The hand-wringing is over — this is how we fight back
On election day 2020, I suggested on my radio program that if Joe Biden were to lose (something we did not expect, but after 2016 who knew what could happen) he, Harris, and Democrats in Congress should set up a “shadow government” to be a visible and ongoing opposition and alternative to a second Trump term.
Apparently, somebody on Team Trump was listening. Or they copped the idea from the same place I did: the UK, Canada and Australia, all countries where the party out of power assembles a “shadow government” with a “shadow cabinet” that regularly informs voters of how and why they’d run the government differently were they in power.
A mere six months later, in July of 2021, the last chief of staff of Donald Trump's first term, former Tea Party congressman Mark Meadows, appeared on a fringe rightwing TV internet show and repeatedly referred to Trump’s “Cabinet.”
“We met with several of our Cabinet members tonight,” Meadows said. “We actually had a follow-up ... meeting with some of our Cabinet members.”
Referring to Trump as “the president,” just as Trump did in daily fundraising emails, Meadows added in 2021 while Biden was president, Trump is “a president who is fully engaged, highly focused and remaining on task.”
Probably the best-known shadow cabinet is the one that forms in the UK every time a new government is formed. The first formal UK Shadow Cabinet is generally credited to the Labour Party, although the concept had existed in more informal forms earlier.
In 1921, J.R. Clynes became the leader of the Labour Party and led the opposition in the House of Commons. During his leadership, the party began to assign specific members to scrutinize and respond to the work of government ministers, laying the groundwork for what would become known as the shadow cabinet.
This structure became more formalized under Ramsay MacDonald, who succeeded Clynes as party leader in 1922. By the time Labour formed its first government in 1924, the shadow cabinet had evolved into a recognized body within the party, with designated roles mirroring those of the actual Cabinet.
The benefit of Democrats forming a shadow cabinet now will be twofold:
- First, it can serve as a platform for critiquing the policies and behaviors of the GOP. A press conference being held by a random member of Congress critizing, for example, Trump’s anti-labor policies won’t have anything close to the impact of the “Shadow Secretary of Labor” convening members of the press to hear a well-prepared presentation by a person fully qualified to be the next Labor Secretary. More credibility and more publicity.
- Second, having Democrats fill the shadow equivalents of every major position in the Trump administration gives each of the prospective candidates for the next Democratic administration an opportunity to fully inform themselves about the issues facing, in this case labor, and thus prepares each shadow secretary to hit the ground running after the next election.
Turns out that it’s not just good politics; it could become one of the best and most essential tools to fight for democracy’s survival.
Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-NC) gets it, calling for a Democratic shadow cabinet just like I did, only his suggestion came right after last year’s election. He’s calling for Democrats to “borrow from our British friends and appoint a shadow cabinet to fight back against the worst excesses of a second Trump administration.”
And he’s absolutely right, because what we’re witnessing isn’t normal Republican governance: it’s the final phase of a multi-generational corporate takeover of our government that began with the Powell Memo; runs through five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court gutting the Civil Rights Act and declaring that money is speech and corporations are persons; and now involves handing our entire government over to the richest man in the world so he can ravage and twist it to his own enrichment.
This goes way beyond simply having a Democrat provide the rebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union speeches. The Shadow Cabinet should meet regularly and issue serious, high-credibility proclamations and analyses of Trump policies.
Republicans did this on a small scale during the Biden presidency, as I noted about Mark Meadows. Another Trump Shadow Cabinet member was Russell Vought, who literally described his work as creating “shadow agencies” that could rapidly implement their corporate-friendly agenda if Trump won in 2024. And, sure enough, they hit the ground running with their Project 2025 shadow governing platform!
Meanwhile, Democrats appear to be sitting around waiting for the next election cycle while rightwing billionaires and their political puppets dismantle everything from environmental protections to worker rights to women’s ability to vote.
Picture this: a Shadow Treasury Secretary explaining the tangible downsides of Trump’s pro-billionaire policies; a Shadow Labor Secretary denouncing attacks on worker protections; a shadow Environmental Protection Agency administrator exposing how corporate polluters are getting free passes. Every single day, holding daily press conferences, providing real-time counterpoints to this administration's lies.
This isn’t just some obscure parliamentary procedure borrowed from Britain: this is about creating what the British call “democracy’s insurance policy.”
When you have an administration literally governed by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 playbook and funded by billions from over 100 billionaire families and supported by a massive rightwing media ecosystem, you need an organized, systematic opposition that can cut through the corporate media’s sanewashing and both-sides-ism to speak directly to working Americans.
The genius of a shadow cabinet is that it would force Democrats to do what they should have been doing all along: articulate a clear, positive vision for America instead of just being the party of “we’re not Trump.”
While Trump and his billionaire backers are playing chess, Democrats have been playing checkers. Throughout the past four years, Trump’s people were drafting hundreds of executive orders and regulations, creating what they openly called “shadow agencies” to implement their agenda on day one.
We’ve seen the results, and they’ve been shockingly effective. Meanwhile, Democrats are still trying to figure out their messaging strategy.
A shadow cabinet would change that overnight. It would create 26 Democratic leaders — one for each cabinet position — who could provide daily, coordinated opposition to Trump’s corporate/billionaire agenda while simultaneously showing Americans what real public service looks like.
Commentator Bill Scher moved the idea forward quite a bit recently with an article in Politico outlining exactly who he’d suggest could serve in a Democratic shadow cabinet, from Letitia James for Shadow Attorney General to Samantha Power as Shadow Secretary of State and Lina Khan as Shadow Treasury Secretary. Former VP candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has also called on the DNC to create a shadow cabinet. Even fascism scholar Timothy Snyder has pushed the idea.
The corporate media and Republican talking heads are already attacking this concept, which tells you everything you need to know about how effective it would be. They’re terrified of organized Democratic opposition that can’t be dismissed or ignored.
Democracy may “die in darkness,” but it for sure dies when the opposition party refuses to organize effectively. A shadow cabinet isn’t just smart politics, it’s democracy’s best defense against fascism with a corporate logo.
The time for hand-wringing is over. The time for organized resistance is now. It’s way past time for Democrats to pick up the Shadow Cabinet idea and run with it.
