result.

Our alliances have been a great part of our strength as a nation. They are now in tatters. We have lost the respect of the world and have damaged our economy and threatened the global economy in the process.

When the Democrats regain control of Congress as I believe they will, they must put the brakes on this madman. And despite the slim to no chance of conviction, they should impeach him nonetheless.

A catalogue of his crimes that will come out during the proceedings and subsequent Senate trial will help inform Americans what he and his captive Congress have done to damage our national welfare.

The tariffs are but one aspect of this larger picture, but their damage is immediate and if the new Congress is to deliver on its promises it must take immediate action to reverse them and to hold Trump accountable for the incalculable damage he is done this country. They owe it to the American people to blunt the effects of the harm he will inflict on all of us in the interminable remaining two years of his term.

He holds no public office, has no security clearance and yet he flies around the world cutting deals, purportedly for the benefit of the United States with among other parties his investors in Saudi Arabia.

Democrats do this all the time. They strive to establish time and again a modus vivendi with Republicans who seek their political destruction. Kushner was in the first Trump regime that was guilty of numerous outrages, although none so much as what is happening today.

To be sure, political figures often meet with the other side. But this is different. Hakeem Jeffries met with somebody complicit with a regime that seeks to destroy everything in which Jefferies purports to believe. One is left to wonder what was the purpose of the meeting. Was it truly an effort to find common ground?

If so, Jeffries is a fool who doesn’t deserve high office. If it was for some other reason, then Jeffries owes it to Democrats to divulge the purpose of the meeting. The common ground explanation represents a level of naïveté and disconnection with voters that is beyond unacceptable.

The public’s faith in politicians is already abysmally low. When an officeholder is already culpable in the trashing of progressive candidates and the acceptance of corporate and special interest money does something like this, it destroys trust.

The choice of Kushner as an interlocutor is disturbing. He is complicit in much of the damage Trump does. He is making money and peddling influence while purporting to be a diplomat without any legitimate portfolio.

All this does is raise him up from the moral gutter in which he resides. He already consorts with a man, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who horrifically killed and dismembered a political opponent, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Democrats rightfully assault Kushner’s self dealing and that of his family. Making him a legitimate negotiating partner is a mockery of justice and accountability. There is a difference between negotiating with Mike Johnson, however distasteful that is, and a fundamentally dishonest son in law of a man who seeks the political destruction of his party and the bringing down of an entire nation.

Jeffries must tell Democratic voters why he met with Jared Kushner. He spends his days telling us that Trump is a mortal threat to the republic while giving him legitimacy in private. That Jefferies clearly never intended that this story got out is worthy of suspicion in and of itself.

The Democratic electorate isn’t stupid. It can tell the difference between honest opposition and selling out. Jeffries owes those voters, the members of Congress who support him and those members and candidates who do not, an explanation.

This isn’t something that can be a shrug and move on moment. It deserves close scrutiny and if necessary, political punishment. Jeffries and his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer already are compromised owing to their slavish loyalty to special and corporate interests. This however is a bridge too far.

To those who object that there is nothing wrong with meeting with your adversaries, my response is that these are not ordinary adversaries. They are committed to the destruction of the Democratic Party and everything in which it believes.

There is nothing to be gained by negotiating with such people. Jeffries needs to focus on utterly defeating them. He is showing every day that he is not only not up to the job, he is guilty of political malpractice and the undermining of fellow Democrats.

We can do so much better. Democrats in January 2026 can make sure that they do so.

Any significant initiative by Trump to interfere in the elections will cause a major selloff of stocks and bonds. The bond market is already swooning and it is very likely that Trump’s wealthy friends will react badly to any successful effort to block voting or attempts to prevent certification of the results.

The range of Trump’s options will go a long way toward predicting investor reactions. A legitimate crisis will result in a highly destructive response.

The absence of stability and predictability roils markets. Markets want processes and procedures to proceed in fashion that doesn’t result in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Let’s start with a fundamental fact. Trump has no authority to tamper with or interfere with elections. This is the purview of the states, overseen by Congress. The Constitution does not provide for a state of emergency or an executive order. Neither would be valid under the law. That does not prevent him from trying, with the result a crisis of massive proportions.

The markets will not wait for the Courts to resolve the tangled mess that will result. They will react to the attempt. Stocks will immediately dive, with bonds plummeting soon afterward. The absence of stability will result in a bond selloff which will affect interest rates, consumer spending and will damage our full faith and credit.

Nor is that all. The dollar will come under pressure and foreign countries and wealth funds will look for more stable repositories for their money.

Major corporate friends and donors associated with Trump will react just as negatively to the resultant chaos as the more amorphous markets. The regime can ignore the public reaction. It will not be able to dismiss panic by the wealthy donors and corporate giants who put Trump in office.

In the end, Trump will be under extreme pressure from these individuals, the states and the courts, not to mention right-thinking citizens.

I do not believe Trump will get away with this. There are too many forces, friendly and not arrayed against him. Let’s be clear. Wealthy investors will not respond negatively because they love democracy and want to defend our electoral system. This is all about the money. And I for one am willing to accept their selfish motives if they serve to protect our elections.

Several psychiatrist friends tell me that many of their sessions are filled with expressions of anxiety, anger and fear of Trump and the profound damage he is doing to the country and their own psyches. People feel powerless and frustrated.

This is echoed here on Substack. The comments to my posts and the notes and posts by others that I read reflect a host of sentiments-fear, extreme anger, anxiety, cynicism and in too many cases, resignation.

Let’s start with abuse of power. Trump has weaponized the government, especially Justice and DHS, turning them all into instruments of vengeance against those who tried to hold him accountable. Citizens lose faith in the rule of law and see it applied one way to the wealthy and connected and in different fashion to the rest of us.

This engenders especially the emotions of outrage and fear. From the media to educational institutions and law firms, one entity after another has yielded to the intimidation exercised by Trump. People watch helplessly as one institution after another buckles under pressure and they rightfully wonder whether there is anything left of our democracy.

The corruption cannot be minimized. It ranges from the institutional to the personal. We see Washington, DC torn up for Trump’s vanity projects, to the tune of billions of taxpayer funds. Trump has funneled billions of dollars into his business and those of his family and friends.

The regime is characterized by no-bid contracts and rampant influence peddling. Deregulation at the risk to public health and safety for the benefit of Trump’s corporate cronies is exercised by virtually every cabinet department.

This is a level of corruption that dwarfs Credit Mobilier under Grant, Teapot Dome under Harding, even Nixon’s Watergate. In fairness, neither Grant nor Harding was personally involved. Trump has initiated all of this corruption.

The rank incompetence is breathtaking. From his stewardship of the economy to the Iran War and even the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, the lack of basic competence is costing all of us untold billions. Trump denies any failings and doubles down in his own defense with a straight face. He lies with a facility hard to find in any other office holder in modern history.

Meanwhile, the most vulnerable in our society cannot gain access to the most rudimentary services owing to the gutting of virtually every cabinet department save Justice and HHS.

What can we do in the face of all of this? Aside from voting in massive numbers, we must take action in our own lives. Be kind to ourselves and each other. Spend time with our families and friends. Read a book. Watch a ballgame. Try and set all of this aside for the sake of our mental health. In the most extreme cases, seek therapy as an outlet for anger, fear and helplessness.

The cost of all of these abuses is high. We are paying it now and we and our posterity will be paying it for years to come. But we must be confident that ridding ourselves of this regime will allow us to take a deep breath and throw ourselves into the effort of rebuilding our democracy and yes, improve on it. Our goal should not be to restore the status quo ante. Not only did it not work; its failings made Trump possible.

We must never forget this period, as painful as it is, because forgetting risks a repeat of this abysmal experience. We must hold these people accountable while rebuilding.

All of this will be hard, but nothing so much as what we are enduring now. We must comfort ourselves with the reality that we can not only survive this, but together rebuild a nation better than that which preceded this nightmare.

The legislation must address the cost of living, health insurance, housing, child care, the cost of energy and other pressing issues.

On housing, Congress must propose legislation that will address the absence of new construction, soaring rents, lower cost accommodations, rampant, exploitative corporate purchases of houses and apartments and a bill of rights for tenants.

On health care, Democrats must move toward Medicare price negotiation, the prices of prescription drugs and making coverage more affordable. While the public seems not to be ready for Medicare for All, there are intermediate solutions such as restoring Obamacare subsidies and access that Congress can take.

On child care, a way must be found for parents to obtain it at a reasonable cost. They cannot be expected to work without access to care for their children. The Republicans claim to be the party of family, yet when the rubber meets the road they demonstrate their utter lack of care for the plight of parents facing impossible choices. Congress needs to provide for subsidies, as soon as possible. This is a national emergency.

Subsidized family and medical leave are past due. In addition, workers lack the ability to negotiate for higher wages thanks to the dilution of labor laws. Collective bargaining has to be strengthened and sanctions against employers who exploit workers should be put into place. The minimum wage should be increased. Workers cannot possibly raise a family under current wage limits.

Monopolies must be broken. Virtually every major industry, including needed utility services, are controlled by hard monopolies. The result is no choices and dramatically higher prices: the cost of energy is unacceptably high. Antitrust laws should be restored in the aftermath of the chipping away by Republican congresses and presidents.

Outrageous fees hidden in the small print should be eliminated. Virtually every industry uses them and they are deceptive and highly expensive. Similarly, credit card interest rates are and have been ridiculously high for years, far greater than the prime rate. Consumers are caught in the trap of making minimum payments barely covering interest without any hope of reducing principal.

The Biden infrastructure policies need to resume in earnest. So should new construction be increased dramatically and mass transit be improved. Protecting jobs from AI is difficult, but Congress has to try nonetheless. We are facing a potential employment crisis as jobs in various categories are increasingly under threat. Already, hundreds of thousands of people have been terminated in favor of AI driven changes in work.

Tax reform is long past due. The current system favors the wealthy over working people. Wealth and not income should be taxed. This would put billions in the pockets of income earners and would yield additional billions in revenue from the ultra-wealthy.

None of this means there is no time or capacity for investigations. This regime must be investigated for every abuse of power and act of corruption, from Trump on down. Subpoena power should be used mercilessly to get at the truth. Those who refuse to testify will be exposed has having something to hide. That should be publicized.

This should include malicious prosecutions, flagrant misappropriation of public funds, no-bid contracting and the numerous conflicts of interest exhibited by Trump and his appointees and favoritism shown to companies at the expense of public health and welfare.

Democrats can legislate and investigate at the same time. They need to tie the cost of living to the rampant corruption that characterizes this regime. Also, they must show how their policies change lives and improve economic opportunity.

There is an avalanche of bad policy that needs to be overturned. It is essential that Democrats show what they are doing from the policy perspective and how they are holding responsible Trump and his acolytes for the untold damage they have done.

While none of this will be enacted in the next Congress, a foundation will have been laid to ensure that the next Democratic president and Congress can hit the ground running. A restive public will accept nothing less.

Trump and Kennedy have created mass confusion surrounding the public discussion of vaccines. Mistrust of doctors and their advice is rife not only among Trump’s supporters, but millions of others as well. This is intentional and Kennedy has taken advantage of Trump’s obsession with conspiracy theories to further his irresponsible agenda.

The result is that children who otherwise would benefit from early vaccination and their parents are going to lose that protection. The CDC has made it clear that separating vaccines results in no health benefit. And not receiving vaccines threatens the health and safety of those who surround unvaccinated children.

These separated vaccination schedules will severely disadvantage rural and poor families especially. Many of these families have no doctor nearby and have to take time off work for multiple vaccination visits.

As for Kennedy, he knows there is no connection between vaccines and autism. He came upon this bogus theory when he was a trial lawyer. He latched on to a discredited study to make a case for the connection. That event was the source of a decades-long effort to discredit vaccines.

The research shows conclusively that there is no connection, but that has not stopped Kennedy. To the deep dismay and embarrassment of his family, he has used his platform to lie to millions. In interviews he filibusters, talking over difficult questions. In truth, the media should stop giving him air time. Every appearance spreads the lie farther and farther.

Trump may not know any better, though it is reported that members of his staff have practically begged him to avoid this issue, largely because more than 80% of Americans support vaccines. Unfortunately, the remaining 20 some percent will foster the spread of diseases that have long been rendered dormant thanks to well reasoned and scientifically supported research into vaccines.

Trump and Kennedy are selling cynicism and distrust. They persuade the gullible and conspiracy-minded that pro-vaccine medical practitioners are part of a sinister plot to place lives at risk. They look like crusaders for the truth to those inclined to believe them, while sowing doubt among those who have been made vulnerable by uncertainty. And neither man takes responsibility for his actions. If outbreaks result, they will evade responsibility with excuses.

Fortunately, the Executive Order will have little practical result for families who want vaccines. The main issue here is vaccine availability. There are shortages and many pharmaceutical companies have reduced or ceased vaccine production. The real risk comes from those who refuse vaccines in obeisance to Trump and Kennedy’s abuse of power and corruption of the public debate.

What is galling is the absence of any means of controlling these liars. Impeachment is out of the question. The Senate will never convict them if they are impeached. The best one can hope for is a public reckoning stemming from impeachment debates and the trial record in the Senate.

In the meantime, we are left hoping for a Democratic president and Congress in two and a half years and also hoping that the number of sick and dead will not be as high as we are justified in fearing. This is cold comfort to a nation that begs for facts and truth and gets nothing but lies and conspiracy theories.

They did this last year in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” It provided for nearly $1 billion in Medicaid cuts over the course of the next decade. The bill also makes it easier for authorities to terminate coverage. Estimates indicate that 10 million additional individuals will be uninsured by 2034. Most of those are Medicaid recipients.

Trump and the Republican Congress also included requirements for reporting work for a most Medicaid patients. Starting next year, recipients will have to demonstrate that they fulfilled eighty hours of work or other approved activities to maintain their insurance. This is no more than bureaucracy designed to kick people off the insurance rolls. States have tried this gambit in the past, resulting in many losing their insurance because of an inability to navigate the bureaucracy.

This will have a reverberative effect on hospitals and other providers. Already, hundreds of thousands of people are showing up in emergency rooms without coverage. States and providers are on the hook for the loss. Trump and the Republican congress claim that a rural health fund in the bill solves the problem. It doesn’t-it is no more than a temporary fix. It actually cuts Medicaid spending in rural communities by more than $150 billion.

Where ACA coverage is concerned, people are losing premium subsidies and can no longer afford insurance. Many go without, left with no choice but to risk catastrophe.

The Republicans have no problem ballooning the deficit with monstrous tax cuts for the wealthy. They however find their fiscal discipline in cutting health care for those who most need it-low-income workers and the elderly.

Too many Americans shoulder the blame for this travesty. Mistrustful of Medicare for All, they choose instead to pay wealthy insurance companies for care less reliable than what their tax dollars will fund. Net-net, patients are losing money and suffering the staggering bureaucracy inflicted on them by private insurers. All of this because the Republicans scream socialism and scare what could be an otherwise receptive public.

Medicare for All as it is proposed by its advocates is optional. People who wish to do so may keep their private insurance. There is every reason to believe that a mandatory system would work, however. It does so in most European countries. If the public realized that they would pay less in taxes than they presently pay in exorbitant premiums and co-pays, there might yet be hope.

Ultimately, Democrats must explain the concept clearly to an audience that is receptive as it has ever been. To make headway, they need to push back hard on the Republican scare tactics. With more progressives in Congress and hopefully a Democratic president and congress in 2028, real reform may have a fighting chance.

This fall, it is almost certain that Democrats will flip the House, and they have decent odds to flip the Senate. Even if they come up short in the Senate, Democratic control of the House starting in 2027 will be essential to finally passing a bill that curtails gerrymandering.

In fact, I would argue that there is only a two-year window for Democrats to act on redistricting reform. In November of 2028, even if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, the House is fairly likely to flip back to Republicans. This is in large part because the extreme Republican gerrymanders in Florida and Texas are not going to cost Democrats more than a few House seats this fall, but in 2028, those new maps will truly hurt Democrats (at least five Democratic House seats that we’re in good shape to defend this fall will likely flip to the GOP in 2028).

So, the question becomes, what type of redistricting reform bill can Democrats pass in 2027? Obviously, there will be real limits, given the hurdle of getting 60 Senators on board, as well as obtaining the signature of the guy in the White House. But I do think there is an anti-gerrymandering bill that Democrats can write that both parties could support.

I believe that a national law that limits county splits when new maps are drawn for the 2030s is exactly the kind of legislation that would be narrow enough to get Republican support, while also preventing both parties from gerrymandering. Specifically, Democrats would specify in the bill that when it comes to Congressional redistricting, no county could be split more than X+1 times, where X is the number of splits mathematically required.

As someone who has drawn hypothetical Congressional maps for almost every state, I can say that keeping counties intact makes gerrymandering much more difficult. Respecting county lines by avoiding unnecessary splits often produces more proportional and reasonable House maps. The bill could even stipulate that the county boundaries to be used must be those that existed in 2020, so as to prevent states from trying to redraw their counties just to get around the law.

This simple proposal would not only stop both parties from splitting large, urban counties into fragments (something that Texas’s House map does in a particularly egregious way), but it would also protect minority communities. Obviously, in a perfect world, Congress would pass a new Voting Rights Act, but a national rule that limits county splits actually goes surprisingly far in stopping Republicans from cracking large cities. For instance, in Tennessee, Davidson County (home to the state capital of Nashville) is currently divided into three House districts. This ensures that Democrats and minority voters are diluted to such a degree that all three House districts will elect Republicans.

However, under a law such as the one I’ve outlined, Davidson County could only be split into two House districts, which would give Republicans much more incentive to simply draw one House district that keeps Nashville intact. They could, of course, try splitting the county across two districts, but that would mean Democrats could potentially win both House seats. Republicans would face a similar calculus in other states across the country, pushing them to keep urban areas intact when drawing House maps.

Even though Republicans have much more blood on their hands when it comes to gerrymandering, this bill would constrain Democrats, too. In fact, I think this is why a national bill limiting county splits could potentially make it through the Senate and even get Trump’s signature. For example, it would mean that Democrats could no longer split Baltimore across multiple House districts (which dilutes voters of color and is not even necessary to elect more House Democrats from Maryland). It would also prevent Democrats from potentially splitting Chicago or New York City even further in the 2030s in order to gain a few more House seats.

In short, a simple bill that limits county splits could accomplish a lot, and members of both parties would have reason to at least consider supporting such a proposal. Of course, only Democrats are enlightened enough to write and introduce such a bill, which is why I see 2027 as being crucial. When the House is under Democratic control starting early next year, the party must make redistricting reform a priority in the short time it has. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not optimistic that Democrats will hold the House after the 2028 elections due to GOP gerrymanders, so time is of the essence.

If Democrats can bring some order to redistricting while they hold the House, they will have improved American politics for voters all across the country. A fairer national House map in the 2030s would be a game changer, and something truly worth fighting for.

(Many thanks again to Brad Van Arnum for another timely and thought-provoking piece.)

The energy in the party is coming from the progressive wing, and the establishment must reckon with that before 2028. Michigan is critical. It will be one of a handful of states that will decide the balance of power in both houses of Congress.

There is a lesson here. It is not necessary that every candidate attempt to replicate El-Sayed’s style. The important consideration is that candidates understand that voters are fed up and ready for a different path, and that the common message is to speak to their concerns. El-Sayed did that in brilliant fashion, and each candidate should adopt his or her own style but keep to a common set of messages-the cost of living, health care, housing and in general the crying need for a government that not only cares but dares to act.

The most difficult challenge now is achieving unity in the Michigan Democratic Party. This was a nasty campaign that was replete with recriminations and sometimes vicious personal insults. Outside forces spent more than $60 million to defeat El-Sayed and bitterly resent and are threatened by his victory. He is justifiably angry at the prejudice and lies that characterized the opposition.

All parties need to take seriously the challenge ahead. Mike Rogers, though he is nothing more than a Trump toady, gives off the impression of a reasonable actor. He and the National Republican Party will attempt to paint El-Sayed and all other Democratic candidates as Communists or Socialists (thought they would be hard-pressed to explain either ideology). Don’t fall for that trap. Maintain a tight focus on the issues that concern Americans.

If Democrats can get past the anger and find their common bonds, they can capture a wide swath of voters—young people and seniors, progressives and moderates, urban and suburban voters. Poll after poll show that all of these demographics are fed up and ready for something different.

Democrats also need to stop their pearl-clutching over their disagreements. These are natural and a sign of a healthy party, much more so than the lock step and fear that characterize the Republicans. Get over the past fight and remember that the objective they all share is winning Democratic majorities.

Defeating Rogers will require unity and a ruthless determination to tie Trump around his neck like an albatross. Democrats have to persuade voters that he embodies everything they have come to abhor—money politics and slavish devotion to the special interests that dominate our politics.

The choice should be one between candidates who care about the citizenry rather than profiting from office and serving the interests of the people who are making their lives intolerable. If El-Sayed and others can do that, they will win.

El-Sayed should avoid ideology like the plague-meet voters where they are and focus on the issues. He has done a marvelous job of that and there is no reason to believe he will change in the general election campaign. Mike Rogers has nothing to offer and El-Sayed will use his formidable political skills to persuade voters of that.

To be sure, centrists represent a particular challenge, as much as disgruntled Stevens supporters and her supporters in African-American communities. At the same time, he will profit by reassuring Jewish voters that they are his constituency as well, and that while he has differences with them over Israel, he respects them and their faith. He will succeed by showing them that he will represent their interests as well. The populist arguments, as difficult as it may sound, could find an audience among some disgruntled Republicans. He should approach them as well.

Democrats must not allow Rogers to portray the Democrats as feckless and disorganized. They can frustrate his efforts by truly acting as a united front. El-Sayed will win if he does two things at the same time: harness his own energy and build a durable statewide coalition that feeds off of it. He has proven that he is capable of doing that. The challenge now is to persuade his erstwhile opponents to join with him rather than sit it out in unproductive anger.

In the end this is up to the rest of the Democratic Party of Michigan. He has shown that he can do his part. It is up to them to help rather than harm him. And it is imperative for the national party to get over it and extend to El-Sayed the financial support he will need. If they fail to do so, he will be proven right in everything he has said about them.

The means by which this must be done is the nomination of solid candidates who have their fingers on the pulse of their constituencies. It also requires a message that people understand and can identify with and serious organizing at the national and state levels.

One of the primary reasons that Democrats have not accomplished all of this by now is that they spend far too much timer reacting to what Trump and the Republicans are doing. Some of that is necessary but the primary effort should be the development of clear messages that candidates can use in their races.

This means health care, inflation, minimum wage, childcare, jobs and the right to choose must be the centerpieces of the national, state and local messages.

The national message needs to be easy to understand and relate to the problems encountered by voters in their daily lives. The issue of democracy as an abstraction, as frustrating as it may be, is simply not on the minds of most voters.

Democrats therefore must explain what they are for and what fixes they plan, how the Republicans mismanagement and corruption have caused the problems and a detailed description of what Democrats would do as an alternative. The idea is to persuade voters to vote for Democrats as opposed to simply rejecting Republicans. A confident approach is equally important. Stop apologizing and assert yourselves.

The cost of goods obviously resonates, so focus on that. This and the attendant issues of health care, rent, drug costs, among other things, resonate with almost all demographics. The party should avoid extended discussions of issues that appeal to a small group of voters. Democrats also need to ditch the jargon that has for too long been a centerpiece of their communications with voters.

Strong candidates will reinforce the messages Democrats use. The party needs more Mamdanis and fewer Schumers. They have to be sincere, credible and strong-minded in order to penetrate the distrust of Democrats.

As noted, it isn’t just the federal offices. The states and localities are critical. The long neglect of these races has brought us abortion restrictions, gerrymandering and a host of other ills. This means that the Democrats must focus on building strong state parties, recruiting winning candidates and adopting updated means of fundraising and social media. Above all, they need to build a stronger bench in order to help build majorities for the future.

They should spend money earlier in the election cycle. Waiting until the end will not work in 2028. It is imperative that the Democrats organize early and establish themselves with voters long before the last few months of the campaign. Constant and diligent organizing is critical to future success.

The redistricting fight must be joined in earnest by Democrats. While gerrymandering must be outlawed in the very near future, Democrats must not unilaterally disarm now. A comprehensive strategy to reverse the theft of numerous seats needs to be planned and implemented as soon as possible.

Turnout must continue to be a focus. Democrats have worked hard to encourage greater turnout over the last several cycles. They need to build on those efforts. That requires microtargeting, field operations and better use of available data. The party has to work to earn back young voters, too many of whom failed to vote in 2024. Focus on the cost of living, the inability to buy a house, get a good job. repay student loans and the climate.

The DNC must be reformed. Really, it should be rebuilt from the ground up. It is providing precious little to candidates and doing very little to build bridges to state parties, it is in debt and does virtually no meaningful organizing. By all appearances, it spends its time and effort undermining attractive progressive candidates.

By the time 2028 rolls around, if the party does these things it should achieve a clean sweep: both houses of Congress and the presidency. These are fundamental, achievable goals. In the absence of true leadership from the party establishment, it will devolve upon the state parties and the candidates themselves to lead the way.

From that time on, Iranians lost all trust in America. The Shah was our darling for nearly three decades as an ally in the battle against Communism. He persecuted his people mercilessly and was widely despised. Meanwhile, we rewarded him with infrastructural assistance and hard cash, most of which was siphoned off by the autocrat. No wonder that most Iranians turned on us.

It all came crashing down in 1979. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had steadily been gaining adherents among disaffected Iranians, made a triumphal return to Iran. Within a very short period the Shah (who was very ill) was toppled.

He was immediately replaced by Khomeini, who established the Islamic Republic of Iran. One of his first demands was that the United States extradite the dying Shah to Iran, presumably so he could be executed. Jimmy Carter refused the Iranian demand.

Within days, massive crowds took to the streets with anti-American signs and shouting “Death to America.” It wasn’t just the Shah. It was the entire history of U.S. interference. Mossadegh’s memory remained fresh and raw.

Soon afterward, a crowd of students crashed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostage more than 50 Americans, most of them diplomats. Sanctions against Iran ensued as the hostage crisis dragged on.

The calamity, to the shock and dismay of the Carter administration and the American public, dragged on for more than a year. It finally ended when Iran, after an agreement with Carter to release the hostages, refused to let them leave Iranian airspace until after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office on January 20, 1981. A humiliated Carter was sent by Reagan to Germany to greet the arriving former captives.

After Reagan took office, he increased sanctions and declared Iran a sworn enemy of America. We supported the Iraqis in Saddam’s war against Iran in the early 1980s. Punctuating the failed policies of the 1980s was the harebrained scheme by the Reagan administration to exchange arms for hostages. This later exploded into the scandal known as Iran-Contra, which ultimately crippled the administration for the remainder of its term.

This agreement involved the sale of weapons to Iran. In return, the U.S. asked Iran to use its control over Hezbollah in Lebanon to obtain the release of American hostages held there. All the while, the countries remained in conflict.

The sanctions policy continued into the 1990s well into the 2010s. Finally, the Obama administration moved to break the deadlock. In 2015, the administration negotiated an agreement with Iran, involving other countries. The deal limited Iran’s nuclear ambitions to civilian use in exchange for a loosening of sanctions.

Donald Trump was a fierce critic of the agreement, which had widespread global support. Less than two years after taking office, Trump canceled it, to global opprobrium.

From then on the relationship deteriorated into a cold war. Fundamentally, the U.S. for decades sought to contain Iran only to find that the shoe was on the other foot.

In sum, the United States was for Iranian independence when its policies favored us. We tolerated repression for years. The result was a terrorist regime that ruled with an iron fist and killed many hundreds of thousands of its own people, perhaps more.

And yet for years, the regime had public support because of the hamhanded treatment of Iran for decades. The public remembered Mossadegh and the Shah, and that was enough to ensure support of the regime from some quarters despite its many depredations.

The policy of containing Iran continued until February of this year. Egged on by the Iran-obsessed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump joined Israel in furious aerial assaults on Iran that destroyed infrastructure and worse, killed hundreds of children in a girl’s school.

The irony here is that this took place while massive demonstrations against the regime swept the country. The Israeli-U.S. war ended that uprising, perhaps for years to come. We are now mired in what appears to be an endless war in which Iran holds the upper hand because of Trump’s vulnerability to Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz. The result has been dramatic rises in the price of oil and gasoline.

The war has metastasized into a broader conflict drawing in the Gulf states, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. Iran seems willing to accept unlimited punishment in exchange for the upper hand against the vulnerable Trump. Meanwhile, our feckless policy has caused a rift with our allies in the region, and with much of the world.

The broader lesson here is that for nearly eighty years, the U.S. has bungled Middle East policy because of a lack of understanding of the region and an unwillingness to learn from previous foibles. The result is a destabilized Middle East and a global economy suffering extreme hardship. This is the legacy of our failed policies and today, there is no clear ending to this miserable story.

None of this is new. It has been coming for decades. It went from a kingmaker to a supplicant to self-nominated presidential candidates.

John F. Kennedy’s insurgent 1960 campaign was the first indication that the DNC’s omnipotence was beginning to show cracks. Kennedy skipped the normal nominating process and ran in several primaries, which were far less important then than they are today. He accumulated enough delegates through the primaries than the party favorites, including Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.

Kennedy established a formidable political machine that relied on personal contacts made by him, his brother Bobby and his crack campaign staff to gain support and to rake in large sums of money. By early summer he had the nomination firmly in hand while the DNC watched in awe. He created a personal brand that swamped the party machine.

The party itself in the earlier part of the 20th century was built on a coalition of labor, city political machines, liberals and southern conservatives. These actors excercised absolute power in their respective spheres. They picked candidates and drove out potential challengers who refused to “wait their turn.”

They controlled the votes and who would be nominated and elected. Kennedy wouldn’t “wait his turn.” Instead, he built his own machine, used television to appeal to voters and disregarded entreaties to wait for 1968 (he was only 43 at the time). In so doing he co-opted the party and ran it through his aides after he was elected.

That became the pattern, particularly as Civil Rights and other issues caused a break in the coalition that characterized the party earlier in the century.

I witnessed some of these developments in 1980. I was working on Capitol Hill, and I had a Republican friend who was working at the Republican National Committee. One evening after dinner, he took me over to the RNC to see the latest gambit established by the Reagan campaign.

They turned the basement into a huge collection of cubicles, each one occupied by a young staffer dialing around the country for dollars. The tote board on the wall showed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars accumulating in the party coffers every night.

One of my friends worked at the DNC. I told him about the phone bank and urged him to tell the leadership what was happening and to do the same. He took it upstairs and was told that these were gimmicks beneath the dignity of the party.

This was emblematic of the party’s growing ossification. Anything conceived outside the DNC’s walls was irrelevant to its leadership.

Fast forward to Barack Obama. He followed Kennedy’s example to a T. He built his own brand and campaign apparatus and defeated the shoo-in candidate, Hillary Clinton. Obama built a network of outsiders and ultimately used them to create a campaign built on his personality and the promise of change.

The implication was that Hillary represented the old ways, and he was the avatar of a new generation of Democrats. Kennedy, as described, did the same thing. Once again, the party proved largely irrelevant.

Things did not improve by the time Obama’s second term ended. In many ways things became worse. Donors soon abandoned the party, lacking proof that their money was going to a machine that could win elections. Voters began to tune out its incessant appeals for money.

The leadership of the party has become increasingly feckless and weak. Chairman Ken Martin has proved incompetent. His growing lack of control was exemplified by an incident where he threw a phone at a staffer in frustration.

The party in poll after poll shows an approval rating in the mid-to-high twenties. It is very hard to win elections under such circumstances. Led by a group of establishment consultants, it has lost one winnable election after another.

Candidates began taking matters into their own hands and now raise small- dollar donations in the tens of millions. Bernie Sanders proved it could be done and now one candidate after the other has a small-dollar machine.

The bottom line is that the organization that characterized the Democratic Party some 70 years ago has entirely broken down. It has been replaced by candidates and the two congressional campaign committees.

Nobody cares what it thinks anymore and it has proven inept in the face of the insurgent Democratic Socialists. It is now a bunker, bereft of money and dependent on the advice of establishment consultants who are entirely out of touch with the national mood.

It is too soon to say whether the DNC will cease to exist. What appears certain is that if it survives, it will be a mere totem.

The advice I have to offer is to give directly to the candidates of your choice. They are the future of the party. Every dollar donated to the DNC is good money thrown after bad.

The Civil War emerged from a tumultuous decade of political battles in the 1850s that slowly but inexorably engendered a sense of growing helplessness in both parts of the nation.

Since the founding, Congress employed compromise to tamp down the slavery debate. They avoided any decisions regarding the issue. This modus vivendi ended with the reprehensible Dred Scott decision by the Taney Court.

The 1850s saw numerous attempts to avert a break. The Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, among other pacts, were designed to keep the peace between the opposing states. Various compromises came and went, lasting until the end of the decade. By that point, however, the genie was out of the bottle.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was one of the earliest efforts to achieve some lasting compromise. It permitted settlers in the new areas of the country to invoke self-determination on the issue of slavery. The slave faction and the north immediately acted to establish their respective positions. The result was unrestrained violence.

“Bleeding Kansas” was the center of the fight between the two factions. In the 1850s, Kansas became the center of a violent struggle over slavery. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act invited settlers from the east, leaving to them the decision regarding whether or not to permit slavery in the territories, there arose clashes between pro-slavery factions from Missouri and with settlers opposed to the institution. A fight for power ensued that devolved into violence. John Brown of Harper’s Ferry fame was one of abolitionists at the center of the violence in Lawrence, Kansas. The territory finally entered the Union as a free state in 1861.

While all of this was happening, the political environment in Washington had become toxic. Out of this confusion came the Republican Party, largely in opposition to slavery. The political power in the South, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, devoted all of its energies toward the protection of slavery from what increasingly became an organized effort in favor of abolition.

The Senate saw debates between the giants of the era-Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Calhoun. Despite Clay’s and Webster’s efforts toward compromise, dissolution seemed inevitable.

Out of this turmoil emerged Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 captivated the nation and laid squarely before the public the issue of whether or not slavery should spread. It became increasingly clear that there was no compromise to be found as the debate grew and the animosity it engendered divided the country in half.

The South, despite the protection of the Supreme Court, felt besieged. For the first time in the republic’s history, it saw its power at the national level start to wane. It is no overstatement to say that a sort of paranoia took hold.

The spark that lit the coming conflagration was the election of Lincoln in November of 1860. He received no votes from the southern states and did not have a majority, the ballot having included three major candidates. Before Lincoln even assumed office, southern states began seceding.

The debates of the 1850s were critical to the onset of the Civil War because they demonstrated that there was no longer any common ground. Within months, the war began.

Nobody expected it to last four long years, but the South was determined to maintain slavery (which it clothed in the mantle of states’ rights) and fought the Union to a stalemate until Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman introduced to the nation (and to the world) the concept of total war. Reconstruction in the absence of Abraham Lincoln was a disaster and the result was bitterness, hatred and ultimately lynchings and other atrocities.

We live with this awful legacy today. White Nationalists and the regime they brought about continue to foster racism while denying the evils of slavery. We owe it to our posterity to cut deeply into their power.

We cannot legislate what is in the human mind and heart. What we can do is legislate the effects of the racism by restoring the rights the Dred Scott Supreme Court stole from African-Americans in the 1850s and which the Roberts Court continues to steal today. Anything less would be a betrayal of our predecessors and of our posterity.

Secretaries of state, attorneys general, and local officials are actively preparing for interference before voting even begins. That includes concerns about access to voter data, the presence of ICE agents near polling places, the possible use of federalized National Guard units or troops, and even attempts to seize ballots or disrupt their handling.

In past election cycles, planning focused on turnout, equipment reliability, and cybersecurity. Now, planning includes how to respond if federal officials insert themselves into the process in a manner that is unlawful or coercive. That alone says a great deal about where things stand.

Under the Constitution, elections are run by the states. The federal government has a limited role, mostly tied to enforcing protections and funding aspects of election infrastructure. It does not manage voter rolls, it does not control ballot access, and it does not administer polling places. When this regime tries to assert control in those areas, it creates a direct conflict over authority that the system is not designed to manage.

That conflict is already underway. There have been threats to withhold federal funding and other forms of pressure that go beyond legal boundaries. They are explicit attempts to influence how states carry out their responsibilities, and they violate the law.

Trump and his allies have also been clear about their broader objective: to shape the way in which the election is conducted. That does not require changing votes directly. It can be done by creating uncertainty, or making voters question whether it is safe or worthwhile to participate. Even a small reduction in turnout, if it is unevenly distributed, can change outcomes.

States are responding in practical ways. They are strengthening chain-of-custody procedures for ballots, limiting unnecessary access to voter data, and preparing legal filings in advance so they can move quickly if federal actions cross the line.

Coordination with local law enforcement has also increased, particularly around polling locations and ballot storage sites. Some district attorneys have even vowed that federal agents who engage in voter intimidation or attempt to interfere with lawful election activity will be subject to arrest.

That position demonstrates how serious the situation has become. It also raises the possibility of direct confrontations between different levels of government.

At the same time, the system still depends on routine actions carried out at the local level. Poll workers checking voters in, volunteers managing lines, county officials certifying results—these are the places where elections happen. If those processes continue without disruption, the system can still function.

Public trust remains a key variable. At the moment, distrust is not found in both parties. It is more pronounced among Republican voters, many of whom have been told repeatedly that the system is unreliable. That creates a situation where the more distrust is engendered, the more it may discourage participation among the same voters it is meant to mobilize.

State officials are not assuming that dynamic will resolve itself. Their preparations reflect a recognition that the threat is real and imminent, and that they may have to operate under sustained pressure. The goal is not to eliminate risk entirely, which is not possible, but to contain it and preserve the lawful process.

The courts will inevitably be drawn into this. They will be asked to decide where federal authority ends and state authority begins, under tight deadlines. Those decisions will shape how much room states have to resist or adapt to federal actions.

If the courts enforce existing limits, the system will hold, even if it is strained. If they do not, and interference is allowed to proceed, the implications will be clear. It would mean that the lawful jurisdiction over elections is no longer being upheld in practice.

At that point, the outcome will depend less on legal structure and more on public behavior. Whether people choose to vote, even under uncertain conditions, will determine how much of the system continues to function as intended.

The responsibility for voters is straightforward. Participate in the election, assist others in doing the same, and do not assume that someone else will carry that burden. The process still works if people use it.

The next few months will show whether that remains the case. If the elections are successfully subverted and people fail to take to the streets, many Americans will have demonstrated that they are not worthy of the democratic republic we were granted 250 years ago. And for the rest of us, the consequences will be too awful to contemplate.

Inside the Capitol, it feels very different, and that gap between perception and reality is why I eventually walked away from the Hill and into law and ultimately, independent commentary.

Being a congressional aide is, in theory, a job about legislating and serving constituents. In practice, it’s a job about time—specifically, protecting a member’s time from the thousand forces trying to hijack it. On paper, your boss might sit on multiple committees, co‑sponsor dozens of bills, and lead a caucus devoted to some noble cause.

On TV, he or she appears as a polished spokesperson for “the party line.” But internally, the day is a barrage of competing demands: committee prep, donor calls, stakeholder meetings, staff briefings, constituent casework, press inquiries, and the occasional attempt at actual policy thinking squeezed into the margins. As staff, you become the limiter who decides what gets through and what dies in the inbox, and a surprising amount of power sits in those mundane decisions.

If you only follow political coverage, you’d think bills live or die on the floor in clashes between principle and power. Most bills never get that far. They die quietly in committee, vanish in leadership’s drawer, or get folded into some omnibus or continuing resolution that no one outside the building will ever read. Introducing a bill is often more branding than governing: a member introduces something, sends a press release, posts a clip, and checks a box for a constituency.

The odds of passage are often beside the point. What actually matters is whether the bill gets onto the agenda of the people who control the machinery—committee chairs, ranking members, leadership staff, and the policy entrepreneurs who have earned the right to push things through.

Governance hides in details: obscure provisions in must‑pass bills, regulatory tweaks buried in committee reports, quiet compromises that keep agencies functioning for another year. The drama is visible; the actual work is often invisible by design.

The most important thing people misunderstand about Congress is how much it depends on unelected staff. When viewers see a hearing, they see a member grilling a witness. When you work there, you see the staffer who spent hours drafting those questions, reading dense reports, and anticipating answers.

Staff are the institutional memory. Members come and go, committees reorganize, majorities flip, but staff—especially long‑serving staff—provide needed continuity: the history of old fights, the details of past deals, the traps hidden in many statutes.

Because members have limited time and expertise, staff end up as analyst, negotiator, and shield all at once. They translate technical policy into options a member can act on, quietly work language with other offices to find something everyone can live with, and absorb blowback when something explodes so their boss doesn’t have to. Burnout among those people is all too common.

Another rude awakening is how deeply the incentives inside Congress are wired for performance rather than problem‑solving. If you’re a staffer trying to help your boss govern, you quickly learn there are things that help the district but don’t trend, and things that trend but don’t help the district at all. Cable news hits, hearing clips, combative tweets—these are the currency of modern congressional brand‑building.

They help raise money, galvanize the base, and strengthen a member’s standing inside the party. Quiet work on oversight letters or regulatory fixes rarely gets any airtime. Even members who genuinely care about policy find themselves pulled toward symbolic conflict because attention has become the main metric of success. From the outside, you might say, “Why don’t they just focus on governing?”

From the inside, you see that governing is the unglamorous thing you do between media hits, if you have any time left. Part of why I left Congress was simple exhaustion. The pace dulls your ability to think deeply; you’re constantly reacting to news cycles, constituents, and leadership directives.

There’s little room to interrogate the institution itself or ask whether the system you’re serving is actually capable of doing what it claims. The deeper reason, though, was that I realized I cared more about explaining the machine than about helping it produce the next round of talking points.

On Capitol Hill, your job is to make your member look effective, aligned with their voters, and responsive to events—whether or not the underlying institution is actually working. As an independent commentator, my job is different. I get to ask harder questions about why Congress is so dependent on staff and lobbyists, why legislating increasingly happens in omnibus behemoths instead of regular order, and why members are rewarded more for performative conflict than for durable problem‑solving.

Leaving meant giving up proximity to power and the ability to nudge specific bills at the margins. It also meant gaining the freedom to talk about the institution itself without worrying whether the chief of staff approves. I moved from actor to narrator. I stopped trying to fix the script from backstage and started writing about why the script looks the way it does.

That experience now shapes my commentary in ways I hope are useful. When a headline says “Congress fails to act,” I’m less interested in the outrage and more interested in the process: Was there a serious effort? Who decided it wasn’t worth floor time? What tradeoffs were made quietly somewhere else?

I pay attention to appropriations markups, oversight letters, and technical amendments because that’s where a lot of real governing happens. I try to center institutions and incentives, not just personalities, because when a member behaves in a way that looks irrational, there’s usually a rational incentive behind it.

You don’t have to care about jurisdiction charts or procedural arcana to care about how Congress works. But as long as we only talk about the Congress of cameras, we will keep misdiagnosing what’s wrong with American politics and keep reaching for fixes that don’t touch the underlying machinery.

Then there is the special interest money. Congress is awash in it. This results in watered down legislation that wouldn’t make a positive difference even it did pass. Worse, it irretrievably corrupts the entire system. Nothing that violates the precepts of the special interests has a hope of passage. This alone degrades Congress.

Congress is an unmitigated disaster today. The lesson for the Democrats, though, is that going back to the way it was is unacceptable. Very little got done in the realm of progressive policies since the 1970s. If Democrats do not adapt and begin legislating for the people, the people will ultimately turn on them again.

This is a golden opportunity for Democrats to remake Congress and in the process, make it work. Let us hope they learn from past mistakes and seize what can be a golden opportunity to effect real change.

We have the record of what the intelligence community concluded about 2020 and it does not back him up. The declassified “Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections” assessment, published in March 2021 and now reposted by ODNI, finds that Russia’s activities were aimed at discrediting Biden and the Democrats, promoting Trump, eroding public trust in the electoral system, and deepening social divides.

It also states plainly that there were “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process,” including registration, casting ballots, tabulation, or reporting results. China is described as considering options and running limited influence efforts but not mounting the kind of system‑level operation Trump now claims, and certainly not altering the actual mechanics of the vote.

Trump’s wretched performance flips that record on its head. He accused “deep state” actors of hiding a massive Chinese breach that supposedly sabotaged his re‑election and invalidated the official narrative that 2020 was secure. He told viewers they had been “blatantly lied to” about voting machines and ballot counting systems, insinuating that friendly bureaucrats let a foreign adversary inside the system and then covered it up.

But the only detailed, vetted assessment his own administration declassified says the opposite: Russia ran an influence campaign to help him, China did not hack the infrastructure of the election, and the technical machinery of voting held.

That is the core lie at the center of the speech: pretending the intelligence record vindicates his story about China when, in reality, it documents Russian interference on his behalf (while he was President) and rejects the picture he is painting. He is repurposing the official record, twisting its language, and betting his supporters will never read the underlying assessment.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. It is landing less than four months before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. Trump used the speech to declare that America’s elections are “worse than a third‑world country” and to push for sweeping changes like his favored SAVE Act, presented as the only way to stop supposed fraud and foreign manipulation.

He is building a narrative where the default assumption is that the system is corrupt, enemy states are active and Democrats can only win through cheating or concealment. That narrative is not just about relitigating 2020; it is preparation for 2026.

Once you accept his premise that elections are thoroughly compromised, it becomes easier to justify measures that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Democratic officials and observers have already warned that Trump’s team is normalizing the presence of federal agents and troops in major cities, getting people used to seeing uniformed forces on urban streets. Those forces would show up at polling places in blue states under the banner of “protecting the vote,” and if the results turn against Trump and his allies, they move to “seize the ballot boxes” and count the votes themselves while crying fraud.

Trump has already floated this kind of tactic once before, in the aftermath of his 2020 loss, when close advisers promoted schemes to use the military and federal power to grab ballot boxes and rerun the count on his terms. Now, in office again and facing midterms where his party’s majority is at risk, he is reviving the conspiracy theories that made those schemes possible: foreign plots, traitorous officials, rigged machines, and a righteous president forced to take drastic action to “save” the republic. The speech fits directly into that narrative: China stole 2020, the deep state hid it, and he alone will fix it.

The danger is not just what he said, but what it authorizes in the minds of his most loyal followers and operatives. If 2020 was a foreign hack blessed by domestic traitors, then any aggressive move he makes in November can be framed as overdue justice, not an attack on voting rights.

More armed presence at polling places in Democratic‑heavy cities suddenly looks like security. Dragging ballot boxes into custody for “inspection” becomes a patriotic duty. Federal demands for complete state‑level voter data and registration records, already a feature of his past fraud hunts, become standard operating procedure.

Take away the slogans and it is simple: Trump lied about what the declassified 2020 assessment says, lied about who interfered and how, and then used those lies to argue that the existing election system cannot be trusted. From there, the road leads to troops at polling places, ballot boxes under guard, and results subject to “review” until they match the preferences of the man who happens to be in the White House.

He is telling us in plain language that he does not accept elections he cannot control. The question now is whether anyone with power to stop him will treat his speech as the warning it is, instead of just another round of noise in the news cycle.

The bottom line is that Donald Trump is a sick and desperate man. As such, he is more dangerous than ever. He is looking for a pretext to dispatch troops into the streets in Democratic cities. He will use any altercation as an excuse. Voters, poll watchers and others at voting precincts must not take the bait. And voters must come out in massive numbers to make it difficult to steal this election.

For Lindsey Graham, that last issue towers above all the others: How did one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics become one of his most devoted defenders?

That question will follow Graham long after his sister takes office and the speeches honoring his service have ended. It is the defining paradox of his political career because no one articulated the concerns about Donald Trump more clearly than Lindsey Graham himself.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Graham warned that Trump lacked the character, judgment, and temperament required of the presidency. He did so before it was politically advantageous to criticize Trump and after Trump publicly ridiculed and humiliated him.

Those criticisms were not about tax policy, judicial philosophy, or foreign affairs. They were moral judgments about fitness for office. Graham saw something in Donald Trump that he believed represented a danger to the Republican Party and, by extension, to the country.

Nothing that followed suggested those concerns had disappeared. Donald Trump did not become more restrained after taking office. He did not grow more respectful of democratic institutions. If anything, many of the behaviors Graham had condemned only became more pronounced. Yet Lindsey Graham underwent one of the most dramatic political transformations in modern American history, evolving from Trump’s fiercest Republican critic into one of his closest allies and most reliable defenders.

The defining moment came on January 6, 2021. As Congress reconvened after the insurrection at the United States Capitol, Graham stood before the nation and uttered words that appeared destined to become the moral conclusion of his political life. “Count me out,” he said. “Enough is enough.” It sounded like a senator finally choosing constitutional principle over partisan loyalty. It sounded like a man who had rediscovered the convictions he had expressed five years earlier. It sounded, in that moment, like the closing chapter of a complicated political relationship.

It was not. Within weeks, Graham had returned to Mar-a-Lago. Within months, he was once again defending Donald Trump and ultimately endorsing his return to the White House. The declaration that “enough is enough” proved not to be a final judgment but a temporary pause.

Whatever history ultimately concludes about Lindsey Graham’s motivations, the public record leaves little room for dispute about the sequence of events. He repeatedly warned Americans about Donald Trump, declared after January 6 that Trump had crossed an unacceptable line, and then resumed supporting the very man he had condemned.

It is right to approach death with solemnity. But there is an equally important obligation not to sanitize history. Public officials voluntarily place their records before the American people for judgment. Honest historical assessment is not disrespect. It is accountability. To ignore the contradictions that defined Lindsey Graham’s public life would be to reduce history to sentimentality.

Lindsey Graham will be remembered less for the legislation he helped pass than for the extraordinary distance between the principles he once proclaimed and the political loyalties he ultimately embraced.

Every public servant leaves behind a legacy. Lindsey Graham’s will not simply be one of service or influence. It will also be a cautionary tale about what happens when political survival appears to eclipse publicly declared conviction. That is not an epitaph anyone would choose. But history rarely asks permission before rendering its verdict.

American party politics used to be described in terms of big tents. Each party was seen as a loose coalition of social groups and interests competing for the middle and trading power over time. That picture no longer fits what is actually happening.

Today, the parties look more like sorted camps than coalitions. Democrats draw most of their strength from college‑educated urban and suburban voters, many racial and ethnic minorities, and issue‑driven activists. Republicans draw most of theirs from white voters without college degrees, especially in rural and exurban areas, along with culturally conservative and religious constituencies. The overlap between these camps has shrunk, and the number of voters who could plausibly belong to either party has fallen. This sorting changes how parties behave.

When parties are coalitions, compromise is part of the job: different segments inside the tent have to bargain, so moderation and deal‑making are routine. When parties are identity camps, compromise looks more like betrayal. The emotional core of partisanship becomes negative rather than positive. Many voters are clearer about who and what they oppose than about what they affirmatively support.

Within that environment, the Republican Party has shifted into a something that is less about conservative policy preferences and more about reshaping the rules of the system. It relies on tools like gerrymandering, restrictive voting rules, targeted control over election administration, and aggressive judicial appointments to maintain power even as its agenda often lacks majority support. It also shows a willingness to challenge or circumvent electoral outcomes that threaten its position.

This is a move away from accepting the basic rules of competition and toward redesigning those rules to secure long‑term minority rule.

The Democratic Party has changed in a different way. It represents a broad set of groups, but they are not knitted together by a single, clear program. Its professional‑class leadership often prioritizes rights, inclusion, and technocratic management, while many of its working‑class and younger supporters want more direct economic redistribution and structural reform. The party speaks the language of democracy and institutional protection, but is often cautious about using hardball tactics to alter the system, even when the existing rules disadvantage its voters.

The result is a party that acts more like a defender of the current constitutional order than a force for redesigning it. It tries to hold together a large coalition, but does so with a tendency toward strong rhetoric about saving democracy, combined with limited investment in some of the places where the rules are actually being rewritten, such as state legislatures and local election offices.

When people talk about realignment, they often think of a transition from one stable arrangement to another: a new majority coalition, a new dominant ideology, a new normal. The current period looks more like an extended struggle in which the basic rules of democracy are themselves an object of partisan conflict. The important dividing line is less left versus right and more between those who want to preserve majority rule within a restrictive constitutional framework and those who are willing to change the framework so that they do not have to be ruled by a shifting majority.

This has consequences for how democracy functions. Elections still happen on schedule, but their meaning changes if one side treats defeat as illegitimate or unacceptable. Under those conditions, the main contest shifts from persuading voters to controlling institutions that can override, dilute, or reinterpret electoral outcomes. Legitimacy becomes more fragile because ordinary losses are framed as threatening crises, and ordinary administrative decisions become tools for entrenching power.

It also means that technical details matter more than they used to: district lines, voting procedures, certification rules, and appointment powers become instruments of regime engineering. Change happens through accumulated advantages inside the machinery of government.

The parties are not just vehicles for interest groups trying to pass policies. They are now central players in a struggle over what kind of political system the United States will have in practice: one in which different majorities can take turns governing under shared rules, or one in which a hardened faction uses the party system to fix those rules to its own benefit.

This latter situation is the one we find ourselves in today. The only antidotes we have at our disposal are to fight voter suppression attempts and turn out in massive numbers. Otherwise, we will be compelled to live in a minoritarian system for years to come.

To do that, Democrats must find a way to unite before the November mid-terms in order to maximize the number of seats they win in each House of Congress. The debate over the direction of the party is inevitable, but winning requires that it be postponed until January of next year. A protracted fight over direction will disillusion voters and cost the party the seats necessary for solid majorities.