It’s time for Democratic leaders to fight — or step aside for those who will

This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 30 episode of “Velshi.”

Today, we speak with some reverence about the United States Constitution — a document remarkable for its time, which established our democracy and guides and informs our rights and freedoms to this day.

However, when the U.S. Constitution was presented to the Founding Fathers for signature, they weren’t universally enthusiastic about it. In 1787, ever the optimist, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin delivered his final speech of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Many in the room harbored hesitations; in fact, Franklin had a few himself.

Despite its faults, Franklin believed this Constitution was better than the alternative: living under monarchical rule without representative democracy. In the end, he was able to persuade the holdouts, the Constitution was signed, and the United States of America was born.

It is said that, on the way out of the convention, Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had just created. He responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

True democracy requires the competition of ideas. When even one of our two major parties ceases to function, democracy itself is put at risk.

We all know by now that the Republican Party is no longer a functioning political party. It is fully captured, a vessel of authoritarianism. That makes it even more vital that the Democratic Party rise to this moment in defense of our democracy. However, the national Democratic leadership — whether they are unwilling or simply unable — is largely not rising to this moment.

Let’s be clear: My job is journalism. I do not work for the Democratic Party. I’m not a member of the Democratic Party, and I certainly don’t do PR for the Democratic Party. My job — the job of journalism — is to bear witness on your behalf and to hold power to account on your behalf.

Avoiding hard truths is not how we save democracy. Right now, one of those hard truths is that America has been badly let down by the leadership of the Democratic Party. It’s time for some of those leaders to step aside and let people who are prepared to fight, fight.

I see the fight, the energy and the will out there. I see it in voters in Iowa who last week flipped a Republican state Senate seat and, in one fell swoop, ended the Republican supermajority chokehold on that state.

I see it in Texans who fought tooth and nail against gerrymandering. You might say they lost the battle, but in my opinion, their actions will prove, one day soon, to have won the war.

I see it in Govs. Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker, who are taking on Donald Trump and the Republican Party in ways Democratic leadership in Congress seems unwilling to do.

I see it in Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is drawing crowds of tens of thousands in his full-throated fight against oligarchy. I see it in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, from the moment she was elected to the House in 2018, has never shied away from loudly speaking her mind and shaking things up.

I see it in Tennessee state Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, who were expelled from the state legislature for participating in a gun violence protest after a deadly mass shooting.

I see it in the grassroots organization Indivisible and in the millions who’ve turned out under banners like “No Kings.”

I see it here in New York in mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. He is one of the closest things the Democratic Party has to a young, relevant phenomenon who draws new voters into the coalition. And he still has not been endorsed by New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, who claims to have a lot of fire in her belly about the whole redistricting thing.

Or by New York senior Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, who seems regularly and validly outraged — but that’s about it. Or by New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, who sure can deliver a hell of a speech. Or by New York’s other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, who actually runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Mamdani captured the imagination of the voters in a super crowded field. He’s outpolling all of his opponents combined. And yet his own party’s leaders won’t embrace him, let alone try to hitch a ride on his populist coattails.

Mamdani is emblematic because he’s actually a fighter who learns what his voters care about and meets them where they are. If he has to break some china to become the next mayor of America’s biggest city, he will.

I am looking for every fighter I can find. I could not care less if he’s a democratic socialist, just like I could not care less that former Rep. Liz Cheney is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. I’d vote for Mamdani and Cheney and any one of those people who are prepared to risk something for the benefit of their fellow citizens and for democracy.

But I’d be hard-pressed to vote for Hochul or Schumer or Jeffries or Gillibrand, or the people who lead the mess that the Democratic National Committee is these days. The people who control the levers of power in the Democratic Party appear, to me, to be standing on the sidelines.

We are in the “boiling frog” moment of authoritarianism: Tanks are on our streets. Speech is being extinguished. Elected politicians arrested and charged. Judges ignored.

But with each norm eroded, each law bent, each lie normalized, each threat brushed aside, we get further and further away from that republic Franklin warned us we could lose.

A ranting, would-be strongman, who brags about dictatorship and talks about taking over other countries, coddles authoritarianism and seeks revenge against perceived opponents, is president. His unqualified henchmen surround him. Yet the leadership of the Democratic Party cannot seem to find the front of the battle line.

Political leaders who think their job is to cut deals and make strongly worded statements are missing the moment entirely. Americans are begging for more — begging them to get off the mat and get back into the fight.

So if you are a political leader in this country and you are not prepared to fight with both hands, and you are not prepared to make “good trouble,” then perhaps you should step aside and make space for those who will — for those who will show us that they can fight a bit dirty, if that’s what the defense of democracy demands.

Because right now, that is what the defense of democracy demands. American history has given us leaders who met the existential threats of their time head-on. Abraham Lincoln did not preserve the Union by “managing the crisis.” Franklin D. Roosevelt did not confront fascism abroad or at home by splitting the difference. They fought. They broke the china.

This is not a left vs. right fight inside the Democratic Party. It’s not about whether Democrats should tack to the center or lean progressive. The choice before us is simply democracy vs. authoritarianism.

“Where is the party?” is not a rhetorical question. It is the most urgent question in America today. If the answer is silence, then we risk Franklin’s 1787 warning becoming a prophecy.

So I’ll ask it again: Where is the party? Is it in the smoke-filled rooms of Washington, waiting for polls to turn? Or is it with the people who are already in the streets, already raising their voices, already demanding the fight?

If the party won’t show up for democracy, the people will.