Revolving Door Project | Four Pillars to Hold Up the Roof of Resistance

The cornerstones of our approach to the next four years of Trump.

This newsletter was originally published on our Substack. Read and subscribe here.

This week has been…well, whatever negative thing you want to say about American politics, we probably agree with you. Or think you’re being a bit too hopeful.

That said, the coming months must eventually end up as a nadir in the trajectory of modern history. Even if #resistance is seemingly out of fashion (and wrongly so: not all elements of the recent past should be deemed cringe, and #resistance was a net positive, even if it led to outsized audiences for alternatively gauche and grifting behavior), resistance is not only necessary—it can and must succeed.

We at Revolving Door Project suggest four pillars to structure your approach to the coming years of political bedlam.

1. Think twice before blaming the victims or attacking the vulnerable.

Accountability in society should start with the powerful. Theories on what Biden and Harris or their top advisors and appointees like Zients, Sullivan, Blinken, Yellen, or Powell should have done differently the past two years are useful. They were the most powerful figures in the administration. The same goes for scrutinizing David Plouffe, Tony West, Anita Dunn, and other key 2024 campaign figures, as well as Democratic leadership like Schumer and Jeffries.

But college students protesting war crimes? People with five-figure followings communicating online without poll-testing their language first? Really be sure you have examined the decisions of the powerful before blaming random people you happen to disagree with for where we are.

And if your take on a vulnerable community is that you don’t think they “poll well enough” to be worthy of our support and defense—well, then you might be a terrible person. Good people don’t conduct polls in order to determine their values.

2. Remember the wheelbarrow!

When attempting to overcome overwhelming odds, it’s always important to take a full accounting of one’s assets. Consider the approach of Westley in The Princess Bride, waking up from near death and needing to infiltrate a heavily guarded castle. At first he thinks it’s an impossible task—three men up against sixty palace guards. (“My brains, his steel… and your strength against sixty men… and a little head jiggle is supposed to make me happy? If we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.”) But when he learns that they also possess a wheelbarrow—“Why didn’t you list that among our assets in the first place?”—and a fire-resistant cloak, he’s able to devise a clever plan to scare the guards away from the castle gate.

What does that mean for progressives? What are our potential wheelbarrows?

Well, as many have noticed, taking state and local government control by allies seriously is especially important now. But we also must prioritize avenues like congressional oversight for investigating and condemning corruption in our federal government. Even while in the minority and thus without the current ability to issue subpoenas, ranking Democrats have considerable ability to elevate material concerns with misgovernment. RDP has long been focused on this type of work. “Be more like AOC” is a simple way to think about this possibility.

The wheelbarrow approach also means taking minority commissioner appointments to independent agencies seriously. (Here’s a handy guide to independent agencies that RDP has long managed.) Rohit Chopra became an FTC commissioner during the Trump years, and Lina Khan spent time on his staff. As a result, the FTC began to take some baby steps during even the Trump years—and their failures to act were made controversial by Chopra’s energetic dissents. More efforts like that will be crucial.

It also means activists not only mastering new media (which apparently still means TikTok!), but old media. The last refugees using Facebook or the older audience still listening to terrestrial radio matter, even if their once-massive user bases and audiences have been declining. Activists can and should communicate where and how they are comfortable, and no audience is too small in a country in which the purportedly ascendant Trump won swing states and the popular vote alike by less than 2%.

3. There is no need to “prioritize” outrages.

Back in the day in which figures like Joe Biden and Anita Dunn developed their understanding of politics, it was defensible to think that there were not many messages that could be disseminated at any given time. Figuring out what message would take the presidential slot on the evening network news was genuinely important—and subject to the White House’s centralized micromanagement.

Now…imagine explaining the centrality of the nightly news to a young person?

We need more humility and more activity. Don’t guess in advance what message will work. Have everyone communicate on the issues that move them most to the audience most likely to care. Trump didn’t emphasize his tax cuts to working class audiences or his tariff ideas to the rich. He didn’t inquire about cocaine use on Christian Nationalist podcasts or attack abortion rights on Joe Rogan. And his podcast bros, tech billionaires, anti-LGBTQ+ extremists, and other diverse supporters certainly emphasized different things to different audiences.

So yes, Trump will “flood the zone.” Trump will wield his authority over wildly disparate executive departments and dozens of independent agencies on behalf of corporations and hate at the same time. It is not a distraction for people to communicate about what moves them to people who are likely to be moved similarly, even if that issue is not the most frequently cited concern in a national poll.

4. Appeal to practical self-interest and material matters.

The billionaires have broken through the final barriers, and are in control of the federal government in America. But this fact won’t matter on its own—we have to show how it connects to real life issues.

Consider how the first Trump Administration’s Health and Human Services Department undermined the Affordable Care Act even as Trump failed to end Obamacare legislatively. Question: How much did Democrats discuss the executive branch’s war on healthcare while Trump was in office? Answer: Very little…but more than any opponent of Trump discussed the issue after Trump left office.

Focusing on the material consequences of Trump’s corruption, incompetence, and war on civil servants will be critical for the country to reclaim a political discourse tethered to the actions of politicians and consequences of policies, rather than a culture war ruled by cycles of outrage and pushback over rhetoric.