The Democratic Party won't save us. We must save democracy. Here's the plan.

How to support democracy's comeback without just giving to Democratic candidates.

Be a part of democracy’s comeback. Invest strategically in frontline groups to protect the most vulnerable, block the Billionaire Coup, and win back power. Please join me in giving to MVP’s Comeback Campaign if you can.

Here’s why MVP is our best hope for taking on Trump, Musk, and the GOP:

It’s 2015. Donald Trump is on stage, braying and whining and being as terrible as he can be. Instead of uniting to stop him, his opponents attack each other.

That, in two sentences, is how Donald Trump won his first GOP primary. And it could be an apt description of how our democracy ends—not by fire or ice, but by a classic collective action problem.

No honest person doubts that in March 2025, America faces the most serious threat to democracy in our lifetime, at the very least. The big question on serious thinkers' minds is, “Are we more like Russia in 1999, 2004, or 2012?” Instead of being spurred into action by that shocking question, too many of us feel like Trump’s opponents on the debate stage—waiting for everyone else to get it together and stop him.

In the anguish of this fugue state, good things are happening—like the #TeslaTakedown, especially. But many Democrats and much of the left have turned on the Democratic Party.

I get that emotion; often, I may even second it. Leaders need to lead. But many of them, along with the party and system that gave us this mess, cannot effectively save us from it—at least in their present form. We can spend the next two years yelling at people who won’t feel the necessary pressure to change until a mass movement forces them to. But turning on each other now would be suicidal. It’s the one way we’re guaranteed to live in regret for the foreseeable future.

We have no time to waste, no time for infighting, and no time to wait for elected officials to reject all the trappings that make collective action impossible. We must challenge ourselves to practice radical acceptance to take on the threat we face directly. Nearly all of us, to some degree, let this happen. No one knows precisely how to fix this. But it’s our G-damn country. Our choices now may affect the rest of our lives and the lives of every American who follows us. And to the rest of the world, the horrors that this regime wants to commit will be done in all of our names.

So, let’s focus on one thing we know: The Democratic Party alone will not save us.

Democracy needs a makeover

Yes, VP Harris would have won without a global headwind against incumbent parties and Elon Musk spending $45 billion to buy the presidency. But even if she had won, the Democratic Party would need a massive makeover.

Even the most optimized people-powered political machine would need an update in 2025, given how the Citizens United regime has given the Republicans every possible advantage to make money and propaganda count more than people. But think about this: Trump leads a party that has gutted just about everything the government does for workers everywhere and anywhere it gets to power to do so. Yet the GOP still won working-class voters. That’s got to be a wake-up call that sounds like a foghorn.

Democrats don’t compete in much of the nation. And too often when we do, we offer voters the second-best Republican, which is an absolute disgrace given that GOP has aligned with the most malign forces in the world. And I don’t just mean Putin or Musk. I mean, climate catastrophe advocates, antivaxxers, union and university busters, fiends who’d leave pregnant women alone to bleed out in hospital parking lots…

Run for Something is leading the charge to nurture a new generation of candidates to lead the party. That’s fundamental. However, we cannot think of democracy as something that only happens when people vote.

Funding local organizers can create lasting change

I spent 2024 doing everything I could to try to save democracy. It didn’t work out. You may have heard.

But I discovered an organization that employs a method that is the best hope for transforming this nation and taking on the billionaire capture of our media, courts, and government. It’s a way to put your money to work in a way that does more than build elections. You can help develop infrastructure that wins lasting change once those elections are won. And it does this with work it does is crucial to restoring the social fabric that fascists shred in the hope of destroying any opposition.

The Movement Voter Project and the MVP PAC work like mutual funds, investing in frontline organizations that build support for progressive policies and candidates. They do this on the same schedule as Fox News: 24/7, 365 days a year, not just for a few months every four years.

Because they’re directly connected to organizers in every community where Democrats need to win, I trust their plan for directing our resources to get out of this mess.

So what’s the plan?

The Plan

Summary of Funding Priorities

1) Protect Vulnerable Communities

Marginalized communities are under attack. MVP partners are fighting back. Our urgent moral challenge is to support these organizations so they can block harm to immigrant, LGBTQ+, and other at-risk communities immediately — while building power to prevent harm in the long term.

2) Pressure Congress: Stop MAGA Bills

Republicans have a slim 220-215 House majority. We need just three defections to stop bad bills. MVP is helping organize “The Battleground Alliance,” an unprecedented collaboration of year-round organizing groups pressuring vulnerable House members to block the worst of the Trump agenda.

3) Strengthen State-Level Organizing

MAGA is winning because people-powered democracy has diminished. The solution? A revival of deep, year-round organizing. MVP is leading the way by 1) doubling down on funding groups organizing large, engaged membership bases, and 2) nurturing state-level alliances and "state ecosystems" that can grow power year after year, and influence policy at EVERY level of government.

4) Scale Up Progressive Media

In the media war, Democrats are getting crushed. We need to level the playing field starting now. In the past, MVP has invested modestly in progressive media and media-based organizing... But 2024 was a wake-up call. We are now focused on scaling our support for the progressive media ecosystem, and to combat right-wing disinfo that is winning over young people and other Dem-leaning voters.

5) Defend the Wisconsin Supreme Court

The most important election of 2025 is on April 1st in the ultimate swing state of Wisconsin, and the outcome will affect all of us. Protecting the 4-3 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will enable us to bust the myth of a Trump “mandate,” prevent GOP foul play in 2028, potentially un-gerrymander a GOP House seat, and bring about favorable state rulings on voting rights and more.

6) Take Back the House in 2026

The single best way to stop the Trump agenda is to flip the U.S. House in 2026. Through the newly-formed Battleground Alliance, MVP is funding a nationally coordinated organizing effort to flip the House in 2026 — and build local power in key competitive districts that lasts beyond the election.

Give what you can

We need to try everything. If you think Democratic candidates, specifically or in general, are the best way to resist the Billionaire Coup, do it. If you consider investing in progressive media the best way to do it, do it. If you don’t have any money and can only share messages like this, please do so.

What we do in America in 2025 will determine whether we will survive to build a more perfect democracy or we become Russia in 1999, 2004, 2012, or even worse.

I’ll be asking you to help fund MVP’s Comeback Plan, and if you have another idea you’re excited about, please let me know. We need to try everything.

The only thing we cannot do is stand there, fuming at each other, while Trump takes us to a place none of us want to go.