Kick ‘em When They’re Down

Momentum means push harder.

My daddy used to tell me that when you get in a fist fight, you hit them first, and you keep hitting them until they can’t hit you back. It doesn’t go over well these days, in a world that likes its ideologies non-violent, and I’m not telling you to go hit anybody. But it was a good lesson, and it turns out to be good for a lot more than fist fights. It’s how you win in politics, and the Republican Party has understood that for most of my life.

Donald Trump embodies it, violence and all, and it bought him plenty. A trifecta that moves in lockstep behind him. A Supreme Court handing down rulings that anybody who’s read the Constitution can see run against the words and ideas in it. A House and a Senate run by cowards and opportunists unwilling to challenge Trump even on something as clear as who gets to take this country to war. Trump built real power, and he built it by hitting first and never stopping.

I’m not writing this with admiration for what he’s done with the power he accumulated. I’m writing these words because too many of us in this movement balk at building and using power. The fact is that to build a country that works for everyone in it, a country that’s more just and more moral, one that’s actually worth being proud of, we need power. We can’t be scared that our ideas won’t be popular. We can’t be scared our shared vision will be twisted and lied about. They will be. That isn’t a reason to quit pushing for a better country and a better world. To the contrary, that’s a reason to describe them better, to plan them better, to build a bigger coalition of people who can carry them. There’s never a reason to fold in a righteous fight.

But folding is exactly what we keep doing. Last Tuesday, three candidates Zohran Mamdani backed won their House primaries in New York, an earthquake by any measure. And the same week Lander won big, he pledged his support for Hakeem Jeffries. Friday, AOC followed suit. She’s pledged her loyalty to Hakeem. Why? Jeffries is the establishment. He’s the status quo. He’s the leader that has presided over a party that’s failed to beat Trump. He is the same type of Democrat that led to us losing thousands of seats over the last decade. A party leadership that is still less popular than Donald Trump. When you are trying to transform a party you can’t back down.

Lander didn’t ask for a single thing. He could at least have borrowed Jeffries’ own lines, the ones Jeffries used when reporters asked whether he’d back Mamdani. “We’re going to have to have a conversation.” “We’ve had productive conversations.” Jeffries promised him nothing and meant to promise nothing, and Lander handed over his support for free anyway. That’s the saddest habit in our movement. Our people give up before the fight even starts.

Whoever wins the House and Senate will decide on the chamber’s leadership. If the Democrats win them both in November, there needs to be a fight over who leads us. If new progressives from around the country are elected they’ve gotta demand leadership that can meet the moment. This is a transformational moment. They can’t just roll over. We need more than strongly worded letters. We need a vision. A leadership that wants a Democratic supermajority not a “strong Republican Party”. When Platner, Kiros, Larkin, Vang, El-Sayed, and the rest win in November, neither they nor we can celebrate and sit back down. That is the precise time we stand up demanding new and competent leadership for this party of ours.

And we ought to be clear about what we’re demanding, not just that we’re done folding. A floor under our votes, in writing. Ban members of Congress from trading stocks, and shut the door between Congress and the lobbying shops that hire them the day they leave. Say out loud that justices who threw out the plain words of the Constitution should be impeached. Stop arming the IDF and stop paying for a genocide. Build the housing and the energy and the health care at a scale that brings the prices down to where people can actually afford to live. That’s the price of our support for the next leader. Not a letter. Not a hashtag. A list, and the spine to hold to it.

People are calling this the Democrats’ Tea Party, and they mean it as an insult. They say the DSA is going to be the Tea Party of the left. Fine. Look at what the Tea Party ultimately created. It led straight to Donald Trump and MAGA, and built the power to take institutions apart, and put questions back on the table that the establishment thought were closed. It did all of that on sheer force of will, carried by a movement that started as the Tea Party and grew into MAGA. We can build that kind of power. The difference is what we use it for.

The Tea Party/MAGA folks are obsessed with tearing things down. Ours is focused on building and investing in the infrastructure that will raise us all up. The new breed of Democrats winning today are talking about creating enough energy and housing and electricity that we can actually afford them. We’re talking about opportunity, and fairness and accountability in the courts, here at home and out in the world. The socialists are talking about a country that stops taking part in genocides, stops arming the IDF, stops being a nation that ships bombs around the world. It’s a movement hell bent on building the future, not destroying the present.

But don’t mistake restorative for gentle. Some institutions are going to have to be rebuilt, and some are going to have to be torn down. The reason DOGE sounded reasonable to so many people is that the MAGA/Tea Party folks were willing to state the truth, that the SEC and the FDA and the FBI had all been captured and need to be transformed. They watched OxyContin pour into their towns. They watched Jeffrey Epstein glide through this country for years like the law didn’t apply to him, because it didn’t. They watched greedy Wall Streeters cheat and loot and destroy the wealth of millions and millions of Americans, and saw that the SEC and Department of Justice didn’t prosecute a single one of these criminals. They knew elections get bought and the FEC did nothing. So when the Democratic leadership tells us that these institutions are sacred and mustn’t be touched it doesn’t resonate. Voters assume you’re either a corrupted liar or a moron. Neither option inspires confidence.

When you start winning, you push harder. You don’t sit down and you don’t say thank you. You hit first, and you keep hitting, and you don’t stop until the people who broke this country can’t break it anymore.

Corbin Trent