Donald Trump is the most effective president in my lifetime. There, I said it.
Not because he’s accomplished good things. Quite the opposite. I can’t think of a single thing he’s done to improve the country. But effectiveness isn’t the same thing as benevolence. And by any objective measure, Trump has been extraordinarily effective at using the power of the presidency to get what he wants.
The reason is simple: Trump doesn’t believe in constraints. He doesn’t care about norms, traditions, public opinion, elite opinion, or whether anyone thinks he should be doing what he’s doing.
Yes, the public hates him. But that’s because he’s used that superpower—the ability to ignore political traditions and constraints—almost entirely in pursuit of self-serving ends. It’s soul-crushing to think we still have 941 days of this left.
But there is a silver lining: Trump has shown that all those traditions and conventions were nothing more than artificial constraints on the power of the presidency. All those Democrats before him who claimed they couldn’t do this or that? It’s all been shown to be bullshit. The office has extraordinary power, now with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval.
Agencies can be disappeared. Congressionally mandated spending can be ignored. Regulatory agencies can be instantly reshaped. Immigration policy can be radically transformed by executive action. Inspectors general can be fired en masse. Entire categories of federal employees can be reclassified or removed. Federal law enforcement can be redirected toward presidential priorities. Foreign policy conventions can be rewritten overnight. We’ve learned that there is no virtue in an “independent” Justice Department.
The details of what survives court challenges and what doesn’t are almost beside the point. Trump has exposed something that many Americans—and certainly many Democrats—never fully appreciated: The modern presidency is far more powerful than anyone admitted. For decades, Democratic presidents treated many of those powers as off-limits, constrained by norms and a fear of backlash from the wealthy and powerful interests most invested in the status quo. Sometimes public opinion mattered too. But more often, caution was treated as wisdom because the people who benefited from inaction demanded it. Trump has demonstrated that most of those constraints were voluntary.
That’s the lesson Democrats should take from this era: Political power exists to be used. (It’s no accident that this is this site’s new tagline. Power does matter.)
Republicans understand that. They treat every election as a mandate to reshape the country in their image. Democrats too often treat victory as permission to make small adjustments around the margins while explaining why bigger change isn’t possible.
Trump has shattered that excuse.
I was thrilled with the Democratic primary results in New York on Tuesday night. Three candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cruised to victory, two of them ousting Democratic incumbents. The sitting congressmen were perfectly adequate progressive Democrats, always voting the right way. Yet there is a complacency in the Democratic caucus that will be the death of us if it isn’t excised.
Two of the three winners last night, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is building a core base in New York City. The third, Brad Lander, left the organization a few years ago. None of that matters, really. Their votes will be little different than their predecessors’, but they also won’t be as complacent about the status quo as the incumbents they are replacing.
We need that energy throughout the country. Not progressive vs. moderate vs. conserva-Dem. I have little energy for that battle, not in these times. What we need is the traditionalists swept out, with reformers leading the charge. Yes, a right-leaning Democrat can be a reformist! It’s not about ideology but about doing the work to get stuff done.
The Democratic Party today is narrowly more unpopular than the Republican Party. We will win big this November because Trump is truly that awful, but that won’t sustain the party for long. Maybe not in 2028. Definitely not in 2032. And if we want to see real change—not just fixing the mess Trump has made, but also building a truly progressive America—then we need to build trust among voters that Democrats can deliver.
That requires more than better messaging. It requires Democrats to use power. Otherwise, we’ll remain stuck in an endless loop: Republicans break the government in service of the wealthy and powerful, voters throw them out, Democrats come in and restore the status quo, voters wonder why their lives haven’t improved, and then voters throw them out and usher in Republicans to break it all over again.
Under the old constraints, there was seemingly little a president and Democratic Congress could do to enact quick change. At least that’s what we were told. But thanks to Trump, we now know those constraints were always an illusion.
And who did that illusion benefit? The wealthy elite. They built a system that treated caution as wisdom, delay as prudence, and inaction as responsibility. And they even got themselves a trillionaire out of the deal.
I’m frequently asked for my preferred 2028 Democratic presidential nominee, and I can’t bother to name names. We’ll have like 40 people running.
But I know what I’m looking for.
I want someone who will tackle the office with the same disdain for those traditions as Trump—but in service of people instead of himself. Anyone who muses wistfully about the old days when everyone got along and political enemies in Congress would have a beer afterward? Instant disqualification. Anyone who talks about rebalancing commissions to give the other party “a voice”? Instant disqualification. Anyone who accepts this broken and corrupt Supreme Court as just the way things are, even though nothing caps it at nine justices or prohibits term limits? Instant disqualification.
The status quo has served a tiny elite. The rest of the country has been left behind. Trump could’ve used this power for the betterment of our country, but he hasn’t helped even his core supporters. They’ve been among the people hurt most by his policies.
Now imagine a Democratic president who tells the political, media, and financial establishments to fuck off, then uses the full power of their office to directly improve people’s lives and to reshape the courts to better reflect the interests of the many rather than the powerful elite.
Those are the candidates who will grab my attention, whether they are running for president, Congress, or just about anything else.
Markos Moulitsas is founder and editor of the blogging website Daily Kos and author of three books.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
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