Norman Solomon

Two events laid bare a dire reality we face in Trump's national hell

Ten years after Donald Trump first ran for president, he stands at the helm of Titanic America. How did this happen?

No factors were more pivotal than the outlooks and actions of the Democratic Party leadership. Scrutinizing them now is vital not only for clarity about the past, it also makes possible a clear focus on ways to prevent further catastrophe.

Here’s actual history that corporate Democrats pretend didn’t happen:

2016: Hillary Clinton offers more of the status quo. Her allies in the Democratic Party pull out all the stops so she can win the party’s presidential nomination. With a big assist from the Democratic National Committee, she prevails over the strong primary challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — but her campaign trail goes downhill from there. After rallying behind Sanders’s genuine progressive populism, many young people don’t trust the pseudo-populism of Clinton’s campaign. She has earned a millennial problem, and it prevents her from becoming president.
2017: Democratic Party leaders can hardly blame themselves or their nominee for the virtually unbelievable circumstance of the Trump presidency. A critical focus on Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street won’t do. Neither will critiquing her thinly veiled contempt for the progressive wing of the party. But blaming Trump’s victory on Russia becomes an obsessive theme.
2018: The Democratic leadership is mapping out a battle plan for the midterm elections in November. At the same time, a key priority is to thwart the inside threat posed by progressive forces. Establishment Democrats are keeping a watchful eye and political guns trained on Bernie Sanders.
2019: Democrats take control of the House, and a large cast of political characters is off and running for the party’s presidential nomination. Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are at the left edge, while more than a dozen others jostle for media attention. For elites determined to retain undemocratic power, seeing either Sanders or Warren in the Oval Office would be the worst possible outcome.
2020: Early in the year, the economic populism of the Sanders campaign continues to catch fire, while many forces team up to function as fire extinguishers. The Democratic Party establishment acts to smother the grassroots blaze. After Joe Biden’s fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary puts his campaign on life support, rescue comes 18 days later from South Carolina, where Biden wins a landslide primary victory — and then several corporate-friendly contenders quickly drop out of the race and effusively endorse him. When Biden clinches the nomination, progressives largely close ranks behind him to defeat Trump. Biden squeaks through.
2021: President Biden’s first year includes backing and signing legislation with real benefits for tens of millions of Americans. But his resolve dissipates. Before the end of the year, he abandons Build Back Better legislation that would have been transformational. Notably, Biden withdraws all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in late summer — but overall he opts to fuel militarism, with ever-higher Pentagon spending instead of devoting adequate resources to meet human needs and protect nature. The president goes full speed ahead with “modernization” plans for ever more dangerous nuclear weapons that already have a pre-overrun price tag of $1.7 trillion.
2022: Biden relapses into his customary “moderate” political mode, while his capacity to speak coherently weakens. Party discipline, internalized by Democrats in Congress, precludes independent-minded leadership as they begin to proclaim that Biden should run for re-election. Conformity of groupthink and fear of retribution from the White House keep people quiet.
2023: A real-life Shakespearean tragedy unfolds as Biden throws down a gauntlet to run for re-election even while his mental frailty becomes more evident. Enablers ignore the party’s base, with polls continuing to show that most Democrats don’t want him to be the next nominee (including 94 percent of Democrats under 30). A common canard — pushed by Biden’s coterie of sycophants — contends that because he defeated Trump once, he’s the best person to do it again; the claim ignores the fact that Trump 2020 represented an unpopular status quo, and Biden 2024 would represent an even more unpopular status quo, as “right track/wrong track” polling makes crystal clear. Soon after Hamas attacks Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israeli military starts its siege of Gaza, Biden begins to further alienate many of his party’s usual voters by massively boosting U.S. military aid as the slaughter of Palestinian civilians escalates.
2024: Among top Democrats, denial about Biden’s evident cognitive infirmity grows along with the infirmity itself. Even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June, the political reflex of dissembling prevents him from bowing out for another 28 days. That leaves 107 days for the newly installed nominee Kamala Harris to pick up the pieces before Election Day. At first it seems that she might find ways to depart from coming across as Biden’s yes-woman, but there is no such departure. Nothing epitomizes the Harris campaign’s moral collapse more than her insistence on echoing the Biden line about Gaza while the U.S. continues to arm Israel’s military as it methodically kills Palestinian civilians. In the process, Harris chooses to ignore both human decency and polls showing that far more voters would be likely to cast their ballots for her if she were to come out against sending more armaments to Israel. Electoral disaster ensues.

Last month, two events showed the huge contradiction between the potential for true progressive change and the dire reality of feckless Democratic Party leaders.

When socialist Zohran Mamdani won election as mayor of New York after running as a Democrat, he said: “If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one.”

A week later, eight members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus surrendered to Trump, betraying efforts to defend Obamacare and a health-care status quo that still leaves tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. The capitulation meant that the nation’s health-care crisis would get even worse.

Craven and conformist Democratic Party leadership — coloring inside corporate lines while enmeshed with rich backers — hardly offers a plausible way to defeat the Trump forces, much less advance a humane political agenda. Saving the country from autocracy requires recognizing and overcoming the chokehold that Democratic leaders have on the party.

The timeline above is drawn from my new book about the 10-year political descent into the current inferno, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, which is free as an e-book or PDF at BlueRoad.info.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

A reckoning awaits these out-of-touch lawmakers hopelessly in denial

Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress.

And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.

Three weeks ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution titled “Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Twenty-one House colleagues, all of them Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. They account for 10 percent of the Democrats in Congress.

In sharp contrast, a national Quinnipiac Poll found that 77 percent of Democrats “think Israel is committing genocide.” That means there is a 67 percent gap between what the elected Democrats are willing to say and what the people who elected them believe. The huge gap has big implications for the party’s primaries in the midterm elections next year, and then in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

One of the likely candidates in that race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), is speaking out in ways that fit with the overwhelming views of Democratic voters.

“I agree with the UN commission's heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,” he tweeted as autumn began. “What matters is what we do about it – stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.”

Consistent with that position, the California congressman was one of the score of Democrats who signed on as co-sponsors of Tlaib’s resolution the day it was introduced.

In the past, signers of such a resolution would have reason to fear the wrath — and the electoral muscle — of AIPAC, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby. But its intimidation power is waning. AIPAC’s support for Israel does not represent the views of the public, a reality that has begun to dawn on more Democratic officeholders.

“With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reported this fall. Notably, “some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations.”

Khanna has become more and more willing to tangle with AIPAC, which is now paying for attack ads against him.

On Thanksgiving, he tweeted about Gaza and accused AIPAC of “asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.” Khanna elaborated in a campaign email days ago, writing: “Any politician who caves to special interests on Gaza will never stand up to special interests on corruption, healthcare, housing, or the economy. If we can’t speak with moral clarity when thousands of children are dying, we won’t stand for working Americans when corporate power comes knocking.”

AIPAC isn’t the only well-heeled organization for Israel now struggling with diminished clout. Democratic Majority for Israel, an offshoot of AIPAC that calls itself “an American advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies within the United States Democratic Party,” is now clearly misnamed. Every bit of recent polling shows that in the interests of accuracy, the organization should change its name to “Democratic Minority for Israel.”

Yet the party’s leadership remains stuck in a bygone era. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, typifies how disconnected so many party leaders are from the actual views of Democratic voters. Speaking in Brooklyn three months ago, she flatly claimed that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel.” She did not attempt to explain how that could be true when more than seven out of 10 Democrats say Israel is guilty of genocide.

The political issue of complicity with genocide will not go away.

Last week, Amnesty International released a detailed statement documenting that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” But in Congress, almost every Republican and a large majority of Democrats remain stuck in public denial about Israel’s genocidal policies.

Such denial will be put to the electoral test in Democratic primaries next year, when most incumbents will face an electorate far more morally attuned to Gaza than they are. What easily passes for reasoned judgment and political smarts in Congress will seem more like cluelessness to many Democratic activists and voters who can provide reality checks with their ballots.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

This Trump bromance was strangely heartening — but don't count on it lasting

Across the political spectrum — with alarm on the right and delight on the left — the display of warmth from President Trump toward Zohran Mamdani last Friday set off shock waves. Trump’s lavish praise of New York’s mayor-elect in the Oval Office was a 180-degree turn from his condemnation of the democratic socialist as “a pure true communist” and “a total nut job.” The stunning about-face made for a great political drama. But what does it portend?

Trump and his MAGA followers are hardly going to forsake their standard mix of bigotry, anti-immigrant mania and other political toxins. Demagoguery fuels the Republican engine — and in the 11 months until the midterm elections, skullduggery to thwart democracy will accelerate rather than slow down.

While countless media outlets have marveled at the appearance of a sudden Trump-Mamdani “bromance,” the spectacle has rekindled hopes that America can become less polarized and find more common ground. But what kind of common ground can — or should — be found with the leader of today’s fascistic GOP?

It’s true that Mamdani has a huge stake in diverting the Trump bull from goring New York. Billions of dollars are at stake in federal aid to the city. And the metropolis would be thrown into a chaotic crisis if Trump goes ahead with his threats to send in federal troops. Mamdani seems to have deftly prevented such repressive actions against his city, at least for a while.

Understandably, Mamdani’s main concern is his upcoming responsibility for New York City and its 8.5 million residents. But important as the Big Apple is, Trump’s draconian and dictatorial orders nationwide are at stake. It’s unclear that the chemistry between the two leaders will do anything at all to help protect immigrants in Chicago or Los Angeles or anywhere else in the country.

The president’s accolades for a leftist certainly confounded the perennial left-bashers at Fox News and many other right-wing outlets. Such discombobulation among pro-MAGA media operatives has been a pleasure to behold. But there’s more than a wisp of wishful thinking in the air from progressives eager to believe that Trump’s effusive statements about Mamdani, an avowed socialist, will help to legitimize socialism for the U.S. public.

Trump’s widely reported and astonishing turnaround about Mamdani might cause some Americans to reconsider their anti-left reflexes. But it’s also plausible that ripple effects of the episode could help to legitimize, in some people’s eyes, Trump’s leadership even while it continues to inflict horrific policies and anti-democratic politics on the United States. Gracious and avuncular performances by despots are nothing new. Neither are cosmetics on the face of a fascist.

A hazard is that the image of Trump as a tolerant and open-minded leader, in convivial discourse with New York’s progressive leader, could undercut the solid accusations that Trump is imposing tyrannical policies on America. Just a day before he met with Mamdani, the president publicly suggested the execution of several Democrats in Congress.

The most publicized few seconds of the Trump-Mamdani session with reporters was when a journalist asked about Mamdani’s past charge that Trump is a fascist. The interchange was widely reported as an amusing moment.

The danger of normalizing autocracy is heightened when the utterly serious appraisal of Trump as a fascist can be recast as a media punchline.

Over the weekend, Mamdani stood his ground during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, pointing out that in the Oval Office he had said “yes” to the reporter’s question about Trump being a fascist. And he added, “Everything that I’ve said in the past, I continue to believe.”

How long Mamdani will remain in Trump’s good graces is anyone’s guess. No doubt the mayor-elect is fully aware that Trump could turn on him with a vengeance. If Trump can do that to one of his most loyal ideological fighters, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, as he did recently, he can certainly do it to Mamdani.

To call Trump “mercurial” is a vast understatement. And yet, in countless ways, with rhetoric and with the power of the presidency, he has been unwavering and consistent — as immigrants being terrorized by ICE agents, or single mothers trying to feed their families, know all too well. Given all the harm his policies are doing every minute, it would be unwise to take seriously Trump’s broken-clock pronouncements that are occasionally accurate and decent.

Democratic socialists don’t need Trump’s approval. We need to defeat his MAGA forces. It’s unclear whether what happened with him and Mamdani in the Oval Office will make that defeat any more likely.

None of this is a criticism of Zohran Mamdani. This is an assessment of how the follow-up to his Oval Office drama with Trump could go sideways.

Trump and Mamdani found each other newly useful last Friday. Only later will we know who was more effectively using whom.

It’s all well and good to laud Mamdani’s extraordinary political talents and inspiring leadership for social justice. At the same time, we should recognize that he has entered into an embrace with a viperous president.

And when a rattlesnake purrs, it’s still a rattlesnake.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.