According to the entirety of pop culture — which I’m defining as the annual broadcast of It’s A Wonderful Life, Hallmark movies, and every version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol — this is the time of year for miracles. Christmas is a moment for transformation of our views, our purpose, our principles, and a reminder to put some good out into the world — or appreciate the love and value we’ve been offering the whole time. And while this season is usually known for calls of peace on Earth and goodwill to all, my Christmas miracle is to ask Santa to bring the Democratic Party some spine.
Since the election results rolled in, Democrats have been rolling over. Across the federal government in particular, Democrats in Congress and the executive branch have been all concession and compliance, with more public declarations of how they can imagine working with an incoming Trump Administration than how they will reject and resist one. It’s a devastating turn from a campaign season that saw Democrats (correctly) claim that Donald Trump and his approach to governance pose an existential threat to the Constitutional order — even setting aside the calamitous policies on tariffs, immigration, and healthcare. Instead of highlighting even further the danger Trump represents to everything we hold dear, Democrats have downplayed it, minimized it, and accepted it as inevitable.
And it’s not just Trump: Democrats aren’t any better at confronting his legislative footsoldiers in Congress either. Even when they had the GOP dead to rights in this late budget battle, as Republicans blew up a long-planned and thoroughly negotiated deal at the behest of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Democrats in the House and Senate allowed Republicans to salvage themselves from the political devastation of a shutdown before Christmas without recovering anything that they had lost in the tantrum thrown by House Republicans. Instead, Republicans were able to freely develop an alternative plan that only received consensus from the GOP caucus in exchange for a promise to cleave 2.5 trillion dollars from “mandatory” spending on programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP (food assistance).
So as Republicans get ready to burn down the 20ᵗʰ century, coronate Donald Trump and make Elon Musk the Speaker of the House, it would be great for us, as citizens of the United States, for the Democratic Party to return from the Christmas holiday ready to throw down for democracy. Imagine Democrats running multiple public pushback campaigns against unfit nominees, using the (absolutely horrible) discoveries from the Gaetz House Report to ask how exactly the Trump Administration is vetting and picking their candidates for these essential government tasks. Or maybe they could use the last days of a Democratic Senate to remind everyone, everywhere that Donald Trump sicced a mob on Congress the last time he was in power, and that the anniversary of that awful, tragic day in our history — January 6 — is coming up. Or how about just trying every legislative and political trick and trap imaginable (and some we’ve never seen) to slow down this Republican trifecta’s implementation of Project 2025.
But honestly, even if all of these things together is too much to ask, it would be nice for Democrats to at least remember that this was a narrow election loss against a cabal of inveterate liars who said absolutely nothing honest about what they would do with power, instead of a 1984-style blowout where there were two open and straightforward options. A lot (a lot) of people came out and voted for Democrats, especially down the ballot, and we deserve representation too. More Democrats showed up for the Harris agenda in 2024 than Republicans turned out for Trump in 2020, and yet we’re treated as an afterthought — if we’re acknowledged at all. We deserve a party that fights for us — not to stir up trouble for the sake of it, or because Republicans are the enemy (even if they are), or because Democrats need to perform for optics, but because these policies and ideas are bad and harmful for the vast majority of this country and someone should stop them from going into effect. And maybe it would be nice to have a reminder that government isn’t for hurting people we dislike (or hurting people at all?!) but making lives better for as many of us as possible, regardless of our background or politics.
In the end, my Christmas wish isn’t as much about politics or policy as it is about possibility. In the new year, Democrats will be in the minority in the legislature, under a Republican administration, with the courts stacked against them. Even the best strategies and tactics will only go so far. But a Democratic Party that tries, even in the most dire circumstances, will reignite something that we haven’t had much of since November 5: hope. And that’s a gift worth giving.
