Complacency Is the New American Crisis

Guest article by Michael Cohen

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

With 473 days until the midterms, Democrats are celebrating Trump’s weakness—ignoring their own. Complacency isn’t a strategy. It’s an invitation to lose everything… again.

Let me start by saying something that shouldn’t need saying: I’m a Democrat. I have been for most of my life. I believe in civil rights, climate action, immigration reform, and protecting our democracy from most of the Trump executive orders. But I also believe in calling out bullshit—even when it comes from my own side of the aisle.
And with 473 days left until the midterm elections, I’ve got to say it: whatever Democrats are doing, it’s not enough.

Right now, Democrats are taking premature victory laps over Trump’s sagging poll numbers. They’re gleefully pointing at the endless garbage fire of his Cabinet meetings, the barrage of lies about tariffs, taxes, and wind power, the Epstein fallout, the ICE horror show. And sure, it feels good to watch him stumble. But let’s be very clear: watching Trump implode is not a strategy. It’s a hope. And hope is not a plan.
While Trump is lying to America’s face—claiming we have “no inflation” as grocery prices continue to squeeze working families—Democratic leaders are fiddling with talking points, fundraising emails, and high-minded policy memos that no one outside the Beltway gives a shit about. Trump says letters he wrote to foreign leaders magically equal trade deals. He claims tariffs punish other countries when in reality we foot the bill. He’s out here inventing asylum conspiracies, hallucinating blackouts in California, and pretending Social Security taxes no longer exist—and somehow his lies are louder than our truth.

And I get it. Democrats want to believe this is over. They want to believe Americans are tired of his voice, his face, his chaos. But I was inside that machine. I helped build the narrative. I helped bury the stories and shape the headlines. And I’m telling you: Trump doesn’t need reality to win. He needs a vacuum. And Democrats, in their current state of self-congratulating inertia, are giving him just that.

Now don’t get me wrong. Trump is lying about everything from Ukraine aid to troop levels in South Korea. The facts are clear: Europe has outpaced the U.S. in aid to Ukraine. There are 26,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, not 45,000. China is the global leader in wind power; and still, Trump says they “barely use it.” These aren’t gaffes. These are deliberate lies, delivered with confidence, because he knows most people won’t bother to check.

But here’s the part that should really scare you: Democrats aren’t inspiring confidence either.

Favorability numbers for Democratic leaders are dismal. Not “room for improvement” dismal—crisis of faith dismal. Americans don’t feel like the party has a plan. They feel like it’s full of careerists more interested in performative resistance than transformative leadership.

So, let me be my usual blunt self: You don’t beat authoritarianism with vibes. You beat it with vision. With courage. With a goddamn pulse. Where is the coordinated messaging blitz? Where are the press conferences hitting back every lie? Where is the urgency?

We’re in a moment that demands FDR energy—and we’re getting committee chairs issuing stern letters. The DNC should be throwing haymakers, not cocktail parties.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth for my fellow Democrats: Trump doesn’t win by being right. He wins when the opposition underestimates him. And right now, we are underestimating the danger. Again.

We’ve done this dance before: the smug certainty of 2016, the tentative relief of 2020, the fractured chaos of 2024. How many more warnings do we need? How many more institutions need to be compromised before we stop acting like the system will save us?

It won’t. We have to save us.

And that means Democrats have to stop pretending this is a normal political cycle. It’s not. It’s not enough to be the party of “not Trump.” We need to be the party that offers something real—bold economic reform, real immigration policy, a plan for climate and housing and healthcare that doesn’t feel like it was written by a subcommittee afraid of its own shadow.

The stakes aren’t theoretical. If Trump regains full control—unchecked, emboldened, vindicated—he’ll burn what’s left of this democracy to the ground, and he’ll do it with a smile. And if Democrats fail to meet that moment because they were too busy refreshing poll numbers or fundraising off Trump’s lunacy, then we will deserve what we get.

I say this as someone who once stood at Trump’s side, who saw the man up close, and who left that world to try and make things right. I didn’t come all this way to watch Democrats blow it from the inside.

We’ve got 473 days.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That’s the sound of democracy on the edge—not because Trump’s on the ballot, but because his grip on power requires it. His movement thrives on our inaction, our arrogance, our silence. Keep mistaking his chaos for collapse, and the question won’t be how we lost.

It’ll be why we never fought like hell to win.

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