“Bourgeois” democracy

1. At the core of any winning strategy to defend and expand democracy are alliances that draw together multiple social constituencies of varied size, interests, and political capacity. Go it alone strategies are a time proven recipe for defeat. The drivers of white nationalist authoritarianism understand this fact quite well, and act accordingly. We should as well.

2. When our democracy is under sustained and unprecedented assault at the hands of Trump and his accomplices, the role of the left isn’t so much to remind people of the limitations of “bourgeois” democracy. Most people are aware of that reality. It is, instead, to alert them of the existential danger to “our” democracy that Trump presents.

3. Our democracy isn’t simply the handiwork of architects sitting in high places of power and working their magic since the country’s founding. It is also the creation of people in low places leveraging their numbers, diversity, vision, and unity to defend and deepen “our” democracy.

4. The titans of industry and finance, to be sure, have benefited from Trump’s policies. But it doesn’t follow that everyone of them is happy with his presidency. Not only Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer would prefer someone else sitting in the White House. Others do as well. We should welcome their opposition to Trump’s brand of authoritarian anti-democratic rule, even if their motivations and aims are different than ours.