Lock Them Up

It is immensely frustrating watching Democrats right now.

Donald Trump is destroying the economy—not just the American economy, but the entire global economy—and the best most Democrats can muster is mewling about how he’s golfing and meek suggestions that tariffs should be targeted rather than broad-based. Some Democrats are tentatively going further by accusing Trump administration officials of insider trading. But by and large, Democrats aren’t doing what they should be doing about Trump’s tariffs—shouting from the rooftops that Trump is going to crash the economy, zero out your 401(k), and get you laid off from your job.

Donald Trump is attacking the constitutional order, defying the rulings of federal judges, kidnapping dissidents and immigrant parents off the street, and freely wielding the unconstitutional tool of impoundment to negate Congressional appropriations and conduct a political purge of the federal workforce. (On a personal note, the entire staff of the agency researching and treating blood disorders such as hemophilia—I’ve lived with a severe form of it my entire life—got the axe from RFK Jr.’s HHS.) The best most Democrats can muster is some mumbling about each of these in turn; some Democrats are tentatively going further by highlighting the individual cases of particularly sympathetic victims. But by and large, Democrats aren’t doing what they should be doing about Trump’s assault on the constitutional order—shouting from the rooftops that Trump is going to make himself a dictator if he is not forced to bow to federal judges and congressional appropriations as per the Constitution’s mandate.

Donald Trump is attacking the American social safety net, using DOGE to close programs like LIHEAP that aid the poor, degrade Social Security to the point that people are already missing benefits, and send Dr. Oz into Medicare and Medicaid with a hatchet. The best most Democrats can muster is GOP-friendly appeals to the friendly seniors who are the most conventionally sympathetic recipients of entitlement spending. Some Democrats are tentatively going further by offering defenses of Medicaid. But by and large, Democrats aren’t doing what they should be doing about Trump’s war on the poor—shouting from the rooftops that without the social safety net, many people will die cruel and unnecessary deaths.

Democrats balk at rhetorical maximalism most of the time. They’ll dabble in it around election time, but otherwise they’re constantly trying to turn down the temperature even when they’re out of power. This fundamentally misunderstands the role of an opposition party, which is to work to make the government unpopular. Instead, Democrats try to appear like a reasonable partner when in opposition—leaving Republican presidents’ approval ratings relatively unmarred—and wait patiently for Republicans to make themselves unpopular. That’s the throughline of Democratic responses to the Trump administration’s unprecedented war on the economy, the Constitution, and the social safety net: Democrats are still, amidst all this, trying to appear reasonable and conciliatory, even as their opponents make it clear that they are utterly unreasonable and utterly uninterested in conciliation. Even when sitting in opposition to a normal government, rhetorical maximalism is warranted to drag the government down—and this is not a normal government. Today, rhetorical maximalism is not only warranted; it is the most accurate means of describing the situation. Donald Trump is not trying to reshore American manufacturing; he is attempting to blow up the global economic order and sever necessary economic ties with friends and foes alike. Donald Trump is not merely exceeding his authority in service of other policy goals; exceeding his authority and assuming dictatorial power is the overriding policy goal. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not trying to privatize Social Security; they are trying to destroy it. Failing to engage in rhetorical maximalism now will only fuel the Democratic base’s increasingly intense distrust of its own elected officials. Failing to engage in rhetorical maximalism also gives up leverage; by being extreme and unwavering in their opposition to the Trump administration, Democrats could be signaling to the average voter that something is deeply wrong and they should be unhappy. Instead, by treating him as a normal Republican president, Democrats are willingly giving up the leverage they have over public opinion; politicians’ ability to shape public opinion through their own public stances is a well-established phenomenon in political science known as elite cueing. Democrats could be using their elite cue power to galvanize public opinion against the Trump administration by challenging and criticizing him in the starkest and most urgent of terms, signaling to ordinary voters that this is an unusual administration warranting an unusual intensity of opposition. They are instead treating him as the second coming of George W. Bush, and voters who nowadays remember Bush as a normal if incompetent president are shrugging it off.

There’s a particular kind of rhetorical maximalism that Democrats are especially unwilling to touch, but which is especially warranted by our present situation. You might recognize it as an echo of a mode of political attack mainstreamed by none other than Donald Trump: Lock them up!

Point out to a disengaged observer that basically every Trump administration official is committing crimes out in the open—insider trading, false statements, extortion, mishandling of classified information, fucking human trafficking, you name it, they’ve done it—and they’d reasonably assume that Democrats would be having a field day with this information. Not so. Democrats are still reluctant to point to the naked criminality of this administration, or the corruption of the institutions which have acquiesced to his dictatorial demands; in fact, some of them are openly dismissive of the idea, as Colorado Rep. Jason Crow was when asked by Semafor reporter Dave Weigel. Just eight Democrats are on the record in support of impeachment so far, despite the fact that congressional Democrats previously impeached Trump twice for transgressions substantially similar (January 6) or lesser (Ukraine) than any number of ongoing Trump administration policies, from bills of attainder blacklisting disfavored law firms and directing criminal investigations of former staffers to mass kidnappings of immigrants off the streets to open defiance of federal courts.

There is a strong norm (primarily among elites) against prosecuting politicians in this country, dating back to Gerald Ford’s corrupt pardon of Richard Nixon. It’s a bad norm, and it’s one that needs to be violated if and when Democrats regain power. Consequently, Democrats need to start doing the work now to build consensus for the prosecution of senior members of the Trump administration and its corrupt proxies in law and academia. It is coincidentally a great way to repair the Democratic Party brand. Overwhelming majorities of Americans from both parties view their federal elected officials as corrupt. Neither party does much to incorporate anti-corruption rhetoric into their campaigns nor anti-corruption policy into their governance. This wasn’t always the case—even Republicans used to make names for themselves by prosecuting corruption, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie being prominent examples—but corruption prosecutions have declined for a number of reasons since the 2008 financial crisis, and neither party has tried to reverse the trend. It’s a great opportunity for whoever has the guts to take it, and Republicans are more or less precluded from doing so as long as their most charismatic and popular figure is Donald Trump; Democrats, meanwhile, would benefit from cleaning house and dumping old, corrupt politicians who drag down the party’s brand. If they do so in service of a pivot to relentless, unsparing attacks on Republican corruption, cruelty, and incompetence? Even better, and it’ll prime the electorate to be ready for—and supportive of—the messy, controversial cleanup work that will have to be done if we are lucky enough to get out of this administration with power back in our hands.

So let’s start adjusting our rhetoric. We don’t need to warn Americans about the harms of a standard-issue conservative platform; we need to warn them about an attempt at authoritarian regime consolidation, mindless economic shock therapy, and a forced return to 19th-century mercantilist foreign policy. We don’t need vague gestures at accountability; we need to promise, loudly, explicitly, and frequently, to lock them up.