"Even now, as I travel around the country, I see the forces of repair gathering in neighborhoods and communities. If you’re part of an organization that builds trust across class, you’re fighting Trumpism. If you’re a Democrat jettisoning insular faculty-lounge progressivism in favor of a Whig-like [Whigs emphasized traditional morality and progressive improvements, Brooks says] working-class abundance agenda, you’re fighting Trumpism. If you are standing up for a moral code of tolerance and pluralism that can hold America together, you’re fighting Trumpism.
"The Democratic Party in the United States can make the erosion of democracy visible to the public and costly to the perpetrators. It can obstruct legislation in Congress, compete in electoral districts where Republicans typically run uncontested, and coordinate to maintain a presence, even if only in protest, in as many institutional spaces as possible. Recent attempts to lead town halls in districts where Republicans refuse to hold them are great examples of this strategy.
"Wealth cannot wholly inoculate the private sector from the pressures imposed by a weaponized state. But the larger and richer a private sector is, the harder it is to fully capture or bully into submission. In addition, wealthier citizens have more time, skills, and resources to join or create civic or opposition organizations, and because they depend less on the state for their livelihoods than poor citizens do, they are in a better position to protest or vote against the government.
"Compared with those in other competitive authoritarian regimes, opposition forces in the United States are well-organized, well-financed, and electorally viable, which makes them harder to co-opt, repress, and defeat at the polls. American opposition will therefore be harder to sideline than it was in countries such as El Salvador, Hungary, and Turkey."