What's In Store For The Progressive Movement Under Trump And With Republicans Running Congress?

And With Corporate-Aligned New Dems Running The Democratic Party?

There will be big changes on the Senate Finance Committee. Gone are Sherrod Brown (D-OH), arch conservative Tom Carper (D-DE) and moderates Bob Casey (D-PA), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Replacing them will be Bernie and fellow progressives Peter Welch (D-VT), Tina Smith (D-MN) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) plus moderate Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). Democratic holdovers include progressives  Ron Wyden (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Maria Cantell (D-WA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and worthless right-of-center Dems Mark Warner (VA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Tom Carper (DE), Michael Bennet (CO) and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV).

The committee is responsible for tax policy, Social Security and Medicare and with Bernie on board, the committee is more likely to support expanding Social Security and Medicare and raising taxes on the very wealthy. He wants to get rid of the Social Security payroll tax cap on all incomes above $250,000. He wants to increase Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and increase cost-of-living adjustments. For Medicare, he wants to make the long-time progressive dream— coverage for dental, hearing and vision care— reality while and phasing out deductibles and co-payments.  In his fight against an American oligarchy, he supports a 77% estate tax on inheritances over a billion dollars.

This is in contrast with a mostly wrong-headed report by Hanna Trudo about the problems— what she termed “an existential crisis”— progressives are facing now, between a fascist GOP and a corporate, reactionary New Dems contingent, each of which is being supported by immense wealth from the crypto-cartel, the Israeli genocide coalition led by AIPAC and DMFI and the newest anti-progressive big spender, Elon Musk.

She wrote that “progressives faced their first post-election rebuke last week,” when AOC missed out on a key leadership post on the House Oversight Committee, a sign to many of their diminished influence. Although the interpretation is foolish, Trudo called her loss a rejection of her policies and called the loss “emblematic of an evolving political landscape that has proven challenging for progressives over the past several cycles. The 2018 surge of energy that helped fuel the formation of the ‘squad’ has deflated, with some Democrats questioning its future.”

She also made the foolish statement that Trump’s victory over Harris “all but extinguished the momentum progressives were hoping would carry them forward on Capitol Hill,” even though Harris is the polar opposite of a progressive and symbolizes exactly what’s wrong with the corporate shill party the Democrats have largely turned into.

While Ocasio-Cortez and her mentor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), each has vast national appeal— they’re popular with young people and working-class voters Democrats say they need the most help winning back— there’s still an open question about what they can tangibly do moving forward. 

Some allies who have helped lift the progressive lawmakers’ political careers say members of the left need to look beyond D.C. now for new clout. 

“I think it’s always about organizing,” one former Sanders campaign adviser said. “The tangible things that can be done are not just about legislation. It’s about building a grassroots network that can affect things at every level.”

“From the discussions I have been having with folks, I think it might be happening organically,” the former adviser said.

Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have long relied on the use of small-dollar donations to fund their bids, shunning corporate donations and inspiring others to generate support from people with just a few dollars to give at once. Some are now fearful Republicans are beginning to try to weaponize that small-dollar model against them, further stifling their ascent.

“Elon Musk and [House Speaker] Mike Johnson have their sights on Act Blue,” Our Revolution chief Joseph Geevarghese said about the platform progressives and other Democrats use for fundraising. “They know that’s our money source… It’s a signal.”

Sanders has been critical of Democrats since Trump’s win showed key deficiencies in states where many working-class voters reside. He has moved away from the unifying rhetoric most in the party used right before the election and has gone into introspection and even attack mode, urging his own party to change its priorities to focus more heavily on economic concerns. [Bernie is an Independent, not a Democrat.]

The economic-first approach is what got many progressives with nontraditional backgrounds elected to Capitol Hill initially. Ocasio-Cortez famously worked as a bartender before taking office, mirroring the trajectories of other “squad” members: Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) was a nurse, for example, while Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was a school principal. Both were defeated by [right-of-center, corporate] opponents in November.

Facing a lack of potency, others on the left are trying a newer strategy that seeks to merge some of their more palatable progressive goals with areas of populism favored by Trump. The handful of members who have tried to make that case, including Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), have been met with interest among some on the opposing side. 

Many progressives are starting to get on board with that tactic, possibly because there are few great options. “We’ve got to engage with DOGE, and we’ve got to point out what we think are the inefficiencies in the system like fossil fuel subsidies,” Geevarghese said, referring to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not a formal agency but a project conceived by Trump and Musk that has received much fanfare from conservatives. “That’s going to be a major fight next year right around the expiration of the Trump tax cuts.”

“Another example would be Pentagon spending,” he said. “I think we should engage on that and have a real fight over whether we need to fund certain initiatives. The question is, can we find common cause?”

It’s a start, some say, of what could be a step forward for Democrats who have expressed profound discontent with how their leadership, strategists and party apparatus operate. 

“The party needs a reckoning with itself,” said Corryn Freeman, a progressive operative and executive director of Future Coalition, an organizing network. “They’re saying it out of their mouths, but their actions are fully aligned with the sameness that has gotten us to the place that we are now, which is powerless.”

“The people are dying for our own— I won’t say our own Donald Trump and our own Marjorie Taylor Greene, because those people are unhinged— but Democrats are dying for people who are willing to stand up, take some assertive action and call things out as they see them,” Freeman said.

Another progressive strategist encouraged those within the party to reexamine their roots and reclaim the relevant parts of their platform from the GOP.

“I don’t know exactly when Democrats lost their comfort with populism, but I don’t think it was because Trump picked it up,” the strategist said. “I think Trump picked it up because Democrats gave it up during the Obama years, when they started chasing Silicon Valley money and Obama wanted to appeal to college-educated people who think populism is icky and uneducated.”

“We replaced it with a really prominent condescension,” the strategist added.

It's not going to be easy for the Democrats to win back the trust and the loyalty of working class voters (and non-voters) who they shed over the last couple of decades while they chose to follow the advice of corporate whores like Rahm Emanuel; but it isn't impossible. They better get started and in a serious way and NOW. I'd suggest that they make sure working class candidates are on the ballots— and supported by the party— during the 2026 midterms. Enough already with the inauthentic hacks and careerists. And not just working class candidates, but working class candidates with working class values.