They Are Who We Thought They Were

We have MAGA's playbook, progressive strategist Evan Sutton reminds us. So why are we letting Trump off the hook?

This is a guest post from Evan Sutton, Founder of Firekit Campaigns.

If you’ve been on the internet in the last eighteen years, you’ve seen Arizona Cardinals Head Coach Dennis Green’s famous post-game presser where he yells “They are who we thought they were.”

But most people have forgotten the second half of the quote: “...and we let them off the hook!"

That part is driving me crazy right now as the overwhelming majority of the Democratic party flails about helplessly while Trump and his goons run wild.

Before we continue, I have two caveats. First, there are sports metaphors in this, and I know some of you hate sports. I promise to keep them simple and relevant.

Second, when I say “Democrats,” I mean Democrats in elected office, and especially those who hold leadership positions in Congress and the national committees. Before you yell “not all Democrats,” yes, I am aware that some Democrats are fighting like hell. But the sad reality is that so far the overwhelming majority of elected Democrats are failing the test, and the Democratic party infrastructure is completely MIA. If you need to, though, you can add “except for my fave” in your own head after I say “Democrats.”

OK, now that’s out of the way. Let’s get to it.

Let’s start with a hypothetical. Say you’re a coach, preparing your team for the Super Bowl. The opponent comes to you and says “Hey, here are all the plays we’re going to call in the big game.” What would you do with that information?

The Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 online in April 2023. Think about that. We have had their plan — their playbook, if this were football — for twenty months.

Democrats made an unusually effective effort during the 2024 campaign to attack Project 2025. We successfully made it very unpopular. But Trump is wriggly, the media is compliant, Kamala’s consultants got really excited about campaigning with Liz Cheney, and we were never quite able to hang it around his neck.

But we still had the book itself in hand. Any serious operative knew what would happen if Trump walked back into the Oval Office because IT SAYS WHAT WILL HAPPEN RIGHT THERE IN THE DOCUMENT.

Back on the football metaphor, most NFL coaches script the first fifteen or so offensive plays they’re going to use in a game. They look at the opposing team, try to spot weaknesses, build a set of plays to attack, and then they run those plays. They can practice that opening sequence over and over so the team is comfortable and ready. It helps get the jitters out, and gives the coaches and coordinators a framework while they watch to see how the opponent will respond. After the pre-scripted plays, you do your best to call plays that will attack the opponent effectively and adapt to the situation on the field.

Trump and his MAGA acolytes wrote an entire game script and handed it to us. Not just the first fifteen scripted plays, mind you, but essentially the whole book. And they gave us twenty — 20!! — months to prepare our response. Now they’re running those plays, just like they said they would.

But somehow Democrats failed to prepare. Instead of having a counter for every Trump action, we’re adrift. While Trump is radically remaking the federal government, Democrats are tweeting about UFOs, sharing church platitudes, providing cover for Elon Musk’s meat cleaver meme “department,” and generally bowing to the Trump agenda.

The problem is especially bad in Washington. We have had the opposition playbook in our hands for nearly two years, yet Congressional Democrats appear to have no answers.

They are who we thought they were, and we’re letting them off the hook.

Twenty months ago, when we first got this book, Democratic leaders should have assembled a strike team. It doesn’t have to be big. A dozen smart researchers, comms and data people. Analyze Project 2025. Devise counter plays. Prepare your players. Then go out and execute.

On Monday, January 27th, the Trump regime ordered a “pause” on all grants and loan programs from the federal government. Democratic Attorneys General announced a lawsuit. Great — fight everywhere, all the time.

But this fight won’t be won and lost in the courts. The next four years must be about making Trump and his goons pay a POLITICAL price for everything they do. Political prices are charged in public opinion.

Trump’s actions create real-world pain for real people. Pain that is predictable. Pain we could have been prepared for.

Trump’s pause on federal hiring means that critical roles aren’t being filled at the Department of Veterans Affairs, putting veterans’ healthcare in danger.

Trump’s “pause” on federal grants and loans means programs like Meals on Wheels suddenly don’t have resources to feed seniors in need.

Trump’s goons have said loud and clear that they plan to slash funding for school lunch programs and give big corporations permission to jack up the cost of prescription drugs. The list goes on and on.

A serious opposition party would be ready for all of this. We would be holding press conferences and doing TV interviews in every state. Elected officials would be standing next to a hungry senior or a sick vet or a kid who qualifies for free lunch or a fire chief whose department is suddenly losing critical funding — and we’d be pinning these very predictable consequences on Trump. Every day. Every time. Everywhere.

Instead, we’ve got a (necessary but wildly insufficient) lawsuit that no normal person understands that will be decided by a Supreme Court wholly in Trump’s pocket. We have a lifeless DC press conference. The House Minority Leader hasn’t even bothered to tweet about Trump usurping Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse yet (it’s nearly 3 p.m. ET the day after Trump’s illegal order as I write this).

We have had their playbook for twenty months. We could have been prepared for this. We could have been prepared to make them pay a political price for everything they did. But we’re not. Just like the Biden administration had no plan in place to respond to the Dobbs decision even when that decision leaked two months earlier.

They are who we thought they were. And the Democratic leaders in Washington and around the country are letting them off the hook.