In his latest column, “Democrats, Trump has given you a mission. Accept all of it. The republic is under siege. What can be done?,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes that “However, disoriented Democrats may be, they have to understand that Trump has given them a mission. They need to accept it — all of it….Which means that a lot of what once passed for strategy is useless now. Democrats cannot pretend that business-as-usual behavior is appropriate to this moment. They cannot “choose their battles” because what’s at stake is not just this or that policy but whether we will endure as a free republic in which presidents recognize they are not monarchs. It’s absurd to say of Trump “we will work with him where we can” when the project on which they’d be “working with him” involves shattering the rule of law and making it impossible for government workers to do the jobs Americans expect them to carry out….Democrats who want to save the nation — and their party — need to end their malaise, mobilize their supporters and fight for something that matters. If our constitutional democracy doesn’t matter, I don’t know what does….Franklin D. Roosevelt built the New Deal coalition by opposing concentrated economic power and highlighting the human costs of a form of capitalism with weak guardrails and a paltry safety net. Ronald Reagan unraveled the New Deal coalition with his three antis — anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-communism. In both cases, the power of negative thinking created paths to sweeping affirmative agendas….Trump’s firings have disabled the National Labor Relations Board by depriving it of a quorum. It now has no way of enforcing labor law and protecting workers’ rights. That’s his reward to the many working-class voters who helped elect him….Republicans who control Congress should also be up in arms about the Trump-Musk incursion on their authority. But since they’re falling into line behind a surrender to the executive branch, Democrats have no choice but to make the Trumpist GOP’s going as difficult as possible.”

Dionne continues, “Trump’s obvious indifference to rising costs should, as party strategist James Carville has argued, be at the center of Democratic accountability efforts. Trump, after all, promised to “slash your prices” and bring down “the price of everything.” But his priorities — revenge, political control of the administration of justice, the intimidation of civil servants, and, for that matter, takeovers of Greenland and Gaza — have nothing to do with lowering what consumers pay for groceries, gas or housing. His tariffs will only make inflation rise….An alert reader might say that much of what’s being proposed here sounds a lot like “the resistance” to the first Trump presidency. That is precisely what is needed now — more, even, than the last time around….Sure, the term was a little precious, but what’s forgotten is that the first resistance was effective. It helped save the Affordable Care Act, end Republican control of the House, flip seven governorships, and elect hundreds to legislatures and local offices. Legions of smart lawyers repelled many of Trump’s abuses — and this time around, the legal profession has been at the forefront of the early victories against his maneuvers, including Saturday’s ruling restricting the Musk group’s access to Treasury Department data….Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist who studied the anti-Trump movement, noted recently in the New Republic that what worked the last time were the “persistent, community-based efforts by 2,000 to 3,000 grassroots Resistance groups in every town, city, and suburb across virtually all congressional districts.” The events of the past three weeks summon Americans again to diners, churches, libraries, union halls and taverns to organize, to pressure their elected officials (especially the 15 House Republicans who won last year by five percentage points or less), and to reach out to their friends and neighbors to warn them about what Trump is doing to their democracy.”

In “Former Sanders, Fetterman campaign consultants start new firm aimed at winning back working-class voters: They’re aiming to elect more nontraditional candidates with a populist, anti-establishment streak,” Holly Otterbein writes at Politico: “A group of Democratic strategists who worked for some of the biggest unorthodox names in liberal politics is launching a new firm….The consultants who helped guide Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and the winning Senate bids for John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego are branding their new company Fight Agency….They said they’re aiming to elect more nontraditional candidates with a populist, anti-establishment streak. They’re even open to fielding left-leaning independents who eschew the Democratic Party label altogether….POLITICO is first to report on their announcement….The strategists behind Fight Agency declined to share the names of any potential new clients, but said they expect to work in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential campaign….They have at points worked to elect more traditional candidates, including former President Joe Biden. But many of their past clients are known for their offbeat styles, willingness to speak off the cuff, and a propensity to ruffle the feathers of their own party leaders — an approach to politics the consultants plan to employ at their new venture….McDonald, who made ads for Dan Osborn, a left-leaning independent Senate candidate in Nebraska who lost but outperformed the top of the ticket in 2024, said “outsiders, working-class candidates, even a few independents — this is kind of what people want, and there should be a team that can help them.”….As Democrats grapple with how to win back blue-collar voters, Mulvey said Sanders, Fetterman and Gallego provide “clues” for their party. He said they “all have the ability to connect with working-class and independent voters” and represent “anti-establishment, economic messaging, populist messaging.”

According to Jennifer Bowers Bahney, writing at The Raw Story, a “Single Trump decision could be driving working-class Hispanics back to the Dems: analysis.” As Bahney explains, “Working-class Hispanic voters who turned their backs on Democrats to help elect Donald Trump may soon make a U-turn, according to an analysis in Tuesday’s New York Times….The report listed Trump policies that appealed to Hispanic U.S. citizens and which are currently being carried out: “raids and deportations; the opening of a migrant internment camp at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the president’s attempt to end automatic citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil; tariffs threatened, then pulled back, on Mexican goods; and the U.S. military dispatched to the border.”….But, the report claimed Trump’s embrace of billionaire Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could be the catalyst that drives Hispanic voters back into the arms of the Democrats….Sylvia Bruni, a Democratic Party leader, agreed that the party needed to focus less on issues like abortion and gender “if it wanted to win back socially conservative Latinos.”….Bruni said, “The Republicans kept telling voters: I promise you, eggs are going to be down to $1 a dozen. Economics is what did us in.”