Reversing Autocracy
As Trump tries to drag down our democracy, how do we fight back—and win?
Will US democracy survive the authoritarian onslaught of the Trump administration?
I believe that, with concerted effort, we can beat back Trump’s autocratic coup attempt. Doing so will require that we connect defensive struggles to a three-year strategic counteroffensive focused on unseating MAGA forces across and through the 2026 and 2028 elections, using a combination of mass electoral mobilization and mass nonviolent social action. Simultaneously, we must ready the ground to push for and implement a transformative program immediately following the ouster of autocratic forces, in order to defend, expand, and transform democracy toward a Third Reconstruction.
This is the final section of a three-part series. (See here for part one and here for part two.)
In part one, I outlined a framework for assessing regimes based on two factors: their level of authoritarianism and their level of patronalism. I argued that:
MAGA seeks to establish an autocracy—an intermediary regime between democracy and dictatorship, that centralizes power in the executive branch of the state, but retains semi-competitive elections, nominal (if weak) civil liberties, and legal political opposition.
A Trump-led regime would be a patronal autocracy, in which a corrupt “patron” governs the country as an extension of his business interests and those of a network of loyalists.
In part two, I outlined a three-stage process through which liberal democracies devolve into patronal autocracy: attempt, breakthrough, and consolidation. I argued that:
At the federal level, MAGA has made an autocratic breakthrough within the executive branch, but has not yet broken the autonomy of the legislative or judicial branches.
At the state level, the 27 states under Democratic control or divided government remain relatively democratic, while the 23 states with MAGA trifectas have experienced varying levels of autocratic breakthrough—and in cases like Florida, consolidation.
Within civil society, the richness and diversity of civil institutions provide many points of resistance against autocratic consolidation. However, efforts to reverse autocracy must be connected with efforts to revitalize and democratize our institutions.
In this third and final part, I will:
Review three forms that struggles to restore democracy take, depending on the level of autocracy: electoral correction, quasi-electoral restitution, and extra-electoral restitution.
Make the case that we are in the middle scenario, a “quasi-electoral restitution,” which will require a mix of electoral and extra-electoral mobilization to oust autocratic forces, following which we will need to restructure our political system to ensure democratic rule.
Explore some implications of this analysis for our tactics and strategy for the coming period.
Grounding assessments amidst uncertainty
Before I dive into the analysis, a couple quick prefatory notes.
First, a reminder that strategic assessment is inherently uncertain. At the time I am writing this, the global economy appears to be teetering on the edge of a crash. Financial analyst Nathan Tankus argued this past Wednesday that we are on the verge of a “Lehman Brothers moment” when a long-threatened crisis passes a tipping point from which there is no coming back. Since then the situation has stabilized slightly, but economists still believe we remain at risk of a major financial crisis.
In my last installment, I noted that my analysis of stages of autocracy was based on a belief that Trump and MAGA were following an authoritarian “playbook” with a relatively predictable pattern. However, I also noted that the speed and scale at which they are running that play might tip us over into a chaotic situation whose subsequent development becomes much more difficult to predict. An economic recession or even depression might not reach that magnitude, but an abrupt collapse of confidence in the US dollar—the world’s primary reserve currency—certainly would. It’s hard for me to see how a crisis of that magnitude would aid Trump in his quest to consolidate autocracy. But again, this would be a situation in which (quite literally) most bets would be called off. In that sense, everything I write below should come with an asterisk: I am outlining a strategic orientation based on what seems like the more probable scenarios, but if conditions change, our strategy may have to shift.
At the same time, we need to find the balance between false certainty and “who the heck knows?” An alarmist article that recently went viral on social media points to the perils of both extremes. Titled, “on April 20th, 2025, the United States will Cross the Point of No Return,” the piece purports to lay out an 8-stage playbook through which “democracy ends,” beginning with Trump invoking the Insurrection Act on April 20th, and ending in Trump announcing that the midterm and presidential elections will be “postponed indefinitely.” Published by a pseudonymous blogger known only by the handle “Aletheisthenes,” who claims to have learned all this in a revelation from Elon Musk’s AI system, Grok, the piece is clearly a Q-Anon type conspiracy theory.1 The utter confidence with which the author proclaims exactly how events will unfold—up to and including the exact dates on which they will occur—is itself a key indicator that we have left the realms of serious analysis for Nostradamus-style prophecy.
When I’ve pointed out the unlikelihood of this 8-stage timeline, the most common response I’ve gotten has been: “well who knows, things are so uncertain, anything’s possible.” But if we should guard against false certainty, we most also guard against false uncertainty—the mistaken belief that, because we’re in a chaotic situation, this scenario is as likely as any another. One of the reasons I could quickly identify the article as misinformation is precisely because of how it mixes together predictions that are reasonably plausible with ones that—based on what I have learned through research into patterns of autocracy—seem highly unlikely. Trump invoking the Insurrection Act? Quite possible. Trump outright cancelling the 2026 and 2028 elections? Highly improbable. (Even in fully consolidated autocracies, elections still occur with regularity… they just are not free or fair.) Trump exhorting vigilante militia groups to “take back control”? Quite probable. (Heck, he’s done it before!) Trump closing the border and banning activists, journalists, critics and opponents from leaving? Less probable. (Although consolidated autocracies persecute opponents, in general the pattern is to encourage dissidents to expatriate, not to forcibly keep them in the country.)
The point is not that improbable things can’t happen. Heck, there is a non-zero chance that an extra-terrestrial object will land on the White House lawn tomorrow. (In which case, folks, you read it here first!) But in order to strategize effectively, we need criteria to sort out which developments are more or less likely, to the best of our estimation, based on the most accurate information that we have right now. One aim of this three-part series has been to explore the most likely range of scenarios in order to orient ourselves even (or especially) amidst intense uncertainty. In broad strokes, the strategic orientation outlined below remain applicable, I believe, to the majority of probable scenarios.
Finally, strategic assessments should be collective. I want to stress that the strategy outlined below is by no means mine alone. Liberation Road is a democratic centralist organization that discusses and determines strategy collectively. Every three years, we conduct an organization-wide process to sum up our work, assess shifts in external social, political, and economic conditions, and then collectively discuss, produce, and approve our strategic orientation for the coming period. That organizational process is happening right now!
The thoughts I lay out here have developed in relation with and as a contribution to those internal strategic discussions. I don’t want to overstate the extent to which the strategic components laid out below reflect organizational positions and priorities, because we are right in the midst of an internal process to democratically determine those. But neither do I want to overstate the extent to which they are “mine,” because the strategic approach I lay out here reflects and draws on those internal conversations, as well as the analysis and strategy our organization has refined over the past many years. (See for instance here, here and here.) That’s important because correct strategy does not spring from the individual minds of armchair intellectuals, it is shaped through ongoing, collective practice. Liberation Road will make public a collective Strategic Orientation following our upcoming Congress.
Three Types of Democratic Restoration
The conceptual framework I have drawn on for this series of articles was developed by scholars of authoritarianism based on their analysis of other autocratic regimes. In particular, I have heavily relied on a taxonomy put together by Hungarian political scientists Bálint Magyar and Bálint Madlovics. As discussed previously, they argue that autocratic change unfolds through three broad stages: an autocratic attempt, when an aspiring autocrat uses their elected office to try to consolidate power; an autocratic breakthrough, when they successfully gain control over the entire state apparatus, disabling the first democratic defense mechanism, the separation of the branches, levers and levels of government; and autocratic consolidation, when the autocrat uses control of the state to successfully disable the second defense mechanism, the autonomy of civil society.
To reverse autocracy, Magyar and Madlovics distinguish among three different forms that pro-democracy struggles will assume, depending on the level and extent of autocratic transformation: electoral correction, quasi-electoral restitution, and extra-electoral restitution.
In situations where there has merely been an autocratic attempt—but not yet an autocratic breakthrough—they argue that democratic backsliding can be reversed through an “electoral correction.” In other words, at this stage it is still possible to unseat the autocrat electorally. This does not mean the only thing pro-democracy forces must do is simply wait for the next election, and then go out and vote. To the contrary, there are many things necessary to develop and sustain the popular momentum needed to oust an autocrat: resisting abuses; building organization and opposition across society; challenging the autocrat’s lies and creating counter-narratives; winning smaller victories, where possible, to show that another social order is possible, etc. But if all these efforts are successful, the institutional mechanisms of democracy and the autonomy of civil society remain sufficiently intact to make it possible to remove the autocrat from office through electoral means, within the rules of the existing system. This is merely an electoral “correction,” not a “restitution,” because the core mechanisms that ensure democratic governance have not been corrupted. That is, a new government can be instituted within the existing constitutional order, as opposed to needing to restructure that underlying order itself.
At the opposite extreme, in a fully consolidated autocracy, it is not possible to remove the autocrat through the existing electoral system. While nominal elections still take place—as they do in even deeply consolidated autocracies, such as Putin’s Russia—the extent of autocratic control over the political process and of patronal domination over the institutions of civil society render it virtually impossible to remove the autocrat using the mechanisms of the existing electoral process. In this case, the only solution is “extra-electoral restitution.” In other words, revolution, whether through a “palace coup” by another faction of the ruling elite, through mass-scale protest and non-compliance across multiple sectors of society, through armed rebellion by military or paramilitary forces—or, most often, some combination of all these. Because some sectors of the US left harbor fantasies about mass insurrection, it is worth stressing that, as a pathway to emancipatory social transformation, this scenario is much harder. It starts from a position of much deeper political, economic, and social repression, and requires a far vaster effort to reverse the effects of authoritarianism. Even in situations where sustained efforts successfully unseat an autocrat and restore apparently democratic mechanisms, if this democratization does not also address the weakness of civil society and its patronal dependence on the state, such efforts are ultimately likely to merely replace one patronal autocrat with another—as was the case, for instance, in many countries in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
In between these two extremes, a “quasi-electoral restitution” is needed where there has been an autocratic breakthrough, but not yet full autocratic consolidation. This is quasi-electoral because, depending on the extent of autocratic breakthrough, the ouster of the autocrat may happen through either electoral or extra-electoral means—or, most often, a combination of the two. A very relevant example for our context is the 2020 US presidential election. Despite many threats to the integrity of the election system, the latter was able to function sufficiently democratically to reflect the voting majority’s preference for Joe Biden. Yet Trump refused to recognize the results, and sought to overturn them through both legal challenges and extra-legal mechanisms. It thus required both electoral and extra-electoral efforts to ensure his ouster, including mass mobilization from civil society, elite consensus on the need to follow the democratic process, and the willingness of even some of the autocrat’s political allies and civil society “vassals” (such as Fox News) to honor the election results.
In contexts where there has been an autocratic breakthrough, “correction” alone is insufficient. The independence and autonomy of the branches, levers, and levels of government has been sufficiently compromised that a “restitution” is needed. That is, changes must be made to the degraded legal or constitutional order in order to ensure that the integrity of democratic rules and processes is reestablished. To stick with the example of the 2020 US elections—after the January 6th autocratic insurrection, many forms of restitution were proposed, from using the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from running again for office, to passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to protect voting rights from violation. Ultimately, however, very few of these measures were enacted. There was an electoral correction, but no democratic restitution, meaning the institutional mechanisms of democracy remained partly degraded, setting the stage for Trump’s second ascent to office and his second autocratic coup attempt.
Reversing American Autocracy
So how can we apply this framework to US attempts to reverse autocracy? Based on the current level of US autocracy, I believe that our strategy for restoring democracy should be one of quasi-electoral restitution. In other words, it is possible for us to oust MAGA forces from power, and doing so will require a combination of mass electoral mobilization and mass nonviolent social action organized before, during, and after elections. Progressive forces should thus plan a three-year strategic defense, building towards a strategic counter-offensive, using elections as flashpoints, with the ultimate aim of unseating MAGA from office by November 2028. If we are successful, we will then need a democratic restitution, which we might call a “Third Reconstruction.” Let’s walk through those steps and stages below.
Strategic Defense
In terms of strategic defense, we must mobilize to defend the people’s social, political and economic rights. As last weekend’s “Hands Off” protests demonstrate, tens of millions of Americans around the country are already energized for this fight. As MAGA increases its attacks on key institutions that many Americans depend on, our ability to expand these defensive struggles will only grow. We should rally existing forces, win more people over to our side, and hold the front together in the face of MAGA’s attempts to divide and conquer, particularly around the defense of immigrants, trans people, pro-Palestinian protestors, and others singled out as American fascism’s first targets.
As we broaden our resistance, we should also channel mass mobilization into place-based organizing within and across all the key institutions and organizations of government and, especially, civil society. Autocratic regimes are only able to function because of the passive or active support or compliance of many people acting within political and civic institutions—what some people call the “pillars of power.” As the peace activist Gene Sharp reminds us:
“By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If people stop providing these skills and services, the ruler can not rule. The people are the main holders of power in society, but they are much more effective at exercising that power when they work together in the form of organizations or institutions.”
We should organize within and across all those “pillars of power” to refuse, resist and contest compliance with the MAGA regime. Our key focus should be on defending the independence of levers of government and of the autonomy of civil society—protecting these democratic defense mechanisms as much as possible from further autocratic regression. Absent a massive, relatively rapid degradation of our democratic defense mechanisms—which a strong civil societal and political defense will make less likely—the analysis outlined across this series suggests that our chances of unseating MAGA forces through electoral means are relatively favorable. Below, I will lay out some electoral objectives, and then discuss what to do in the event that the fairness of our election system dissolves rapidly.
Electoral Counter-Offensive
At the federal level, we should attempt to break the Republican House majority in 2026, and to assist pro-democracy forces in retaking the Senate and presidency by 2028. Even in a vacuum, the dynamics of modern midterm elections are favorable to the opposition party picking up seats, and Trump’s unpopular actions are likely to greatly exacerbate this dynamic, providing 2026 pick-up opportunities in even relatively Republican-leaning house districts. At the least, obtaining a 218-seat Democratic majority should be a minimal objective, but 235 seats isn’t out of the realm of possibility. The path to a 2026 Senate majority is much more difficult, but we should aim to at least expand the Democratic caucus, and might perhaps achieve a 50-50 tie; if “stretch” states like Texas are flipped, this could conceivably become a scant majority. Flipping either chamber will impede Trump’s legislative agenda, and flipping the Senate would impede his patronal capture of the judiciary, favorably shifting the balance of power at the federal level. All these efforts should build towards a major push in 2028, when we must aim to unseat the MAGA presidential candidate, defend and expand House majorities, and gain seats in the Senate—Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina are potential pick-ups. Assuming successful defense of existing seats, that could lead to a post-election scenario with a 50-53 seat Senate majority, a 230-240 seat House majority, and a Democrat in the White House.
Just as crucial will be efforts focused on state-level elected office: both as seats of power in their own right, and as sites that have disproportionate influence over the administration of federal elections. By or before 2028, we should aim to help secure Democratic trifectas in multiple states (potentially Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania) while defending and strengthening majorities in current “blue” states. We should seek to break Republican trifectas in other states (potentially Georgia, Iowa, Texas, or New Hampshire) while weakening Republican majorities in other “red” states. We need additional analysis and discussion to determine what objectives are possible and probable here. But provisionally, my sense is we should aim to gain at least as many Democratic trifecta states as GOP trifecta states by 2028.
Election Protection and Extra-Electoral Mobilization
The 2020 elections already demonstrated that narrowly electoral efforts must be supplemented by extra-electoral mobilization to ensure that election integrity is protected and fair results respected. For this reason, civil society groups will need to mobilize before, during and after the elections—registering voters, monitoring polling places, and preparing to coordinate post-election mobilizations to ensure all votes are counted.
But what if the conditions of our democracy devolve so rapidly that, despite these efforts, we do not have anything close to (even relatively) free and fair elections? After all, our election fairness has already been degraded by gerrymandering and restrictive voter ID laws, mass purges of the voter rolls, Republican election officials refusing to recognize results, and other mechanisms. While we will need to continue organizing to defend against these and other threats, there is no guarantee that our efforts will be sufficient to ensure a fair result.
The good news is, ample research shows that mobilizing in and around elections is the best predictor of democratic transition even in consolidated autocracies with deeply degraded democratic mechanisms. In the aftermath of overtly fraudulent and stolen elections, mass mobilization (protests, strikes, and social non-cooperation) can and often does force regimes to withdraw and recognize the election’s real winners—as occurred with the 2000 overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, for instance, or the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. But recent research has shown that mass mobilization before elections is also strongly correlated with democratic regime change. Sociologist Mohammad Ali Kadivar, himself a participant in Iran’s pro-democracy movement, notes that: “Pre-election protests send signals to the regime, opposition, and voters about the viability of an alternative for the regime, challenge the myth of regime omnipotence, and increase the range and intensity of grievances.” This motivates supporters to come out and vote, even in the face of repression, decreases the likelihood of the regime committing outright fraud, and increases the chances of defections from within the many pillars of power—from the media to the military—on whose support or non-compliance the fate of the regime ultimately depends.
Even where these efforts fail to produce immediate results, “bolstering norms and practices of democratic political participation in the midst of autocratic rule emboldens political engagement and participation by opposition groups and individuals,” as researchers Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks note in a paper on pro-democracy organizing in the US (which is well worth a read!). They continue: “Indeed, the most durable democratic transitions have taken place in the aftermath of decades-long oppositional organizing, which helped communities to build the organizational infrastructure, leadership, and norms by which to build and contest for power over the long term.” I do not believe it will take us decades to unseat Trump from office. But the point is that even in deeply MAGA-dominated areas where statewide victories might not be immediately on the table, like Florida or Tennessee, mobilizing before, during, and after elections can be a crucial component of a long-term power-building strategy.
Reconstructing American Democracy
The above analysis suggests that, through a combination of electoral and extra-electoral mobilization, pro-democracy forces have a strong chance of defeating MAGA at the presidential and federal legislative level by 2028, while favorably shifting the balance of power among the states. Yet if we do so, we will inherit a country wracked by economic immiseration, social fractures, and civic and political degradation. There can be no going back to business as usual—first because the “usual” systems will have been ravaged, and second because the problems of those social, political, and economic systems as they developed over 40+ years of neoliberalism are what got us to this crisis in the first place.
It is thus imperative that, immediately upon winning power, pro-democracy forces move to implement a bold, transformative agenda to tackle corporate power, rebuild the social welfare state, expand the rights’ of workers, women, LGBQT+ people and people of color, and complete the unfinished project of American democracy. Because of the autocratic degradation of our structures of governance, this program must of necessity incorporate a democratic “restitution” of the political order itself, one which addresses not just Trump’s rampant autocratic overreach, but also the GOP’s willful erosion of democratic norms in the decade since the Robert’s Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, as well as the even deeper-seated structural biases of our political system—which, as others have noted, structurally privileges white corporate power over the power of the multiracial working class.
Like others, Liberation Road often terms such a program a “Third Reconstruction” because it builds on the unfinished work of America’s First (1865-’77) and Second (1954-1971) Reconstructions, each of which represented a period of dramatic expansion of rights and freedoms for the oppressed. Like those earlier reconstruction periods, this one must combine a transformative social and economic agenda with a political plan to fundamentally reorder the systems and structures of US democracy itself. The full elements of a Reconstruction program will have to come from mass popular movements and be developed in the course of struggle, but could include:
Political Reconstruction. Restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act; repeal Citizens United; reconstruct fundamentally anti-democratic institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court; implement reforms such as rank-choice voting and proportional representation; and expand mechanisms of direct democracy such as ballot initiatives, recalls, and referenda.
Social & Economic Reconstruction. Fully fund childcare, K-12 education, and community college; ensure universal low-cost, high-quality health care; strengthen union rights, overturn right to work legislation, and expand workplace democracy; invest in community-based alternatives to policing; enshrine a national right to abortion access and gender-affirming care; establish a living wage, a universal jobs program, and mandatory vacation, parental, and sick leave.
Environmental Reconstruction. Transform our energy system to 100 percent renewable energy; decarbonize transportation, invest in public transit and a high-speed rail network; restore and expand land and water conservation goals and return land stewardship to indigenous people; ensure a just transition for communities and workers.
International Reconstruction. Implement a foreign policy that focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness; end military aid to repressive regimes, including Israel; facilitate mutual, international disarmament of nuclear, chemical and conventional weapons.
In places where we have or win state governing trifectas, we should immediately push to implement a comparable program at the state level. Minnesota provides us with a real-life example. After a coalition of IPOs, labor unions, and community organizations helped secure a Democratic governing trifecta in 2022, the state legislature passed a whole slate of transformative legislation in just four months, including 12 weeks paid parental leave, child tax credits, free public college tuition, free lunch in schools, stronger protections for workers seeking to unionize, strengthened abortion rights, universal drivers license access regardless of citizenship status, a “trans refuge law” protecting trans-affirming healthcare for in-state and out-of state youth, strengthened abortion access, and an expanded public healthcare option. We should seek to emulate this model, at both the local and state level, wherever we build the civic and political power to be able to do so.
Readying the Ground for a Third Reconstruction
How can we ready the ground for a Third Reconstruction? There are two components of this component of our strategic counter-offensive: building the political power and the social power.
One component of building political power is already covered in the electoral objectives outlined above: winning and expanding Democratic trifectas and governing majorities at the federal, state, and local level. But the Democratic “Party” is less a singular political entity than a broad and contradictory front containing multiple competing factions; to win a Third Reconstruction agenda, we will need to increase the cohesion and power of its progressive wing at the level of individual electeds, political infrastructure, and the voting base. Where possible, progressives should primary centrist and center-right Democrats, especially in relatively safe seats. At the federal level, we should aim to increase the size, strength, and ideological coherence of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (as well as its coordination with progressive forces in social movements and organized labor) and to diminish that of the centrist New Democrat Coalition and the center-right Blue Coalition. At the state level, we should likewise seek to increase progressive state legislative factions, ideally organized into coherent caucus-type structures, and where possible working on their governing agenda with progressive movement, IPO, and labor forces through co-governance structures. And of course, left and progressive forces should cohere behind a single presidential candidate and work to help them win the primary.
Even more than building political power, however, it is crucial that left-progressive forces build social power rooted in mass organizations of the multiracial working class. To illustrate why this is so crucial, we can look back at the last time we defeated Trump’s autocratic coup attempt, in 2020. In the early days of his administration, President Biden proposed what was arguably the largest and most progressive policy agenda since FDR’s New Deal. Moreover, progressive labor and social movement forces wielded more influence over the formation of this agenda than at any time in recent American history. Between the Green New Deal, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and several other major proposed bills and initiatives, most of the components of what we would need to implement a “Third Reconstruction Agenda” were, in the early days of the Biden administration, already introduced as proposed law.
Yet what ultimately passed as “Bidenomics” was a far weakened and watered-down version of the Green New Deal, stripped of the elements that would most immediately and directly benefit the multiracial working class, and replacing corporate regulation and taxation with an incentive-based policy program of “all carrots, no sticks.” Meanwhile other bills, like the Voting Rights Act, failed to pass at all. I have long felt like the left needs to have a much more serious reckoning with what happened, and why. (For some good attempts at this, see here and here.)
So what went wrong? The reflexive orientation on the left has been to “blame the (centrist) Democrats,” but the vast majority of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses proved surprisingly amenable to this agenda.2 To be sure, much of the failure is most immediately attributable to the intransigence of Manchin and Sinema in the Senate, and more broadly to sustained opposition from big business lobbies and their allies in the corporate media. But we should expect any truly transformative agenda to be fiercely opposed by the capitalist class and their allies. The greater contributing factor, it seems to me, was not the strength of capitalist-class opposition but rather the weakness of working-class support. This is the contradiction we must wrestle with.
This represents a great difference between the original “New Deal” and this green new one. FDR’s “New Deal” was created in response to a strong, growing, and increasingly militant working-class movement, which it sought at once to reward, appease, and contain. In contrast, Biden’s “Green New Deal” was proposed, in part, as a response to the historic weakness of organized labor and the multiracial working class, which it sought to partially restore and rebuild. Yet it was precisely the absence of an organized, militant, multiracial working-class movement that sapped our side of the social power to push back against and overcome the inevitable corporate opposition to the most transformative aspects of this agenda. As a result, popular forces failed to recognize even the partial victories of Bidenomics as their own.
So in order to build the power to push for and implement a Third Reconstruction agenda, one of the most critical tasks for us in the months and years ahead is to build back the social power, militancy, and internal organization of democratic, member-run institutions rooted in communities of color, oppressed gender communities, and the multiracial working class. We must rebuild our movement organizations, not in isolation from the other political and social tasks and objectives outlined above, but rather in and through them. As we do so, I believe we can beat back the MAGA right’s authoritarian takeover, build a government truly by, of, and for the people, and win a Third Reconstruction agenda that builds our power and advances the longer-term struggle for socialism.
Bennett Carpenter (they/them) is a queer Southern organizer, trainer and movement strategist. They are a member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road.
The article has now been thoroughly debunked by Snopes and addressed by everyone from USA Today to Indivisible. But its rapid spread across the left shows that none of us are immune to mis- or dis-information, particularly in an era when social media platforms have abandoned all pretense of fact checking or content moderation.
While contradictions between left and centrist forces within the Democratic coalition remain sharp, in recent years those contradictions have focused primarily on resistance tactics and electoral strategy, and somewhat less on governing agenda. It used to be that establishment Democratic candidates would (as the saying goes) “run like progressives, govern like centrists.” In recent years, it has often felt the opposite—they run like centrists, in a mistaken appeal to a non-existent “moderate middle” or a fantasized caricature of the working class, but then sometimes prove surprisingly willing to govern like progressives.
There are answers out there …in the UK, Wales is in the process of legislating to prevent autocracy with a simple but innovative and quietly radical legal solution...
https://open.substack.com/pub/justhinkin/p/has-wales-found-the-solution-to-autocracy?r=3cs2wr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true