At a time when political rights are being contested, Dahlia Lithwick shares her thoughts on the women who are working tirelessly through the law and legal system in pursuit of justice and a more democratic society. Lithwick is the senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law.
"Show the Way" by folk singer David Wilcox is a gift to this moment.
I’ve spent nearly five decades encouraging citizens to move from debilitating despair to engaged activism. During all of this time, whenever I needed a break or a little inspiration, I turned to music, something I think more and more of us need these days. So it was a special treat to rediscover “Show the Way,” a song by folk singer David Wilcox and a particular gift to this moment. It begins:
“You say you see no hope.
You say you see no reason we should dream
that the world would ever change.
You say that love is foolish to believe
‘cause there'll always be some crazy
with an army or a knife
to wake you from your daydream,
put the fear back in your life”
Too many of us see no hope and feel the fear creeping back into our lives.
I heard warnings of that fear and hopelessness at the 2024 Miami Book Fair. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni spoke about his book “The Age of Grievance” and his concern about “our nation’s change from a fundamental optimism to a fundamental pessimism” and bemoaned “our love of simple answers that absolve us of any responsibility.”
Eddie Glaude Jr. — Princeton professor, MSNBC panelist and author of “We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For” — warned that President-election Donald Trump “gives a permission structure for folks to hate and blame others for their condition.” Journalist and author of “We Are Home” Ray Suarez cautioned that “President-elect Trump is offering recycled hatred from the earliest time in our country” and worried that “threats are so huge that we’ll make room for cruelty.”
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But along with the authors’ deep concern were their calls to forge a better way. Bruni encouraged “civil discussion” and cited “the need to find common ground and seek compromise.” Glaude said that “for democracy to work we must become better people.” And Suarez’s own podcast, “On Shifting Ground,” aims to “give us hope for human resilience.”
In “Show the Way,” the songwriter’s relief from the bleakness comes in the chorus and points to the grounding that all great spiritual and political leaders offer:
“Look, if someone wrote a play
just to glorify what's stronger than hate
would they not arrange the stage
to look as if the hero came too late?
He's almost in defeat,
it's looking like the evil side will win
so on the edge of every seat
from the moment that the whole thing begins.
It is love who mixed the mortar
and it's love who stacked these stones
and it's love who made the stage here
although it looks like we're alone
in this scene, set in shadows,
like the night is here to stay
there is evil cast around us
but it's love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way”
Wasn’t the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “It’s love that wrote the play” when, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality”?
And didn’t King offer further clarity on what each of us can do to contribute to this ultimate reality when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that”?
But this leaves us with the question, “How?”
Organizations that work to deliver transformational advocacy lead with love and train us to reach across the aisle. They 1) start with bringing people together and forming them into local chapters so we’re not working alone, 2) train us to become effective activists and 3) encourage us to have breakthroughs, to do things as activists we never thought we could do. They treat us as the powerful people that we are.
But most nonprofits don’t even take the first step. They fail at starting new chapters, or they avoid the challenge altogether, because they see their members as incapable and not really committed.
I find former Citizens’ Climate Lobby Executive Director Mark Reynolds’ approach to starting a chapter to be particularly inspiring:
“Before I go to a city to start a CCL Chapter, I decide that I am going to fall in love with them before I get there. So, when I arrive, I try to find evidence in them and in the environment about why I will never be the same from having spent time with them.”
There will be a lot of challenging and exciting work in the next few years. That makes it all the more important to find an organization that understands and operates from the realization that “In this darkness love will show the way.”
Daley-Harris is the author of “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy” and the founder of RESULTS and Civic Courage. This is part of a series focused on better understanding transformational advocacy: citizens awakening to their power.
In August 2019 I wrote: “Diverse people must be in every room where decisions are made.” Co-author Debilyn Molineaux and I explained that diversity and opportunity in regard to race/ethnicity, sex/gender, social identity, religion, ideology would be an operating system for the Bridge Alliance — and, we believed, for the nation as a whole.
A lot has happened since 2019.
After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the nation erupted in protest with renewed demands for justice and reform. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was placed at the forefront of academic and corporate policies.
And now, after the election of 2024, attitudes toward DEI appear to have turned 180 degrees. As we head into 2025, DEI has been rejected by a vast portion of the American electorate and thus many claim there is a mandate for members of Congress and the president of the United States to turn back the clock on diversity, equity and inclusion.
This thinking is not new. Almost a year ago, I wrote:
“Diversity, equity and inclusion are words that excite passion on all sides of the political spectrum. Yet as so often happens when passions are aroused, the possibility of having a meaningful discussion with any semblance of the critical thinking required to understand the complexity of the subject is virtually impossible.”
In that writing, I quoted an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled “DEI Spells Death for the Idea of a University,” in which writer Matthew Spalding made this statement:
“Diversity is no longer a term to describe the breadth of our differences but a demand to flatter and grant privileges to purportedly oppressed identity groups. Equity assigns desirable positions based on race, sex and sexual orientation rather than character, competence and merit. Inclusion now means creating a social environment where identity groups are celebrated while those who disagree are maligned.”
Rather than speak in sound bites — as will certainly happen as politicians try to take advantage of the perceived mandate to end DEI — it is more important than ever for those on the left and the right to open their minds to the complexities of diversity in colleges, universities, workplaces, our communities and our lives.
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In the coming months, The Fulcrum will reexamine the complexities of DEI. We must ask ourselves if diversity means a granting of privileges to those who are not deserving or whether it means an equality of opportunity so that our nation can merely live into the diversity that is America. As politicians will use fear to appeal to the hearts and minds of Americans, The Fulcrum will instead lead through deep inquiry and analysis
The results of the election offer an opportunity for DEI proponents to deeply reflect on the mistakes that have been made with respect to DEI thinking and policy. We will call on both proponents and opponents of DEI to have deep discussions as to what equity really means asking questions like:
Should equity assign desirable positions based on race, sex and sexual orientation rather than character, competence and merit? Or should the term equity simply mean bringing fairness and justice to institutions and the workplace by providing equality of opportunity? Or something else?
Our inquiry will ask whether DEI advocates used the term inclusion, either consciously or unconsciously, to accept a cancel culture that celebrated identity groups while maligning those who disagreed with these policies or were not a part of these groups. We fully understand that many politicians have used “cancel culture” and “woke” as red herrings to divert attention from the complex issues facing a diverse nation, but this doesn’t preclude opening our minds to a discussion on how to define equity as an operating system and not as a quota.
The issues facing our nation are far too serious to be left to the seekers of political advantage. We realize that addressing the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion is complex. We understand that in the world of today’s politics it is easier for the politicians on both sides to use fearful and hateful rhetoric to rally their constituencies. This is why, as a nation, we must face the issues that have divided us for over 200 years. We must understand that this messy and frustrating process of democracy will only work if We the People rise above the politics of division and separation.
It is our responsibility as citizens and citizen leaders to rise above this infighting and demagoguery. Our national challenges and problems are earnest, urgent and serious. Thomas Jefferson recognized that democracy was born from discourse and discussion, and that such resulting discussion would be replete with differing perspectives and opinions.
For our Republic to survive ideological and power differences, we must lead with inquiry, and move from inquiry to shared truth.
The Fulcrum understands that one of the greatest challenges facing Americans is to live up to our nation’s motto of E pluribus unum — Out of many, one.
Please join us in the coming months as we explore pluralism through deep inquiry and analysis.
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The resistance to Donald Trump has failed. He has now shaped American politics for nearly a decade, with four more years — at least — to go. A hard truth his opponents must accept: Trump is the most dominant American politician since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
This dominance unsettles and destabilizes American democracy. Trump is a would-be authoritarian with a single overriding impulse — to help himself above all else.
Yet somehow he keeps winning.
Trump's political opponents must change course. The time for emoting your way through the Trump era is over. It's time to be rational, to earn credibility with swing voters, to win elections. It's time to stop helping Trump’s MAGA movement and, instead, to stop it in its tracks.
There should be four key features of Trump Resistance 2.0.
First, don't overreach. Despite Trump's legitimate electoral victory in 2016, many wanted him removed from office — one way or another — even before he was inaugurated. This impulse led Trump’s opponents to coalesce around Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. There was a simple problem: The evidence wasn’t there. The idea that Trump colluded in cyberspace to help Vladimir Putin hack into the Democratic National Committee’s email servers was always a triumph of partisanship over reason.
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Then came Trump's first impeachment. Trump shouldn’t have misused his office to seek dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine. But the impeachment process — led by arch anti-Trumpist Adam Schiff — was never about seeking the truth for the American people. It was only about removing Trump.
And, finally, there was District Attorney Alvin Bragg's prosecution in New York. Bragg wasn't blindly pursuing justice with this case. The underlying facts happened seven years earlier and his legal theory was highly controversial, even outside pro-Trump circles. Bragg, like Schiff, had only one transparent goal — to hurt Donald Trump.
All this anti-Trump overreaching backfired. It had the opposite of its intended effect. It helped Trump. It mobilized and grew his base. Trump's narrative that he fought the machine and won powerfully resonates with many Americans.
Second, be accurate. Misusing the legal system isn't the only way to help Trump. Making highly inaccurate assertions does, too.
Take the widespread narrative that he's a dictator. The American people watched Trump be president for four years and come nowhere near establishing a dictatorship. He can't even get his choice for attorney general (Matt Gaetz) a confirmation hearing. He'd rather be golfing than plotting the takedown of our democracy. Are swing voters really supposed to believe he threatens to plunge America into dictatorship?
Third, respect American democracy. The myopic quest to resist Trump has led many to reject American democracy's essential principles. Many of Trump's opponents haven’t just cast aside the rule of law. They've suppressed speech. They've tried to defund the police. They've opposed incremental and rational immigration measures.They've railed against numerous hallmarks of American history and tradition. As the presidential election resoundingly reaffirmed: that is not a winning strategy.
Finally, to effectively resist Trump, anoint the right champion. The Democrats need a leader who's in tune with the American people. Politics isn't about forcing what you want on other people. It's about winning elections so you get more of what you want than if you lose. It was a startling error to put forth Joe Biden as Trump's alternative until a few months before the election. Going forward the Democrats must rally around a strong, vibrant leader with a mainstream message that resonates broadly with the American people.
Otherwise they’ll just keep losing.
The hearts and minds of Trump's opponents have come from an understandable place. But we need more mind and less heart. It's time to be rational and effective. It's time to stop losing elections and start winning them. It's time for something new.
Cooper is the author of “How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by staff during her arrival at the White House on Nov. 12.
“Democrats are like the Yankees,” said one of the most memorable tweets to come across on X after Election Day. “Spent hundreds of millions of dollars to lose the big series and no one got fired or was held accountable.”
Too sad. But that’s politics. The disappointment behind that tweet was widely shared, but no one with any experience in politics truly believes that no one will be held accountable.
It’s common after a national election to see partisans on the losing side join other operatives and media experts in autopsies of the defeat, pointing fingers or coming up with an abundance of excuses.
This time it’s the Democrats sifting through the wreckage of defeat to determine if Election Day was a circumstantial setback or the unfolding of a potentially long-term disaster.
That fear was only encouraged by the realization that the party was in for a repeat of the stunning disappointment Democrats suffered in their loss to Trump in 2016.
This time, Trump actually outperformed his 2020 margins across the map, winning the popular vote as well as the electoral vote, despite his well-documented negatives, including 34 felony convictions.
History also tells us that the parties have shown impressive resilience in their ability to come back from disaster in recent decades.
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But, first, comes a reckoning.
The day after the election, as the Washington Post reported, the Dems were “awash in angst-ridden second-guessing.”
Ah, yes, political junkies in the chattering classes produced ample scenarios to pinpoint where they went wrong.
What if Harris had picked, say, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate? Could that have helped her margins in the “blue wall” states? If Biden had stayed in the race, could he have retained the strong coalition that carried him to victory in 2020?
But the bigger question is, how could the party have so lost touch with the voters that they underestimated the numbers of voters who still wanted to vote for Trump’s mixed message?
The question reminds me of a fundamental principle of political campaigns and voter behavior that I first heard Democratic consultant James Carville express: “Every election is a contest between ‘change’ and ‘more of the same.’ ”
“Change” was the magic word that inspired and propelled the relatively unknown Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s long-shot campaign to victory in 2008, when the war-weary and economically shaken voters looked for change after eight years under Republican George W. Bush’s presidency. A similar desire for change worked in Joe Biden’s favor against Trump in 2020.
Unfortunately for Harris, she was too closely tied to the Biden administration to credibly promote herself as a change agent. Nor did she have enough time to come up with more of a platform of her own.
Things could have worked out better for her and other Democratic candidates if they had followed the advice offered by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.
Judis is a journalist from the left who has studied and written about American democracy for decades. Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at Washington’s conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and before that was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which makes him one of the few researchers I know who has worked at a liberal and a conservative think tank without losing his mind — a commendable achievement in Washington, a town too often hobbled by ideological segregation.
Their latest book, "Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes," offers a wake-up call for Democrats and others who they believe have lost sight of the people in America’s political center who both parties are trying to woo. Or should be.
Both parties are afflicted these days with new challenges, even as they try to figure out changes in the electorate that resulted from old challenges.
For example, the turnout of so many young, disenchanted and underemployed white males in this campaign year came as a surprise, particularly to Democrats, who were expecting the party’s support of abortion rights to carry them closer to victory than it finally did.
That, too, offers an important political lesson. Timing is everything, it is often said. But issues matter, too.
Where have all the Democrats gone? Maybe the party’s leaders need to go find out.
Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.
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