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This Isn't a Democrats vs. Republicans fight. It's Americans vs. MAGA.
The folks showing up spontaneously in cities across America aren’t showing up for politics. They're showing up for America.
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Edwin Eisendrath hosts It’s the Democracy, Stupid on Lincoln Square and WCPT820 AM/Heartland Signal. He’s the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago’s public schools. Subscribe to his Substack.
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I am done listening to pundits, consultants, and influencers tell us what Democrats must do, as if the attack on American democracy and freedom is a problem that the Democratic Party must solve.
Those who see this moment as a battle between the Democratic and Republican parties see nothing at all. The big question we face today is whether we should remain a democracy governed by the rule of law. That is not a partisan fight.
Our political parties are organized to fight policy battles in a democracy. Who should bear the burden of taxes? How shall we incentive entrepreneurship? How will we help those in need? How much should we spend on our military? Today we are fighting just to be able to argue about those important questions.
What’s happening on the streets in Minneapolis, like what happened on the streets in Chicago, is not about Democrats versus Republicans. In those cities, as in Los Angeles and Charlotte, armed agents are attacking Americans for speaking out. In response, more Americans are joining the protests. Those Americans are not pouring onto the streets to argue about politics. They are showing up to protect their neighbors, and to assert the rights of all Americans.
The No Kings rallies were not Democratic Party events. I stood with two Republicans at the last rally, and we were ten feet from a group carrying a banner that announced they were the Communist Party of America. Many people came who said they weren’t political at all. And No Kings was a planned rally. The folks showing up spontaneously in cities across America aren’t showing up for politics. They are showing up for America.
Reporters and pundits who think this a partisan fight are blind. If they opened their eyes just a bit, they would see what the rest of us see: It’s not a fight between Democrats and Republicans, but a battle between America and MAGA, between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and coercion.
Courtesy of a supine Congress and a Supreme Court that legitimized the fringe idea of a unitary executive, the Executive Branch now belongs entirely to Donald Trump. He alone commands every employee, sets every policy, launches every initiative. He has opted to use this power in defiance of law, knowing that the judicial branch is a slower one, unable to stop him until long after he has acted. The horrendous decision in the United States v Donald Trump gave presidents immunity from prosecution. Trump has used the pardon power to extend that immunity to anyone who breaks the law in his name. Thus empowered and unconstrained, Trump has styled himself our monarch.
Indeed, he has gone farther, corrupting our military, an institution Americans pay for, serve in, and support in every way in order to protect us. Trump says that institution must follow his orders rather than the law. (Actually, he says his orders are the law.) He fired the military lawyers who would say otherwise. He changed the military’s mission from defense to war. And he has used prosecuted war without consent or even consultation with Congress to crown himself emperor of the Americas. Now he threatens a NATO country.
When one of his agents murdered a Renee Good in Minneapolis, a woman whose last words were “I’m not mad at you,” Donald Trump tasked the entire power of the executive branch with tarnishing her name. For Trump, Ashli Babbit, the insurrectionist who died trying to violently overturn his loss in 2020, is a hero while a Renee Good, who dared protest the violent tactics of ICE, is a villain.
In Trump’s nation, politics is a thing of the past. Dissent is illegal. Obedience is law.
Americans are not outsourcing the defense of our democracy to the Democratic Party, and pundits who suggest we do are dangerous. Anyone waiting for Chuck Schumer to save our country is a fool. But even if the leadership of the Democratic Party were the wisest and bravest amongst us, those who lay the responsibility for saving America at the foot of a political party are ducking their own responsibility as citizens.
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