The Nonsense of Trump's "Common Sense Revolution"

During his 99 minutes of lies to Congress last week, Donald Trump characterized the actions of his administration's first six weeks as constituting a “Common Sense Revolution”, a theme he also touched on in his inaugural address. Apparently he is equating “common sense” with anti-”wokeness”, which he has effectively made the official policy of the federal government in his second term of office. Trump has moved to reverse trans rights, refusing to acknowledge the existence of more than two genders. He’s gutted policies promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. His administration is removing words and phrases that could be considered even remotely “woke” from government websites and documents.

Trump is following a familiar Republican playbook: weaponizing liberal concepts to make them, and in turn their Democratic supporters, seem extreme and out-of-touch to the average American. The use of preferred pronouns is just one example of the “wokeness” demonized by Republicans, along with buzzwords like DEI and critical race theory (CRT). This has dovetailed with the so-called “parental rights movement”, which has railed against the “indoctrination” of children in schools (i.e. teaching that slavery was bad and acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people). These efforts are now culminating in the destruction of the federal Department of Education.

There was no better example of this weaponization during last year’s campaign than the Trump ads that closed with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” These were the ads that California Governor Gavin Newsom recently described as “brilliant” (when he wasn’t busy throwing trans athletes under the bus with Charlie Kirk). In a way, Newsom is not wrong. Trump was able to portray the issue of guaranteeing basic human rights for incarcerated people as something seemingly ridiculous. The Democrats, for their part, never had an effective response to this line of attack, mostly leaving the ads unanswered. Kamala lost, and now Democrats like Rahm Emanuel want to move away from the issue of trans rights altogether (apparently Rahm also has delusions of being president one day.)

The overarching issue here is that the Democrats have repeatedly allowed the Right to define what constitutes “common sense” in this country, without putting forward their own alternative. If it wasn’t clear enough already, the moment this truly crystallized for me was a debate between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz during the 2018 Texas Senate election. During that debate, Beto found the need to say he still supported the Second Amendment, even though he was pushing for gun control. He also stated he was not in favor of legalizing narcotics other than marijuana even though he was calling for ending the War on Drugs. As opposed to actually taking a bold stand, he put himself on the defensive. Of course, you don’t move the Overton Window by playing defense.

The Texas Senate debate was a classic example of another tactic constantly used by the Right: portraying Democrats as supporting policies much more radical than they actually do, like open borders and defunding the police. In actuality the Democrats, afraid of their own shadow, often offer up what can be referred to as “Republican-lite”. Look no further than the official Democratic response to Trump’s speech delivered by Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, considered a “rising star” within the party. Slotkin doubled down on the same failed strategy employed by Harris in her campaign, trying to attract some mythical moderate Republican voter who the Democrats feel they can sway by invoking the memory of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. It didn't work in 2016, and it didn’t work in 2024, but the Democrats seem to think if they keep doing the same thing over and over it will produce a different result.

There’s been an apt Harry Truman quote circulating online that illustrates the futility of the strategy Democrats seem to be employing: “The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat.” Of course, the Democrats of Truman’s time had not yet begun their abandonment of the working class, and were not yet beholden to the billionaire donor class the way they are today. Becoming Republican-lite is the natural outcome of that transformation.

In the face of neofascism, many Democratic officials seem content with throwing up their hands and leaving it up to the “will of the voters”. They do not seem to feel they have a role in actually helping to shape public opinion, especially on issues that may not currently poll well. Of course, social movements have a long history of eventually winning on things that don’t “poll well” - the abolition of slavery and the end of legal segregation are just two examples that come to mind. For the Democrats to roll over and concede to the Right on issues like immigration, criminal justice, and trans rights is premature surrender.

There are a few exceptions to this dead-end approach. Bernie Sanders (technically an Independent, though he ran for president as a Democrat and caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate), delivered a sharper rebuke to Trump’s speech, directly calling out Republican plans to cut Medicaid - which bizarrely went unmentioned by Slotkin. Bernie has also been touring Republican districts in states like Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin, making the case against the Republican budget reconciliation bill. He is presenting a true alternative of economic populism, as opposed to the plutocratic fascism offered by Republicans and the neoliberal technocracy of the Democrats. Bernie is the classic example of a politician who has shifted the Overton window, helping to popularize previously fringe ideas like Medicare for All.

There’s an argument to be made that the Left needs to move beyond Bernie. I think this is true, in the sense that we need to look to a new generation of Left leadership starting in 2028. We’ve seen the emergence in particular of “The Squad” in Congress, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (despite arguments by some on the Left that she is becoming part of the Establishment), Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. The question is whether one of them can emerge as the standard barrier for a potential presidential campaign. We’ve already seen the obstacles a centrist woman of color faces in a national election; we can only imagine those that would be thrown in front of one who is actually on the Left. There are other left-of-center leaders likely to be contenders - for example, billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has a cult following on the Left - though none have quite the same political analysis that Bernie put forward in his campaigns.

I’ll close by returning to my original point. Trump’s “Common Sense Revolution” is hardly America’s first; in fact, the original was the one that led to the founding of the US in the first place. One of the founders of America’s radical tradition was Thomas Paine, the author of the pamphlet “Common Sense”. Contrary to the title, the views expressed by Paine were not necessarily mainstream at the time it was published. It was the pamphlet itself that helped popularize turning the growing rebellion against Great Britain into a war for independence. Maybe that is the true lesson the Democrats would be best to take heed of today - “playing possum” will not topple the king, but redefining “common sense” on their own terms just might.