The first month of Donald Trump’s second administration has overwhelmed the opposition. Coastal progressives who once propounded lofty theories of radical social change are depleted by the fact of their political irrelevance. In the halls of Congress, Democrats are plainly rudderless. “In about six or seven months,” Nancy Pelosi limply predicted on MSNBC, “you’re going to see such a change … a very different picture [of] the Democrats.” Such rote posturing is likely to persist under the current leadership. Despite the policy breakthroughs of Joe Biden’s term, notably in the realm of antitrust enforcement, Democrats are struggling to offer a vision of how they will use state power to help working people.
“Liberal despondency at a moment that calls for fearless reinvention is baffling.”
The depth of liberal despondency at a moment that calls for fearless reinvention is baffling. Setting aside the debate over whether the new era promises “Project 2025” at full throttle or an unpredictable mix of Jacksonian impulses and corporatist experiments in key industries, Trump thus far is doing what the techno-libertarian right has long craved: calling time on the modern administrative state, the inception of which traces back to the business regulations and agencies created under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Cumbersome regulations that may actually fetter economic development are a mere footnote in this drama. The effort to cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which under former director Rohit Chopra ramped up civil penalties on predatory financial fees and fought the novel and pernicious practice of politically motivated debanking, is just the latest sign of which theory of populism is prevailing in the White House. At this rate, there won’t be much left that needs clarifying.
Trump’s opening moves offer Democrats an opportunity to rediscover their roots. They have yet to capitalize on this opportunity, but under growing pressure to show resolve, it is plausible that they will heed the weary counsel of Joe Biden’s farewell address and revive the party’s venerable anti-monopoly tradition. The question is whether Democrats will proceed cautiously as events unfold, or put forth a new vision of the stakes for American democracy—this time devoted not to one partisan nemesis, the endlessly caricatured 45th and 47th president, but to the concentration of market power that has corrupted our politics for decades.
To be sure, there are obstacles within the party to resurrecting the anti-monopoly cause. Interest in the nation’s antitrust laws rebounded in the last decade, as reports of gig-platform abuses, wage theft, and consumer fraud—a multibillion dollar source of waste in the economy—gained traction in the media. “Hipster antitrust” academics, organizations like the American Economic Liberties Project and Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren helped expose the variety of ways in which Big Tech, as well as the broader problem of financialization, preys on consumers and coerces workers and smaller businesses.
These “neo-Brandeisian” arguments reached Biden’s inner circle during the last administration. But especially after the Democrats’ loss last year, such advocacy has been disparaged by neoliberal pundits and economists determined to reassert their influence over policymaking in the party. Since the election, congressional Democrats have been prodded to emphasize “abundance” and basic purchasing power over the steady erosion of consumer protection. It will take a concerted effort by the party’s anti-monopoly faction to prevail upon other Democrats attracted to a more conciliatory stance toward the country’s dominant firms and sectors.