At a town hall this week in Concord, the sleepy capital of New Hampshire, Democrats were riled up.
“I call Washington every day on my lunch hour,” one member of the audience said in an exasperated tone. “I’m doing my part. I feel let down. There is no fight in the Democratic Party anymore.”
The town hall was hosted by Rep. Maggie Goodlander, a longtime Washington bureaucrat who is in her first term in Congress. Goodlander has only had her seat since January, when she won the election to replace the outgoing Annie Kuster. She has a strong pedigree for the moment. Goodlander’s mother, Elizabeth Tamposi, was a state lawmaker and a bureaucrat in the first Bush administration, who no doubt instilled in her daughter a passion for public service. Goodlander was an advisor to Joe Lieberman and John McCain, then a clerk for Merrick Garland, and was counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. She’s been all over D.C., she’s got strong connections there, and one of her biggest claims to fame is her work on the impeachment of Donald Trump, for goodness’ sake. She’s a fighter.
Or, she ought to be. Audience member after audience member stood up in the Christie McAuliffe Auditorium to ask Goodlander what Democrats in Congress were doing about the Trump administration. Goodlander repeatedly echoed what other Democrats have said: as the minority party, their hands are largely tied, and we should instead look to the courts. “I haven’t given up on the Constitution,” she told constituents. She explained how she monitors court cases “because the stories matter.”
Audience members pressured Goodlander into agreeing to attend a rally on April 5 – which she agreed to – and encouraged each other to join the 50501 movement. They asked her to come and be a part of a leadership solution, to tell Democrats how to turn out and what to do. And she largely evaded that.
After the event, Goodlander posted on Bluesky, “Tonight in Concord, I heard what so many of you are feeling: righteous anger and real fear from the chaos of the Trump Administration. I feel it too. I see you, I hear you, and I’m standing shoulder to shoulder with you.” But that’s not what the folks at the town hall were looking for; they were looking for leadership. As one person responded, “You missed pretty much everyone’s point. Don’t stand shoulder to shoulder with us – lead us!”
Nationally, members of Congress are raising questions about the Senate leadership of Chuck Schumer, who orchestrated a plan to throw House Democrats under a bus and cooperate with the Trump administration on the national budget despite the problems of setting a national budget at a time when the White House is willfully disregarding Congress’s budget-setting power.
Participants at a town hall for Rep. Glenn Ivey in Maryland angrily demanded that Schumer be ousted. They made similar demands at the Goodlander event — and similarly targeted New Hampshire’s senators, Sens. Shaheen and Hassan, who both voted in line with Schumer. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado has called for Schumer to step down and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to make the same statements about Schumer that she made about President Biden last year that led to him stepping down.
The problem with Chuck Schumer is that he doesn’t lead. He seems almost afraid to lead. There is no “Leader of the Opposition” in the American system; like it or not, the Senate Democratic Leader is about the closest thing we have (I, for one, don’t like it). There was no doubt that Mitch McConnell ran the GOP during the Biden administration or the Obama administration, and he ran it specifically to advance Republican interests.
I’m doing my part. I feel let down. There is no fight in the Democratic Party anymore
As recently as 2023, Schumer believed that Trump was an aberration, something the Republican Party would abandon. Trumpism is the sole political position of the Republican Party, and they’re not abandoning him nor his ideology. As an ideology, Trumpism is antidemocracy. It is a deeply authoritarian belief. When asked what would happen if Trump defied the courts, Goodlander had no answer for her audience. It’s a hard question to answer, to be sure. But the Trump administration is openly defying the courts and threatening judges who oppose it. Democrats have to decide if they’re going to stand up, and they have to decide now. There won’t be anything to stand up for if they wait much longer.