Just days after the 2024 election, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post arguing that Democrats should do something we’ve never done: build an opposition cabinet. A team of our best leaders in Congress, one senator or representative assigned to go toe to toe with each of Trump’s cabinet secretaries, ready to call out every bad move and, just as important, say what we’d do instead.
It got some attention. I made the rounds on CNN, MSNBC, News Nation and Fox. Timothy Snyder had a good Substack about it. Then it went nowhere.
Here’s the idea in one sentence: put one congressional Democrat in charge of the opposition to each cabinet agency, so every time the administration does something, one clear voice is there to respond and offer a better way. That’s it.
I called it a “shadow cabinet,” because that’s what they call it in Britain, Canada, and Australia. It’s been a staple of those democracies for 100 years. It’s just a description, nothing sinister about it.
But here’s what I learned: the word “shadow” freaked out some people. The far right grabbed it and spun it into something secret and conspiratorial, some unelected shadow government lurking in the dark. That’s nonsense. Of course they didn’t bother to even read the opinion piece. But the name gave them the opening, and it got in the way of a good idea.
So let’s call it what it actually is: a Democratic Opposition Cabinet. Same thing our closest allies have done for generations, without the spooky name.
Two things killed it.
It was too early. I wrote it the week after the loss, when we were all still on the floor. “Last week stung,” is how I opened it, and it did. Nobody builds a disciplined, year-long opposition while they’re still catching their breath. The idea landed in a party that wasn’t ready to do much but whine and complain.
And the knock was that this is a British parliamentary thing that doesn’t fit our system, a foreign import. That only works if you misread what I’m actually saying. So let me be more clear about what this is.
I’m not talking about changing the Constitution, creating new offices, or setting anyone up to “take over.” There’s one president at a time. That’s not up for debate.
I’m talking about getting organized. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries would pick a handful of our best messengers and make each one the designated person to answer a Trump cabinet secretary and go toe-to-toe with that person. That member owns it. They’re who the press calls, who the advocates rally behind, who shows up every single time the administration moves on their front, ready with the criticism and the much better idea.
It’s a way to organize our opposition and right now our opposition is a total mess. Everybody talks, nobody owns anything, and the message gets scattered to the wind. A Democratic Opposition Cabinet fixes that. It’s not a government-in-waiting. It’s a great essaging tool so we fight back the same way every day.
Trump and his billionaire friends are very good at one thing: flooding the zone. Trump’s Attorney General says something, and right now it’s a coin flip whether any of us answer it, or twenty of us answer it in twenty different ways. With this, our designated person answers it, same day, every time. Cable bookers know exactly who to call. When they move to gut an agency, you get one clear voice who’s lived on that beat and can say it plain: here’s what they’re doing, here’s who it hurts, here’s what we’d do instead. They can’t flood the zone if we stop letting them.
Look, here’s where I land after reading every post-mortem take about what went wrong in 2024. We didn’t lose because we’re short on good ideas. Democrats have better policies to help working families deal with rising costs and the disastrous effects of Trump’s policies. We just did a lousy job explaining it, and we spent way too much time talking about what we’re against instead of what we’re for.
Everything we do between now and the midterms has to fix that. Hold this administration accountable in a way people can actually see, and give folks a reason to come back to the Democratic party. A Democratic Opposition Cabinet does both. And it sets us up for what comes after, keeping the opposition sharp and the message clear all the way into 2028 when we’re gonna put a Democrat back in the Oval Office.
The best part: Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries can just do this on their own. No legislation, no vote, no extra pay for these members. It’s a decision by two people. Name the members. Give them their assignments. Let them go to town.
Last time I made this case, I closed with a line I still believe, so I’ll use it again.
The point was never just to oppose. It’s to show, not just say, what we stand for. We didn’t do enough of that in 2024, and we paid for it.
We’ve got the talent. We’re right on the issues. What we’ve been missing is the discipline to organize it and the guts to put our best messengers out front, every day, and let them fight back.
This is one solid thing we CAN do that will change the equation in Trump’s Washington.
The idea was right two years ago. It’s overdue now. Join me in calling on Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to make it happen after the midterms.
- Wiley
PAID FOR AND AUTHORIZED BY WILEY FOR WAKE
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.