The op-ed pages are filled with anguished essays about how Democrats can learn from their defeat in the 2024 election and rebuild their party. At the same time, there are news reports describing the new so-called “resistance” and who might be best to lead it.
One helpful hint to Democrats might be: stop calling yourself a “resistance,” and start thinking in terms of conventional “opposition” — the normal role of minority parties in representative democracy.
The term “resistance” may sound romantic to those who support the party that has just lost an election, but it is also deeply offensive. It implies that there is something tyrannical about the majority party, such that it cannot be opposed through the ordinary political process, but must instead be confronted through other, even extralegal, means: mass protest, civil disobedience, riots, or even the use of violence. That is what “resistance” movements do, historically.
Back in 2017, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown — who once joked that his state would have to build a wall to keep the rest of America out if Trump won — advised fellow Democrats against calling themselves the “resistance.” “I don’t use the term resistance,” he told the New York Times. “That was a term I associate with the French underground and people who risked their lives. So I don’t know that that’s a fair, apt metaphor for the latest contretemps over policy.”
What Brown understood was that if Democrats were the “resistance,” that meant Trump and the Republicans were the “Nazis.” That was deeply divisive, and an insult to those who actually fought — or were murdered by — Nazis. In a free country, with elections and a strong federalist structure, there were many ways to oppose a sitting government through constitutional means — even by adopting completely contrary policies, as Gov. Brown and California did.
Democrats ignored Brown’s advice, however, and became increasingly extreme. From their point of view — though shortsighted — it worked: they won control of the House of Representatives in 2018 and elected several radical new members, forming a “Squad” behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). In 2020, they took to the streets in the Black Lives Matter protests, which became riots in many places, and achieved the desired result of removing Trump.
But once they started down that radical path, Democrats could not return. While they chose Joe Biden as their nominee in 2020, they only did so after the most radical primary in American history, and Biden moved toward the left — not the middle — after he was nominated and elected. Biden’s successor as nominee in the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, could not live down the many extreme commitments she made as a candidate in 2019.
Worse, Harris resorted to calling Trump and his supporters “Nazis.” Some observers were shocked, but perhaps they simply had not been paying attention: Democrats had treated Republicans that way since the 2016 election. The name-calling backfired, as Orthodox Jews showed up for Trump rallies and record numbers of minorities turned out to vote for Trump. Invoking the term “Nazis” reinforced the idea that Harris and her party were simply out of touch.
If Democrats want to regain voters’ trust, they should drop the idea of “resistance” and return to good, old-fashioned “opposition.” Don’t try to break the system just because you don’t control it: use words, and reason, to explain why the government is wrong and why your ideas are better. Appeal to the better nature of those you want to convince; don’t create fear, destruction, and chaos. Above all, listen to your fellow citizens: they are trying to tell you something.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
