A shocking poll clarifies the Democrats’ future

And unions in Colorado pull a fast one on business lobbyists

Welcome to a Wednesday edition of Progress Report.

I’m still on the mend from the flu, but news waits for no man — and as we’re seeing, the sheer pace of societal shifts and political developments is leaving many long-standing political leaders choking on dust, unable to keep up.

There’s a lot to review tonight; we’ll start with some juicy state and local stories and then look at the latest national developments.

A reminder: Our live video interview with labor organizer, professor, and We Are the Union author Eric Blanc will take place at 9 pm EST tomorrow (Thursday) evening. He’s been at the center of the fight against DOGE’s mass layoffs as a key part of the new Federal Unionists Network, so there will be lots and lots to discuss.

Note: Unlike many progressive advocacy journalists, I’ve gone fully independent, with no special advertising deals or close relationships with powerful politicians to temper what I write. My only loyalty is to you, the reader, and to the cause of progress — economic justice, democracy, human rights, and standing up to oligarchs.

This election showed that progressives desperately need to build up their own alternative political media infrastructure, and for just $5 a month, you can help keep us afloat and build the movement.

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Colorado: This is turning into one of the juiciest and chess-like state legislative sagas I’ve seen in quite a while.

Hundreds of workers turned out to the state capitol in Denver today to urge the state House to move forward with the Colorado Worker Protection Act, a bill that would eliminate the state’s requirement that organizing employees win two elections — including one with more than 75% of the vote — in order to have full union rights. Colorado is the only state with such a law, which is essentially a modified “right to work” law, and there’s a lot of momentum behind repealing it, something that I’ve been covering for the past four months.

The bill has already been approved by the state Senate and made it through its first House committee last week, but it still faces the prospect of being vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. The multi-millionaire, libertarian-minded governor has threatened to break out the veto pen unless the legislators and unions behind the bill agree to some sort of compromise with business interests, who obviously hate everything about this proposal.

But instead of watering down their top priority, labor going in the other direction, attempting to turn the bill as it stands now into the compromise.

Earlier this month, the AFL-CIO introduced a ballot initiative that would require that employers provide “just cause” when firing a worker. Turning away from an at-will employment state is even scarier to businesses than whatever uptick in unionization would happen upon passage of the Worker Protection Act. The union has made it clear that it would drop the initiative for the moment if the Chamber of Commerce comes around on its prized legislation — and convinces a right-wing activist to drop his own initiative, which would turn Colorado into a “right to work” state.

It’s a gambit for the union, but its initiative is the sort of thing that would likely pass with voters in the increasingly solid blue state. That political shift also makes it quite likely that a Democrat will succeed Polis as governor, and both main contenders — Attorney General Phil Weiser and Secretary of State Jena Griswald — back the bill, which almost certainly represents a litmus test for the AFL-CIO.

As such, the Chamber of Commerce might decide that it’s better to agree now and gain perhaps a few small concessions in the bill than be forced to swallow labor’s ideal law a few years from now.

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A few quick news items:

• Oklahoma schools superintendent Ryan Walters has gone so far off the rails in his efforts to infuse conservative Christianity into public education that even churches and deeply religious parents are pushing back against it.

• South Dakota: Republican lawmakers pulled the trigger and approved a number of restrictions on ballot initiatives, including significantly shortening the window of time that activists have to collect petition signatures. That one heads to the governor’s desk, while a constitutional amendment that would raise the threshold for future constitutional amendments to 60% will go before voters in 2026.

• Segregation is back, thanks to Russ Vought and Donald Trump. Seriously, the administration just removed the ban on government contractors that use segregated facilities. This is in line with Vought’s wild screeds against suburban integration, found in the budget manifesto he wrote in between OMB stints.

• Idaho: Republicans are moving closer to allowing unvaccinated children in public schools no questions asked, which is exactly the policy you like to see during a Measles outbreak.

• Texas: Frustrated by cities and towns passing marijuana decriminalization and other progressive ordinances via ballot initiative, Attorney General Ken Paxton is pushing a bill that would give him the chance to review and cancel any local ballot measure before it even goes to voters. Paxton’s proposal suggests that the AG’s office would review these measures to determine whether they violated state law, but he’s a pretty unreliable judge of that, as this winter’s case in Dallas indicates.

Lame Duck Chuck and a Democratic rebirth

Chuck Schumer took the coward’s way out when he canceled his small book tour this week, but at least there was some logic to it: the Democratic senate leader knew that he’d be greeted by protesters angry about his decision to cave and provide the no-strings-attached votes for Trump’s government funding bill, and not wanting to hear from outraged voters or give them a viral moment, he cited “security concerns” and pulled the events.

That Schumer pivoted to appearing on several national TV programs to double down on the same rejected explanations for his capitulation indicates just how dangerously out of step Democratic Party leadership has become and crystallizes the urgent need for a new direction. And a new direction for Democrats is the only way that Trump and the ascendant far-right, with all their money and institutional power, can ever be vanquished.

The senator’s press team likely assumed that The View and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes would be friendly ports in a firestorm and provide Schumer platforms to make his case to their audiences. Before we even get to what he said, it’s important that we examine the context. Schumer privately tried to make nice (or placate) progressive grassroots organizations over the weekend and into Monday, but got a cool reception and a statement from Indivisible — including its New York chapter — that called for him to step aside as Democratic leader.

Going on TV was a play for the liberal elite Boomer crowd that has always been his comfort zone. In a world where there is an effective progressive media ecosystem that can build and sustain pressure at the ballot box, this kind of pivot wouldn’t have been at all politically viable. He went on TV to try convince the angry donors and DC professionals that he had done the right thing, to persuade them to stop speaking to Politico and other news outlets about the discord in the party, because that’s really all he knows. The man is in his mid-70s, so it’d be strange if he was up on the podcasts and Twitch streams and other new platforms to hit. The ignorance wouldn’t be a problem, either, if he weren’t the most powerful Democrat in DC.

The next iteration of the Democratic Party must be led by people who run to the grassroots, who try to communicate directly with voters and take their feedback instead of focusing on the DC bubble — and it has to be both because it’s their natural inclination and because they have no choice. They also need to be way younger and able to speak the language of people who have student loans and pay rent and don’t reflexively think of Vietnam demonstrations anytime somebody mentions campus protestors.

Incidentally, the explanations and prognostications that Schumer offered during these two appearances were shocking enough that the choice of platform really didn’t matter all that much. The plan that he laid out, to hold press conferences that hit Trump for raising costs for middle class families, demonstrated a deeply antiquated view of how politics now works in a modern attention economy where big swings are the only thing that make news or influence people. Insisting that the plan worked in 2017 underlined the disconnect, as 2017 is about as relevant to this moment as 1917.

Even more shocking was Schumer’s insistence that we have not reached a constitutional crisis in this country because the administration has not defied a Supreme Court ruling. He essentially shrugged at the fact that Trump has already blatantly and gleefully ignored rulings from lower courts, which carry just as much authority, and he wasn’t concerned that every federal agency shut down by the White House has has been so quickly gutted that no court order has been able to effectively revive it. Ongoing attempted firings of high-level officials, most recently the two Democratic FTC commissioners, did not hold any sway.

ICE sweeping up innocent citizens, green card holders being arrested and deported without criminal charges, protests being criminalized, schools extorted, medical research savaged… do none of these things constitute a crisis of power and the legitimate use of force by the state?

For such a prolific fundraiser, one might assume he’d at least be concerned about the White House’s quiet war on Democratic campaigning apparatus, in which the DOJ is going after law firms, payment processors, and others who have any association with the party’s election work. Using the Department of Justice to dismantle innocent opposition parties sounds like a constitutional crisis to me.

Unlike in 2017, there is no fooling Democratic voters. A new poll finds Schumer deep underwater with self-identified liberals, 34% to 50%, after a nose dive of 16% over the past few weeks. Partisan voters are generally a trailing indicator, and now they’ve all but caught up.

It’s obvious that Democrats need not only new leadership, but a brand new worldview. After so many decades in DC, they have too much faith in the institutions that are crumbling around them. Nobody likes to admit that they’ve lost touch and that the world has passed them by — as a millennial, I’m struggling with fashions and TikTok trends I’ll never understand — but their refusal to acknowledge the painful truth is now hurting all of us.

As dismal as things feel right now, this is the rare moment in which big directional changes really are possible. The Democratic brand is in the toilet, and no rebranding of neoliberalism (sorry, Abundance agenda) is going to fool voters. The only thing that will change this is actual change, and there is vanishingly little justification that anybody in power can offer for preserving the status quo or tinkering around the edges. Running out the same old patronizing leaders who have been breaking promises and disappointing people since the early 2010s is no way to win back trust or even interest.

So what does this mean practically? Primary challenges, first and foremost. Primaries are generally low-turnout and in many cases can be won with a motivated grassroots movement. Even the threat of them can make lawmakers change their ways, at least for a little while. Donating to and getting involved in longterm organizing is even more important, because that’s what creates sustained power.

Even before that, continuing to protest and demand change whenever a representative is appearing in public — or at their office, if they’re playing coy. They clock these things. It also forces them to demand changes themselves. There are now multiple House Democrats who have called for Schumer to be replaced as Senate minority leader. It’s slim pickings in terms of who would be a clear improvement, and Schumer is hardly the only leader who deserves the boot, but he’s by far the most powerful.

With so many Americans under attack, the protests are only proliferating. Today, the National Education Association backed demonstrations all across the country in protest of the plan to eliminate the Department of Education, and tomorrow, the American Postal Workers Union is holding a day of action at post offices nationwide to protest the administration’s dramatic plans to downsize the postal service.

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