Panicked Democratic voters are turning on their own leaders
Rep. Glenn Ivey’s constituents had had it.
At a long, tense town hall Tuesday, voter after voter pushed the Democratic congressman on what more he could be doing to fight President Donald Trump.
They cheered when he became the first congressional Democrat to publicly suggest it was “time for the Senate Democrats to pick new leadership” and blasted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to help Republicans avoid a government shutdown. But as he told the crowd that the 2026 midterm elections were the best place to channel their efforts, his constituents begged for a better answer. They wanted to know what he – and they – could do now. Many predicted there wouldn’t be free and fair elections in 2026. One person compared the Democratic Party’s response to President Trump to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler.
Why We Wrote This
Alarmed by norm-breaking Trump administration actions, Democratic voters are desperate for their party to muster more “fight.” This has parallels with the advent of the right-wing tea party, which ultimately transformed the GOP.
“I am terrified because we are moving very quickly to an authoritarian state,” one constituent said. “Congressman, I think you are polite. You are knowledgeable. You are well-spoken. You are everything we need in a congressperson in ordinary times. And we need something for non-ordinary times…. When it comes to fighting these fights we need you to be a little less polite and a little more ‘hell no.’”
Her remarks drew the loudest applause of the evening.
President Trump’s November victory initially left the Democratic base demoralized and dispirited. The massive protests that met his 2017 inauguration were nowhere to be found. But lately, a sense of growing panic at what many Democrats see as the destruction of their democracy is spurring a new, desperate energy.
Across the country, Democratic voters who have been reeling from Mr. Trump’s sweeping and possibly illegal cuts to government, his head-spinning policy moves, and his politicization of federal law enforcement are growing more and more incensed at their own party’s seemingly feckless response.
There are some parallels between Democrats’ current state and the advent of the right-wing tea party at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s tenure. That movement not only fought the other side tooth and nail but put its own leaders and lawmakers on notice with primary threats. Ultimately, many old-school establishment Republican politicians were forced from office and replaced by a younger, more hard-line generation of leaders that presaged the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
But where the chief animating emotion of the tea party was rage, this new left-wing movement is being fueled more by terror. Democratic voters are increasingly desperate for their leaders to do something – anything – before it’s too late.
The shutdown showdown
A key pivot point came last week when Democratic leaders failed to use their first bit of leverage since Mr. Trump returned to the White House: the threat of a government shutdown. Senator Schumer split with most lawmakers in his own party, and decided the lesser of two evils was to allow Republicans to pass a GOP bill that would keep the government open until September, while forcing the District of Columbia government to slash its own budget, and making it easier for Mr. Trump to move around some government funds.
Many Democrats were furious – and some called for him to step down from leadership.
“The vast supermajority of Dems want to see Dems fight back, and a super-supermajority say that they’re not fighting back hard enough,” says Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin.
Mr. Levin’s grassroots progressive organization was among the first to call for Mr. Schumer to step aside. When Mr. Ivey endorsed that stance, Mr. Levin responded: “We get the party we demand.”
The Democratic Party is currently polling at record-low approval ratings. And it’s telling which leaders most Democrats say best represent their values in a recent poll: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, two progressive pugilists, were right up there with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Just as the MAGA movement proved the GOP base’s rage was less ideological and more fight-focused than many tea party Republican politicians had assumed, this outcry from Democrats spans the political spectrum.
“The fight going on in the Democratic Party right now is not between hard left, left and moderate. It’s between those who want to fight and those who want to cave. And Team Fight stretches across all ideological aspects of the Party,” Anne Carpara, the chief of staff to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, recently posted. “Misread this at your own peril.”
If current Democratic leaders from Congress down to city hall don’t meet the moment and find a way to fight back, they may face primary challenges.
Amanda Litman is president of Run for Something, a PAC that helps recruit, train, and support younger progressive candidates for state and local office.
Nearly 32,000 people have contacted the group since Election Day to say they want to run for office, she says, with the past few days seeing their heaviest candidate recruitment since inauguration. Many plan to run against other Democrats they see as too old, too out of touch, too lacking in fight. Ms. Litman said she’s heard from a half-dozen people who have decided to challenge Democratic members of Congress in primaries.
“It’s been building since inauguration and the [shutdown] fight was just a perfect moment to demonstrate how out of touch, in particular, leadership is,” she said.
No good options
Part of the problem is that Democratic officials have few good options when it comes to actually stopping Mr. Trump right now. In an appearance on ABC’s “The View,” Senator Schumer argued that there was “no exit strategy” if Democrats had forced a shutdown, and that it would only have allowed Mr. Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk to further decimate the federal workforce.
Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto/AP
“I knew that I’d get a lot of criticism for my choice, but I felt as a leader, I had to do it,” he said. “What would happen if we cut off government spending would be devastation like we have never seen.”
But even Democrats who are sympathetic to Senator Schumer’s viewpoint said he mishandled the moment politically. House Democrats strongly opposed the GOP plan – all but one of them voted against it, and swing-district members are already facing GOP attack ads for the vote. Mr. Schumer refused to take a position until the House voted, then initially declared that Senate Republicans didn’t have the votes, signaling that he would fight the bill. One day later, he reversed course.
Democratic strategist Ray Zaccaro spent well over a decade working in both chambers on Capitol Hill, beginning with an internship in Mr. Schumer’s office. He says a shutdown would have been “catastrophic.” He just wishes Mr. Schumer had tried harder to get something in return for his vote.
“I can understand the impulse to say ‘Let’s just resolve this right now so that we don’t hurt people worse than they’re already going to be hurting,’” he says. “Democrats are stuck in a position where there’s no good solution. But at least extract something.”
He says Democrats have been “dumbstruck” by Mr. Trump’s rapid-fire moves and are struggling to meet the moment. “We are watching the erosion of very significant policy and democratic norms slipping through our fingers on a daily basis, and we’re seeing very little response.”
Democratic voters are practically grabbing their lawmakers by the lapels and shaking them as they demand more leadership.
A district full of federal workers
Mr. Ivey’s liberal, Black-majority district in Maryland, just outside Washington, has the sixth-highest proportion of federal workers of any in the country. Those workers are already bearing the brunt of the deep cuts pushed by Mr. Trump’s administration. Many at Mr. Ivey’s town hall were panicked that they’d be fired or have their pensions slashed. Most had been through government shutdowns before, where they were furloughed or lost paychecks – and yet everyone who spoke with the Monitor said they would have chosen another shutdown rather than let Republicans pass their funding bill last week.
Representative Ivey, an even-tempered, urbane lawmaker who spent years working on Capitol Hill, as well as in the Justice Department and local government before winning his congressional seat in 2022, kept his cool through most of the town hall event. His only moment of visible frustration was when he snapped, “It’s my turn” when one person began to talk over him, nearly two hours in.
“I know everybody’s angry right now. I’ve got two of my kids – they’re getting laid off too right now. So I get it. But the only way we can fix that is to take the House back and hope that the courts keep doing the right thing,” Mr. Ivey said in his closing remarks.
But that didn’t mollify many in the crowd.
They lined up to grill him for two hours, double the scheduled length of the town hall. There were still people waiting to ask questions when the event concluded.
One woman screamed at the congressman from the balcony and refused to stop. After she was escorted out, another constituent told Mr. Ivey he needed to understand what was driving the woman’s outburst.
“That lady that was irate? That sister is scared,” she said.
