An Open Letter To Democratic Leadership: Get Your Shit Together
Voters handed Democrats the House and the Senate on Tuesday. This is the last chance, and the party needs a plan before January.
Phase One Is Done
Tuesday was the voters' job, and they did it. Democrats won control of the House and the Senate, and they won in places the party had stopped visiting: Texas, South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa. This was a rout, and it was historic. NBC News projects Democrats will hold at least 258 House seats. By the House Historian's count, that would be the most since 1993, when they also held 258.
NBC called it a forceful repudiation of Trump's agenda, and it said what voters were asking for:
a clear-cut message that Congress has not done enough to provide checks on his administration and needs to do more to address affordability and corruption.
That is the assignment. Checks. Affordability. Corruption. Three words. Write them on the wall of every caucus room in the Capitol.
I Remember 2024
Two years ago, Republicans took the White House and the Senate and held the House. Democratic voters showed up, knocked doors, gave money, and watched it go sideways anyway. Then came the autopsies. Who to blame. Which ad missed. What the focus groups said.
And the fight that's still going: whether Joe Biden should have run for a second term at all, instead of spending the year before the election setting his vice president up to win. He left the race in July, and the party went into the most important election in a generation with a candidate who had weeks to catch up.
I'm done reading autopsies, and I'm done hoping the leaders of this party grow a spine. So I'll say it here the way I said it on X on Wednesday, as a lifelong, committed Democrat:
Never underestimate the Democratic Party's ability to fuck this up.
After 2024, I won't.
Ever again.
This letter is a demand. Every Democrat should be saying the same thing to their representatives this week, in one voice, so everyone in leadership hears it.
Get In A Room
House Democrats say they already know their first week. TIME reports they plan bills to rescind Trump's tariffs, restore the Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired, and reverse $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, plus a resolution to end the Iran war or make Trump get Congress to authorize it. Good. That's a week. You have two years.
On Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries said this about investigations:
We haven't evaluated who are going to be the targets of the investigation right out of the gate. We'll have those conversations over the next couple of weeks.
Have them. Then tell us what you decided.
And settle who runs the Senate. On Wednesday morning, Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan would not say whether he'd back Chuck Schumer for majority leader. Settle it fast, and settle it behind closed doors. Voters handed you the gavels to govern. Every week spent fighting over them on morning TV is a week wasted.
Get in a room. Map the agenda for the next two years and the plan to pass it. Put it in writing. Then do it.
Make The Deals That Help People
Trump says he wants deals. On election night he told CBS News, "I have total veto power and I'm sure we'll be able to work things out." The next day he told Politico, "I don't want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything."
Take him at his word, and make every deal pay. Lower costs. Medicaid restored. And the health care plan he has promised for a decade, the one that has been "two weeks" away since 2020. Call him on it, and go big.
The Affordable Care Act did what it could with the hand Obama was dealt. Single-payer never had the votes, and the ACA was the market-based compromise that could pass. Now you hold the cards. Trump is a lame duck fresh off a cataclysmic midterm loss. Truth be told, health care is a bargaining chip to him. He's transactional. His positions move to wherever the support he needs is, and with his last election behind him, he needs MAGA less than ever. The Republicans in both chambers have less reason to fall in line behind him now.
If a deal doesn't change something people feel at the kitchen table, it's a photo op.
You don't have time for photo ops. You get two years.
And when he won't deal, send him the bill anyway and make him veto it in public. Adam Schiff put it plainly: "We're telling the country that these are our priorities." Say it with bills, one after another, until the record speaks for itself.
Close The ATM
Then go after the people who treated the American system like a personal ATM. House committee staff have already told TIME where they want to start: Trump's cryptocurrency dealings, Truth Social's sale of faster access to his posts, the luxury jet from Qatar, and donors who may have traded contributions for tariff exemptions. The White House says there are no conflicts of interest. Fine. Subpoena the records and let the documents answer.
The Government Accountability Office has already found that this administration broke the law by holding back Head Start money Congress approved. That finding is on the record. Write the guardrails into every spending bill you pass.
Robert Garcia, who will chair House Oversight, summed it up on election night in two words: "Lawyer up."
Now back it up.
2028 Starts Now
Trump's approval fell to 32% in CNN's October poll, a new low. This is the best setup you are going to get. Use it.
Because if you march us into another presidential election with no plan, no wins, and another round of finger-pointing, pack your bags.
No more chances.
No more autopsies.
No more excuses.
Get it done.