The American people can smell a rat. If we want to be trusted partners, we have to show we are worthy of the trust and be willing to do what it takes to engage, explain and bring people to us.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (C) celebrates with supporters after signing a bill that raises the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour on June 3, 2014, in Seattle, Washington. (David Ryder / Getty Images)
As Democrats and millions of Americans across the country stand up to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of the MAGA Republicans, we must make sure we’re clear about what this fight is about—and what our vision is for the future.
We need to be clear about what we are standing up for, fight hard for that vision, and invite everyone who wants to be in our tent to come in.
Most importantly, we need to fight for a true Democratic vision, not a Republican-lite vision that makes people question whether we stand for anything at all. That means we should proudly be for living wages that allow you to work one job instead of three, allow you to make enough so you have a roof over your head, food on the table, a good education for your kids, healthcare you can afford, and retirement with dignity.
We should proudly be for genuine social and economic opportunity that respects every person for who they are and respects our differences, but also our common vision of how we can thrive, not just survive.
And the Democratic Party must stop courting those billionaires who are simply pouring money into defeating us, destroying unions, and all organized power that seeks to resist them.
This embrace of billionaire megadonors, corporate PACs, and powerful special interests is precisely what led to the disastrous 2024 election. But anyone who thinks we just lost this election is missing the point.
We started losing more than a decade ago when Democrats knowingly abandoned working people across America to push for free trade instead of fair trade during NAFTA. We reinforced that by bailing out big banks and Wall Street instead of working people and Main Street during the 2008 recession.
And all along, it took way too long to get the Democratic establishment to rally around raising the federal minimum wage or designing a universal system that doesn’t just subsidize private insurance companies to provide healthcare to a few while raising the rates for everyone else. We keep defending economic and political systems that are rigged against the people, instead of being willing to boldly call out what needs to change.
Let’s change the script. It’s time to respect Democrats’ natural base of voters and potential voters, and work to win them over.
Instead of constantly being tied to ever-changing polling, Democrats should be leaders in shaping public opinion towards an inclusive and equitable vision that gives every working person and poor person a place to stand. Abraham Lincoln understood the need to use our powerful platforms for good when he famously said, “Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”
Our opposition agenda must push back boldly on the MAGA-extremist and fascist efforts to strip away the things we need to survive. We need to stand up against economic and nativist cruelty and inhumanity—whether directed at poor people across this country or Trump’s program of mass deportations. And we need to be willing to lead the fight back at every level against Trump’s outrageous agenda that gives $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and betrays working people and poor people by slashing every program and benefit that we need to thrive in America.
I know that many important organizations are asking you to donate today, but this year especially, The Nation needs your support.
Over the course of 2025, the Trump administration has presided over a government designed to chill activism and dissent.
The Nation experienced its efforts to destroy press freedom firsthand in September, when Vice President JD Vance attacked our magazine. Vance was following Donald Trump’s lead—waging war on the media through a series of lawsuits against publications and broadcasters, all intended to intimidate those speaking truth to power.
The Nation will never yield to these menacing currents. We have survived for 160 years and we will continue challenging new forms of intimidation, just as we refused to bow to McCarthyism seven decades ago. But in this frightening media environment, we’re relying on you to help us fund journalism that effectively challenges Trump’s crude authoritarianism.
For today only, a generous donor is matching all gifts to The Nation up to $25,000. If we hit our goal this Giving Tuesday, that’s $50,000 for journalism with a sense of urgency.
With your support, we’ll continue to publish investigations that expose the administration’s corruption, analysis that sounds the alarm on AI’s unregulated capture of the military, and profiles of the inspiring stories of people who successfully take on the ICE terror machine.
We’ll also introduce you to the new faces and ideas in this progressive moment, just like we did with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. We will always believe that a more just tomorrow is in our power today.
Please, don’t miss this chance to double your impact. Donate to The Nation today.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and publisher, The Nation
But we also need to have a very clear proposition agenda that draws people in—and that speaks to the need to redesign our institutions from healthcare to education to jobs and wages.
We must fight against Trump’s attacks on healthcare coverage while also standing up for a true universal healthcare program that doesn’t put the more than 100 million Americans with over $220 billion in debt even deeper in the red.
We must stand up to Trump and Elon’s taking a chain saw to our economy and also detail our plans to lower housing, grocery, and childcare costs.
We must do everything we can to stop Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich and provide the clear alternative of making the ultra-wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.
And as we do this, we must remember that hypocrisy doesn’t work: You can’t be in bed with corporations, take their money, and then tell people you are fighting for working folks over big campaign donors.
The American people can smell a rat. If we want to be trusted partners, we have to show we are worthy of the trust and be willing to do what it takes to engage, explain and bring people to us.
Democrats need to stop dithering about process and rules. We have to be clear that we will upend this rigged system and do what it takes to make good on our promises for living wages, affordable housing, universal healthcare, and expanded Social Security. We need to actually invest in our power base of organized labor by expanding the right to organize and investing in domestic manufacturing.
It’s not a coincidence that my home state of Washington is the only state to barely shift red in November. We have one of the most union-dense states in the country and, together with community organizations, have utilized both elected bodies and the ballot to show who we stand for.
The city I represent, Seattle, was the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage back in 2014—and our economy is still one of the strongest in the country. We were among the first states to raise our state minimum wage to one of the highest in the country, and to tie it to inflation so it balances out higher costs. We provide the strongest paid family leave program and the most generous college aid program in the country. And when Republicans tried to repeal the capital gains tax, even the voters in counties that went over 90 percent for Trump rejected it, agreeing that the wealthiest should pay their fair share in taxes.
Get unlimited access: $9.50 for six months.
Voters in Washington state were less likely to abandon us Democrats because we never abandoned them.
Consider the stunning statistic that 90 million eligible voters did not register in 2024. That’s on top of the 9.1 million registered voters who did not vote at all in 2024. Those numbers absolutely dwarf Trump’s popular vote win of just 2 million voters.
Even in key swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan, the populations of eligible-to-vote people who did not vote are significant enough to change the trajectory of the results in those states.
What would happen if we abandoned the conventional “establishment” thinking and redefine who our “swing” voters are—focusing on these 90 million people? Our path to victory is to be clear about our opposition and our proposition, to speak directly to people, and to fight for them. Not more of the same centrist platitudes that don’t offend anyone yet fail to win anyone over.
The good news is that this is not an ideological fight within the Democratic Party, whatever corporate-backed Beltway groups pushing tired centrism think. Progressives, moderates, independents, and even some Republicans just want a system that isn’t rigged against them.
We can win people back with a clear populist agenda that resonates in red and blue districts. We can refuse to listen to the same corporate interests that killed our coherent party identity by embracing anti-union free-trade agreements, relentlessly lobbying Senate Democrats against multiple pro-worker policies, or abandoning immigrants, trans kids, or poor people.
Democracies fall in a matter of months, not years, so this is urgent. But we can do it. Let’s start now.
Rep. Pramila JayapalTwitterPramila Jayapal is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the US representative for Washington’s Seventh Congressional District.