Donald Trump intended to cow us into submission with a $45 million parade, a showy affirmation of his enormous power. But, if June 14th taught us anything about power, it’s the power of mass protests to shape the public narrative.
The scene of sparse crowds attending Trump’s authoritarian birthday party stood in sharp contrast to an estimated five million people showing up at over 2,000 No Kings events all across the country.
And a weekend of political assassinations and a raging conflict in the Middle East only added to the high stakes at this moment in history.
Until we get the chance to show up next November and make Trump a diminished lame duck, we have to keep showing up in stunning numbers to make clear the deep well of public opposition to Trump’s authoritarian agenda.
So where do we go from here? As we enter the sixth month of Trump’s 48-month term, how do we mount an effective, sustainable response to the most dangerous and destructive presidency in American history?
The amazing No Kings Day protest had power precisely because it was a big, defined special moment – the kind of attention-getting landmark event we need to create more of.
Every day, Trump and his administration do something truly alarming and dangerous. But simply feeding people an endless litany of “Oops, he did it again” affronts has multiple drawbacks.
It’s a static narrative that overwhelms and depresses our audiences. And it conveys an image of the Trump machine as an unstoppable freight train rolling over everything in its path. That’s a portrait he’s trying to paint, not one we should help him draw.
We can’t fall into a pattern of ongoing tit-for-tat exchanges with Trump if we want to break through.
I’m not arguing that we start ignoring the steady stream of dangerous Trump initiatives. Far from it. What I’m suggesting is that we respond to those initiatives with more than broad “This is awful. We can’t let him get away with it” rhetoric. People know the hole we’re in. They don’t expect us to dig out of it immediately.
But what they yearn for is a game plan, a strategy – one that plays out over time with a narrative arc that people can follow and invest in.
Periodic massive public demonstrations have to be a centerpiece of that strategy. But they have to be paired with ongoing efforts to center on the biggest challenges like the fight to protect Medicaid and the deploying of Marines and federalized National Guard troops to support lawless ICE raids.
When we define a sustained debate on our terms, we win. When we chase Trump down every rabbit hole, we lose.
The Democratic base’s frustration with Democrats in Congress stems from their failure to provide any kind of strategic blueprint, no answer to “What’s the plan?” other than we’ll take back power in next year’s elections. The premise isn’t wrong. Those elections represent a chance for the country to deliver a decisive verdict and severely weaken Trump for the rest of his time in office.
But the timing is way off. Trump is moving too fast on too many fronts for sitting on our hands until next November to make any sense. We need closer-in checkpoints that can support a constantly moving forward strategy.
Trump is awful. He’s ruining peoples’ lives and driving our country toward authoritarianism. But simply saying that over and over with a few new details thrown in is a static conversation with diminishing impact over time.
We need to focus more of our attention on the personal stories of the people who are bearing the brunt of the MAGA agenda and fighting back with everything they’ve got. As behavioral science expert Nancy Harhut reminds us “Stories evoke emotion. And emotion drives decisions.”
And here’s the key. We have to make sure our storytelling covers the American landscape: undocumented people facing brutal ICE harassment, working class families losing their health care thanks to massive Medicaid cuts, cancer patients losing their lives due to deep cuts in NIH research, etc.
In times of struggle like the one we are in, it’s easy to focus on just stopping the bleeding. But we have to keep reminding people (and ourselves) that we’re not just fighting to end the Trump nightmare. We need to share our vision of a brighter, more promising and more hopeful future. We can’t let that vision get lost in the angst of these troubling times.
If we’re smart, we will treat this past weekend’s big win as a launching pad for a vigorous, sustained strategy that advances a powerful narrative of our own as opposed to a daily, reactive response that only serves to reinforce Trump’s narrative.
That’s the path to genuine progress over time.
