On October 18, the people marched and protested, nearly seven million of them. That is around 2% of the population of the entire United States of America. That is a whole lot of pissed off people. Then, a little over two weeks later, on November 4, a lot more people than expected voted in a few important off-year elections around the nation. The Democrats won all of them and almost all of the rest, seemingly to their own surprise.

Now, some weeks after many in the nation loudly rejected a king they don’t have and then many more voted for liberal and progressive Democrats, the action plan to neutralize the Trump agenda still seems to be no action.

In fact, the Democratic Party leadership now seems even more fixated on the notion that “mid-term” elections in November 2026 will put the brakes on President Donald Trump’s engine of destruction, cruelty, corruption and greed because “everyone” knows how pissed off everyone is.

Then, to make matters worse, there is the ongoing political drama surrounding the just-ended shutdown of the US Government. The shutdown could have provided a meaningful backdrop for a cohesive Democratic response to Republican congressional intransigence. However, when faced with the chance to further energize resistance to Trump and his acolytes, Senate Democratic Party leadership failed again to understand that credible resistance requires the demonstrated willingness to make bold and sometimes uncomfortable political choices.

There was simply no cohesive opposition leadership to lead anybody anywhere, never mind to do so in concert with others who recognized the morally bankrupt Trump “administration” as all too happy to shut down the government they “lead” and loathe. Even when this threatens access to food for America’s hungry underclass and access to healthcare for millions, Democratic Party leadership seems able to do little more than call upon those not in the underclass to care enough to show up and vote against their own interests in that dreamy “mid-term” election to come.

A journey in search of a plan

I hate to be a harbinger of potential doom, but a strategy without cohesive leadership and a serious collective action plan could surely end up looking like a loser when the votes are counted a year from now.

For those of you who missed it, try to listen to the victory speech from Zoran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York City. He has a collective action plan — bring the working class of the city into a broad coalition with the new city leadership to confront the exploitation of the working class by the monied elites who have used the city like a gilded playground in which only they can afford to play.

While you are at it, focus on the passion of Mamdani’s delivery of his message. A lot more of that is what the Democratic Party needs to find quickly, or the promise of the moment will be lost.

In this context, it may come as a surprise that there is a pending resolution of impeachment of Trump that was introduced in the US House of Representatives on April 28, 2025, by Representative Shri Thanedar, a Democrat from Michigan. Five cosponsors stepped up to sign on, four of whom quickly withdrew their sponsorship. One cosponsor remains — Representative Al Green, a Democrat from Texas. That’s it. There are over 200 Democratic members of the House of Representatives, and it appears that a whole two of them think Trump should be impeached.

I am not in the House of Representatives, but just to help show the way, I will suggest that all the feckless Democratic Representatives at least read the resolution and then endorse it as an opportunity to forcefully demonstrate what accountability could look like. Call in the media, do it publicly, line up on the floor of the House of Representatives and sign up. It would serve as a loud collective display of opposition party unity and directly challenge Republicans to do something now about the destructive chaos enveloping the nation. That would be a serious first step of a real collective action plan.

Then, how about moving on to forcefully condemn the illegality and the immorality of Trump’s game of shoot the boats and murder the unidentified occupants in international waters that has yet to yield a single referral to the International Court of Criminal Justice in The Hague.

Apparently, no US congressman or senator has figured this one out. And, no governor, mayor, nor international king, prince or prime minister has seen fit to fill the void. While Trump’s orders sure seem worthy of international investigation and condemnation, domestic and world leaders seem unable to find the moral courage to rise to the occasion.

The call for accountability

Meanwhile, the dizzying array of daily assaults on the rule of law, governance and institutional integrity continues unabated and utterly free of consequence for the dangerous and corrupt Trump and his merry band of sycophants.

In the last month alone, Trump has tried to shakedown the American taxpayers for a $230 million payout to him for alleged damages inflicted by the Biden Department of Justice, demolished the East Wing of the White House without any official pre-authorization to build a gilded ballroom with millions in cash raised from corporations and individuals shamefully and corruptly seeking government influence, and continued to order the US military to commit murder on the high seas while gleefully watching them comply. He then topped it off with loose and dangerous blather about resuming nuclear testing.

This is a short list that never even gets to the daily human toll inflicted on the nation. That list is a much longer list that hits home every day for millions of Americans and others in our midst who cannot find a collective voice to resist.

That list includes thousands of normal US government employees fired, furloughed or marginalized as Trump continues the dismantling of governance and the institutions of government. It includes experts who were ignored and removed from critical US government posts, who devoted their professional lives to protecting the public they served. Most critically, that list includes the hungry and the sick, the poorly educated and the homeless who depend on government and governance to survive.

What if all these people got together and channeled their anger and disgust at the source of much of what is happening in today’s America? And what if many of the rest of us, often free of daily peril ourselves, really got angry along with them? What if together we made it clear that it is way past time for confronting the food insecurity and healthcare deficits in our midst, the racism that fuels these and so many other societal injustices, and the rampant income inequality at the heart of the indifference of so many to the plight of so many others?

These questions seem to be ignored by those who stand silent when these questions are asked. It remains a mystery to me how so many in America can turn away when the need to engage increases exponentially every day. Perhaps it is because meaningful engagement requires something much more than passively watching the spectacle of the nation’s social, legal, institutional, and moral demise.

[Hard Left Turn first published this piece.]

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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