Democrats and progress in the next two years

David Cay Johnston has been covering Donald Trump for decades. In the first part of this recent interview, he talks about various ways that Trump may try on Election Day to suppress the actual vote. It also discusses the recent reception that Trump and J.D. Vance are encountering in public and Trump’s recent authoritarian performances. (1)

 

He also comments on some ongoing disgraces including the fact that the US minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2009 when it was set at $7.25/hr. So the feeling of voters that the Democratic Party too often fails to deliver on its basic promises is not simply the result of effective Republican marketing. This will be a particular challenge if the Democrats successfully win control over both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 election.

Democrats can’t stop the Republicans from using messaging like: “See? The Democrats control all of Congress and they still can’t deliver on anything!”

But the Democrats do have real possibilities to make sure the voting public can see that they are promoting popular policies. They can pass bills on popular issues, like a minimum wage increase and legislative solutions aimed at limiting campaign contributions, i.e., to remedy the damage done by the Supreme Court with Citizens United and related decisions. The raising of the minimum wage and undoing Citizens United have been consistent Democratic talking points since early in the Obama Administration.

But it’s one thing to make issues like that part of a list of issues on a fundraising e-mail. It’s another to convince the majority of voter that the Democratic Party is collectively serious about doing something to fix the actual problems.

Selling pardons, corrupt business deals, shady deals favoring foreign oligarchs from whom the President’s family and business allies benefit in large and even spectacular ways – these are all issues that ordinary voters understand are connected to bad governance. It’s a hopeful sign that Democrats have been stressing the corruption issue in the final weeks of this year’s campaigns.

But the Democrats cannot afford to let the corruption issues become blurred into some vague “good government” idea. With control of one or both houses, they can use both legislative initiatives and the extensive investigatory power of Congress to keep the focus on problems caused by the Republican President and Republican policies.

“Bipartisanship”

When Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention famously declared, “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America” – a theme that John Kerry used as the Presidential candidate that year – that sounded to at least many Democrats like a welcome relief from the ugly partisanship of the Clinton and Bush II years.

What the country needs are good policies, like elections that can’t be bought by billionaire oligarchs. Like secure health insurance for everyone, i.e., Medicare for All. Like much more progressive taxes on those oligarchs. Like practical regulations on AI (“SI” in TrumpSpeak). Like a higher minimum wage. Like requiring the President to obey the laws of the United States.

But one of the peculiar features of American politics is the strange hangover of the idea that “bipartisanship” is somehow a virtue in and of itself. From the end of the Civil War until around 1980 at the latest, the ideological divisions in US politics were played out across both parties. There were conservative and liberals in both. FDR relied on Republican support for his major New Deal programs. The Republicans (at least until recently) would periodically remind the public that Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act could only pass with Republican votes.

That era of that kind of bipartisanship essentially ended with Ronald Reagan’s election as President. The Trumpist Republican Party doesn’t bother with such bipartisan posturing. They’re currently calling the whole Democratic Party communists and terrorism supporters of terrorism.

But in 2026, essentially no voters actually consider “bipartisanship” as somehow a virtue in itself. And the Republican Party certainly does not. Of course, we need both parties to support the basic Constitutional structure with democracy and the rule of law. And when the Democrats get solid legislation passed with Republican votes, that’s great! But they should make sure that everyone knows that those Republican votes were welcome because they supported a good Democratic bill. The same is obviously also true for foreign policy.

The author Gil Duran is one of many people currently calling urgent attention to the threat to democracy from TechBro oligarchs, as in the following interview. (2) This is an issue the Democrats need to urgently address – no matter how much or how little “bipartisanship” Republicans may decide to show.


This post was originally published on the ProDA-Progresssive Caucus of Democrats Abroad Substack.

Notes:

(1) Trump Frantically Looking For Ways to Dupe Voters as Hecklers Take Over Rally. Mark Thompson Show YouTube channel 10/21/2026. <https://youtu.be/HGKHdT42bUQ?si=bgqiMC9zO-CB6Nyy> (Accessed: 2026-22-10).

(2) 'You're with the billionaires or you're with the people' — Interview with Gil Duran. DW News YouTube channel 10/21/2026. <https://youtu.be/2176dnVR02E?si=5a2jrV3yk9NldDiY> (Accessed: 2026-22-10).