When I speak with Europeans alarmed by the developments in the US, one of the first questions they typically ask is: “Where are the Democrats? Where is the resistance to Trump?”

It’s not an easy question to answer. This July, the Democratic Party hit a 35-year low in national polling. Not since 1990 have the Democrats been so unpopular with so many Americans. Even senior party members acknowledge that they are not only losing support among key constituencies – including young voters, union members, growing segments of communities of colour, and those without a college education – but that the party’s brand has become outright “toxic” in large parts of the country.

This comes at a time when President Trump is testing the loyalty of his own base: slashing health insurance, food assistance, and other benefits for millions of working-class Americans; imposing arbitrary tariffs that are beginning to drive up prices; and building a massive deportation operation whose cruelty is alienating people across the political spectrum. On his core issues – immigration and the economy – Trump is rapidly losing public support. In fact, he has become more unpopular, more quickly, than any president in recent history.

So yes, where are the Democrats, who should be ready to seize this political opportunity? Where are the messengers fanning out across Fox News, podcasts and local townhalls to tell the story of how this Administration is harming all Americans, but especially working-class Americans – a key constituency of the MAGA Republican Party? For the past six months, the average American on the street will tell you: the Democrats have been nowhere to be seen.

A party without a plan

The Democratic National Committee is working on a post-mortem of the 2024 election. But there are reports suggesting that the authors are avoiding critical aspects of the campaign, including Biden’s defiant and ill-advised decision to run again, and the party’s bypassing of a competitive primary. These choices prevented Democrats from grappling with the deeper trends shaping the new political landscape – such as how to reach voters who get their news from TikTok and social media or reengage a generation of young men drawn to conservative ideas – as well as testing messages and strategies. They also stopped the party from engaging in the sort of spirited competition that, in 2020, allowed Biden to craft a platform reflective of voter concerns.

In the absence of a shared analysis, Democratic representatives and strategists are drawing their own conclusions. To the dismay of more progressive elements in the party, some officials have read the election results as a referendum on the Party’s so-called “identity politics” and begun to echo elements of Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric. Others read the election as an endorsement of hardline immigration policy and sought out opportunities to show that they support a tougher stance. And many criticised the Harris campaign for its lack of focus on economic inequality and cost of living – leading Senators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) to set out on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour across the country to denounce the big money takeover of democratic institutions.

It’s not surprising that the Democratic Party lacks leadership after an electoral loss – there is no formal opposition leader in the U.S. system. But the absence of any coherent strategy to confront Trump and the MAGA movement is glaring. Time and again, significant numbers of Democrats have voted with Republicans on contentious cabinet picks and immigration policies, even censuring their own colleague for interrupting the president’s State of the Union address. In their one and only moment of political leverage, the high-profile March vote over the government shutdown, they fumbled the ball: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged Democratic Members to reject the Republican spending bill, only for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to vote in favour and help the White House avert a shutdown.

Party leadership has also been resistant to the soul-searching that the election loss demands and blocked the emergence of younger, bolder voices that might help steer it out of the political morass. In May, AOC, whose media savvy has been key to reengaging younger and progressive voters, ran for a prominent position on the House Oversight Committee. Yet under pressure from leadership, the position went to Gerry Connolly, a senior Democratic representative who died six months later.

It’s not surprising that the Democratic Party lacks leadership after an electoral loss. But the absence of any coherent strategy to confront Trump and the MAGA movement is glaring.

Most strikingly, senior Washington Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Speaker Emerita of the House Nancy Pelosi, have still not endorsed New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose surprise victory in the Democratic primary is making international headlines. Mamdani has made it his mission to reengage precisely those voters that Democrats have lost. His campaign is laser-focused on the working class and issues of affordability: proposing a rent-freeze in all rent-stabilised housing, free public buses ; free, universal childcare; and a pilot program for city-run grocery stores in neighbourhoods without access to fresh produce. He has successfully reconnected with communities of colour who swung to Trump. And his innovative digital and social media strategy has gone viral, reaching both young people and the politically disengaged voters who increasingly decide elections.

Though New York is not a proxy for the country, Mamdani has offered concrete answers to some of the thorniest questions troubling Democrats in other states. Yet in New York City’s mayoral race, many top Democrats in Washington cast their lot with Andrew Cuomo, the controversial establishment opponent and a former governor who resigned in disgrace amid allegations of sexual harassment. The overarching impression is of an ageing party leadership that struggles to adapt to the urgency of the moment and find its voice in a new media landscape.

Is resistance part of the job?

Left-leaning Americans want their Democratic representatives in Washington to put up a spirited fight, even from the minority. Yet senior party voices argue that resistance is not their job. Some elected Democrats have responded with exasperation at the public pressure to counter Trump’s policies, telling disgruntled voters to “call the Republicans.” They say their focus is on winning the next elections.

One senior strategist advised the party to “roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” With a White House intent on overwhelming the opposition with the sheer scale and force of its anti-democratic onslaught, there is some wisdom in advising the party to pick its fights. And yet, waiting for voters to get so desperate that Democrats look good in comparison suggests that the party no longer has any idea what it stands for or a compelling vision to mobilise supporters. And standing by while the country burns cannot be the winning strategy.

There are Democrats who understand the weight of this historical moment and their responsibility. These people are working hard to rebuild the Democratic coalition and are taking real risks to show voters that they are willing to fight for them. Sanders and AOC’s Fighting Oligarchy tour took them into deep-red districts to speak with voters. Representative Ro Khanna went to districts where Republicans had cancelled their town halls after being booed – and held his own public events. Some elected officials have faced arrest, physical intimidation and legal threats for defending constituents’ rights.

Yet these acts of resistance have been isolated incidents. They have not fed into a nationally coordinated Democratic strategy. For those paying attention, the courage of a few brave elected officials to speak out – despite an increasingly threatening political climate – has cast the rest of the party’s complacency into sharp relief.

The courage of a few brave elected officials to speak out has cast the rest of the Democratic Party’s complacency into sharp relief.

Democratic governors are finding their voice

Some state officials are beginning to demonstrate a new willingness to coordinate a national resistance strategy from outside Washington and to use more aggressive tactics.

For the past year, 23 Democratic state attorneys general have been closely coordinating to prepare for the legal onslaught of the Trump White House. So far, they have been effective in stalling or blocking key parts of his agenda, including restoring billions of dollars in federal funding for Democratic states and blocking the executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented parents. But lawsuits alone don’t build a movement.

Most Democratic governors, meanwhile, have tread cautiously, wary of Trump’s repeated (if unlawful) threats to cut off federal funding for cities and states that don’t cooperate with his immigration crackdown or any number of other MAGA policies.

But recent events signal a new tone: New York and Illinois governors Kathy Hochul and JD Pritzker worked with Democratic state lawmakers in Texas on a highly public resistance effort. On August 3,  in a dramatic move, they helped Texas lawmakers flee the state in order to block a redistricting vote that would all but guarantee Republicans five new seats in Congress. Hochul has urged her Democratic colleagues to begin “fighting fire with fire” – arguing that if Republicans are no longer playing by the rules, Democrats may have to start meeting them in kind.

It’s not full-blown resistance, but it’s a start.

Untapped power at the grassroots

The prevailing passivity of high-profile Democrats since Trump’s re-election has made it abundantly clear that real change will have to come from outside Washington and outside party leadership.

The tone at the grassroots and across civil society is different this time around. The shared sense of utter devastation after Trump’s 2016 victory was also electrifying: protests sprang up on a seemingly weekly basis across the country, colourful signs filled front yards and windows, people wore T-shirts with slogans like “not my president”, and dozens of political organisations were founded to recruit new candidates and organise the resistance.

The mood now is more sober, more resigned to the long fight ahead. Democratic voters now understand that Trump was not an anomaly, but part of a rising tide of global right-wing populism that will shape the coming decades. This time, he won the popular vote. In fact, if every eligible voter had taken part in the election, he would have won the popular vote by an even larger margin. Many on the Left are tired, especially after historic social movements, like Black Lives Matter, ended in another Trump presidency. And they are legitimately scared: prominent activists like Mahmoud Khalil have been abducted and jailed, and the legal firms that once represented progressive movements are caving to pressure from the administration. There is real, personal risk to organising in a context of growing authoritarianism.

The prevailing passivity of high-profile Democrats since Trump’s re-election has made it abundantly clear that real change will have to come from outside Washington and outside party leadership.

But most of all, as the dismal polling numbers show, people are furious and disillusioned with the party: for its lack of vision, its failure to formulate a strong strategy to defend democracy, and its seeming inability to rise to this moment. The divide between Democratic voters and elected representatives over the genocide in Gaza (only 8 per cent of Democrats now support Israel’s actions) has also fuelled growing anger about the party’s lack of moral clarity, especially among activists and organisers.

And yet, there is an undeniable energy waiting to be mobilised at the grassroots.

Indivisible – a movement founded in 2016 as a network of local chapters to resist the Trump agenda – has seen a resurgence in local support. Despite limited media coverage, the national No Kings Protests in June are now believed to have brought as many as 4 to 6 million people onto the streets – potentially the largest single-day demonstration in American history. As many as 30,000 people filled the stadiums and overflow rooms for the Sanders-AOC tour. In Los Angeles, spontaneous demonstrations have erupted over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests, and community support and resistance networks have emerged to protect undocumented neighbours. In New York, Mamdani rode to victory on a massive grassroots organising effort that mobilised 50,000 volunteers.

No, this doesn’t look like 2016. Democratic Party leadership is weak, disoriented, and uncoordinated, and state leaders are still finding their footing. But what I tell Europeans is that there is enormous potential and untapped energy at the grassroots that a well-organised movement could mobilise. All the experience, expertise, and networks developed under the first Trump administration to take action locally and nationally are still right there, waiting to activate.

The way forward

Mamdani’s victory gives us some clues about how the Democratic Party could funnel this grassroots energy into electoral success. As organisers, pollsters, and strategists have long said, it will take a positive platform that can inspire people to reengage, not another tired anti-Trump campaign, scolding people who can’t afford groceries about the urgency of saving democracy. Voters need to know what the Democratic vision for America looks like.

It will take a renewed focus on working people and on restoring a sense of fairness in the American economy. Some dismissively call this economic populism, but poll after poll has shown that what voters across the political spectrum want and support are policies to make a good life in the US affordable for people who work for a living.

And it will take a credible messenger to make that case – a political outsider, much like Trump, who is willing to break from party orthodoxy on key issues, as Mamdani did in his embrace of democratic socialism. Like Trump, Mamdani recognises that the institutions that Democrats love to defend are not delivering and, at a time when Americans across both parties see a broken system, his policies show that he is willing to try something new. Give the Left something to believe in, something to fight for, and I believe people are ready to get back out on the street.

I am not confident that the Democratic Party will rise to the occasion. In fact, I suspect we may first see the emergence of a grassroots resistance movement before the party eventually steps into its role as the voice of national opposition. In the end, what I tell Europeans is that I have more faith in the American people than in the Democratic Party.