What Are We Gonna Do Now: A Framework for Defeating the Trump-Musk Regime, Part 1

I do not have any easy answers about how to defeat the Trump-Musk regime, but have a sense of what it may take.

This is part one of a multipart series in which I will propose a framework for thinking about the struggle to defeat fascism and (re) build democracy in the US.

Since the election many friends, colleagues, students and others have asked how we can go about combating the fascist ascendancy. In so many words, what are we gonna do now? I have generally answered this question with an air of resignation admitting that I don’t really know how to magically rid the US of the Trump-Musk regime. When feeling particularly piqued I have told people that if I knew the answer to that question, I would write it up, be ignored for a year or two, and then somebody more famous than me would come up with something similar, but not quite as effective, and get credit for it.

There is a fair amount of truth to both those statements. It is also true that bitterness is unhelpful now, and that we all need to push ourselves to determine the best way to defeat fascism American style.

Solutions to any problem are arrived at first by diagnosing the problem correctly. If you do not fully understand the problem, it is almost impossible to solve it. This is more than a public policy truism, but is directly to related to the question of defeating the MAGA fascist movement. Although the questions of what precisely this regime is doing and where they intend to go are extremely important-and questions I hope to kibitz about in the future. We can begin diagnosing the problem by asking a simple, yet extremely urgent, question-is this normal?

By normal, I mean is what the Trump-Musk regime doing consistent with the conventional and accepted boundaries of American political life; is it simply partisan politics within the Constitutional framework and the recognized democratic norms of the few decades preceding 2016? If the answer to that question is yes, then the approach is simple, all we need to do is to work to make sure the Democratic Party wins elections in 2026 and 2028.

There are at least three important things we can do to help make win those elections. First, we can contribute to Democratic party organizations and candidates. If you have read this far, you have probably, like me, been inundated with fundraising requests from Democratic candidates in the last few months, so one thing we can do is try to distinguish the scams from the genuine requests and give to the real candidates.

In addition to contributing money as the election approaches, we can volunteer for campaigns. I am not convinced of the value of shlepping to another state to knock on strangers’ doors, but if you live in a purple state or district, then volunteering and trying to persuade your friends and neighbors to vote Democratic would be very important.

Second, many Democratic strategists, pundits and officeholders seem to think that once the economic impact of the Trump presidency kicks in, voters will turn away from him. The shorthand for this is that when egg prices go up, Democrats win. I am not convinced of this, but if you are, then all you have to do is wait and watch the egg prices.

There is a significant discussion, some might say debate, within the Democratic Party about how to improve their strategy, messaging and campaigns in the future. Most of us are not in a position to influence those discussions, but if you believe that elections will solve our problems, then you should find a way to engage in those discussions.

There is something very appealing about focusing on elections-and therefore believing that what is happening in Washington is essentially pretty normal. This approach is straightforward, optimistic and allows us to do something we are comfortable doing. However, the less comfortable truth is that viewing the Trump-Musk regime as normal is an intellectual and moral cop-out, a refusal to confront the truth because it is too upsetting or frightening. It is also a misdiagnosis of the problem that will inevitably lead to insufficient, at best, solutions-such as focusing almost entirely on elections.

On the other hand, if, like me, you believe what is occurring in Washington is not normal, then the first thing you must do is to understand that elections alone are not going to solve the problem. To be clear, I am by no means suggesting that elections are not part of the strategy, but they cannot be the whole strategy.

As I see it, if we are experiencing something genuinely different from the usual give-and-take of American politics, something that seems painfully obvious to me, then we need a battery of strategies to defeat this regime.

Accordingly, I have identified seven areas, which will be discussed in part two and three of this series, that we need to explore in order to to identify, refine and execute a plan for (re)building American democracy. I offer these suggestions not as a fully thought-out plan, but as the directions in which we need to be strategizing, planning and exploring. These might be best understood as ideas that need to be fleshed out, but the represent, I hope, the beginnings of a holistic plan. Importantly, the first step for thinking about all of this is to recognize that the struggle will not be easy and may be better measured in decades than in election cycles.