Marty Levine
June 30, 2026
It is almost two years since Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party took control of parts of our national government. The results are scary and bode poorly for times to come.
Before election day, the MAGA crowd published their playbook, telling us clearly what they would do when they won this election. Project 2025, a Heritage Society product, set out over 900 pages of detailed proposals for reshaping every aspect of the Federal Government to fulfill four core promises:
- Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
- Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
- Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
- Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “The Blessings of Liberty.”
Since taking office in 2025, we have painfully watched Donald Trump and his team follow this blueprint and ravage the structure of our nation in their desire to “make America great again.” It The Progress we made toward guaranteeing voting rights and fair representation has been eviscerated. A woman’s right to control their body and receive needed medical care has been rolled back. Access to affordable medical care for all has been severely limited. Poverty and financial insecurity is growing. Affordable housing is more and more a dream. And these are just some of the ways we seem to be moving backward along the path spelled out by Project 2025.
We thought we were moving step by step to truly fulfilling the vision of our Constitution’s promise that we were a nation that will “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
While the unique mania of our President has added to the turmoil we are living through, we should understand that the game plan is being followed very closely by his minions. Those who began this campaign decades ago- the rich and powerful men and women and the ideologues saw a vision of a different America. They saw a nation that was ruled by wealthy, white men. They saw a nation that used the labor of those who were not them to support their wealth and status. They saw a nation in which each person was responsible for their own survival. They rejected the very idea of a shared commitment to that “general welfare.”
They see this as their moment, and they are hell-bent to make the most of it.
It seems we are reaching a point when the changes being made to our nation may become difficult if not impossible to reverse. The political and racial gerrymandering that the Supreme Court has made constitutional is allowing them to shape the electorate to negate those who disagree with them. The power of the “unitary executive,” the belief that the President is all-powerful, a hallmark of the MAGA quest, is now being cemented in place. State control of how our elections are being run is being seized by the executive branch of the federal government as well.
This is where we sit 4 months from the November elections that will give those of us who want this slide toward oligarchy to stop a chance to begin to reverse our national course. We will not do that if we don’t look clearly at what has gotten us to this moment.
From my perspective, we’ve been here before. Those who say they want a better country and a fairer and more equitable nation have failed to rise to the occasion and make the personal sacrifices that are needed.
What I wrote weeks before Trump’s victory in 2024 seems just as true today
For the last several election cycles I have been listening to my sons’ struggle to vote for a Presidential candidate with enthusiasm. They have wanted a candidate who recognizes how difficult the challenges are and who stands strongly for principles and policies that will take on the very special interests that are now distorting our democracy. They have wanted candidates who see their goal as leveling the economic and social playing fields so that we all can live the privileged lives that they have been fortunate enough to experience. They are wanting those who they help elect to stand for systemic changes domestically and internationally. And they are wanting to hear a candidate who is willing to acknowledge the failures of the past and the need for a very different way forward. They want a candidate who shares their positions but sounds like Donald Trump.
And they have seen Democratic candidate after Democratic candidate tack to the middle rather than to the left when they run and then when they are in office.
What has changed since 2024 is the number of really progressive candidates who have taken the challenge and have campaigned as advocates for meaningful change. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently wrote about this trend in a piece he entitled “The Populist Revolution Now Underway. A Guide to the Perplexed”. On the right, he saw this reflected in the MAGA movement now in power. On the left, he saw a counter-balancing movement that has broken into view.
Anti-establishment populism has taken the form of a movement against economic elites who are rigging the system against average working people. Its major proponents are Bernie Sanders, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, and other predominantly young Democratic politicians — such as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson; Janeese Lewis George, the presumptive mayor of Washington, D.C.; and a bevy of newly elected members of Congress from New York — Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander.
These men and women have not chosen to moderate their principles to get elected. They have campaigned by telling voters what they think is wrong and what they will do when they are elected. Their directness about the need for taxing wealth, aggressively expanding safety net programs, weakening the power of money in politics, and ensuring that the most marginalized among us are seen as a top priority is unsettling to some of us who don’t want our own privilege disturbed in order to build a better society. Their support for the Palestinian people along with support for ending our nation’s military support of Israel has been a particular point of friction.
We are seeing and hearing the backlash that threatens to give us more MAGA governance from those who should be seeing the success of these progressive populists as signs of better days ahead. Rather than stand behind the energy of these new candidates, there are voices who want to marginalize them and return to the middle, a middle that has moved to the right with each election cycle and a middle which has not brought the progress we need. Here’s how the New York Times captured this response:
In Congress and elsewhere, some moderates have quickly distanced themselves from the victorious far-left candidates, worrying Republicans will use them to paint the entire party as extreme…
Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said the outcomes in New York were “dangerous” for Democrats nationally.
“What we’ve seen Republicans do very successfully before is weaponize the craziest ideas of the activist left,” he said. “And now the ammunition they’ve got is much, much more powerful.”
Their success should give a spark to those questioning if elections still matter and if the MAGA tide can be reversed. But unfortunately, they seem to be scaring many who say they oppose MAGA and want a better nation. Because they are not ready to play politics as usual, to go along to get along, they are asking voters to see that MAGA is the threat, not candidates more progressive than they are
I ended my 2024 pre-election article that I quoted above thinking about my sons with these words:
But if I am correct, those who have counseled moderation and slow change while serious problems remain, making life difficult for so many people, will finally recognize the cost of their fear of change and their unwillingness to pay the price of rebuilding our nation in a manner which truly lives up to its aspirations.
As we approach November 2026, these words remain true.
So, for those who think a candidate for Congress, the Senate, or any other position is too radical for you, please hold your nose and vote for them anyway. Do what you’ve asked me to do so many times. Give them a chance to make a difference. Give them a chance to do things we have failed to do before. Sitting on the sidelines because you are fearful that we will go too far to the left is a certain way to ensure we will continue to move too far to the right.
