As the old DNC guard fades, the next generation of leaders is missing in action

Earlier this month, MSNBC gave Trump roughly 40 minutes of live television time to rant and lie, threaten an Iowa newspaper and pollster, propose privatizing our Post Office, and muse about ending schoolchildren’s vaccine mandates for polio. At the same time Louise and I were dancing with Barack and Michelle at Union Station, Republican leaders were gathered at the Caucus Room Restaurant in DC to organize a “massive resistance” campaign against our nation’s first Black president. This is dumb of you to say,’ and a whole lot of other things that I can’t tell you on TV… “We need to build a party that tells people what it needs to hear and not what its consultants are paid just to say…” While a few brave governors have spoken out, committing themselves to resist Trump’s mass deportation plans, congressional Democrats have been largely silent. When one wealthy man famously said he’d have to leave the country because of FDR’s high taxes, Roosevelt told a crowd, “And I will miss him very much” to gales of laughter. And if she and other leaders and would-be leaders of the Democratic Party don’t step up now to challenge Trump and the fascist crew he’s assembling, don’t offer a contrasting vision for the future of our country today, don’t challenge Trump’s outrageous policies and bizarre appointees every single day, they’re going to lose us our democracy as well.