As I See It: For Democrats to survive, they must attack the oligarchs now

Jon Huer

Jon Huer

By JON HUER

Published: 05-02-2025 10:34 AM

News media reports are that Trump “bragged” about helping his billionaire donors take advantage (to the tune of $300 billion) in a suspected insider trading with his on-again, off-again tariff decisions. And America’s working poor have never seen such blatant and brazen in-your-face money grabbing by the rich oligarchs.

Democrats, although you are given up for dead, here is your political comeback strategy on a silver platter: Start attacking the super-rich.

Long immune to criticism, the rich oligarchs are hated by most Americans just now. You, Democrats, will never find the rich oligarchs more nakedly corrupt, more brazen with their greed, and more vulnerable to attacks, and this is your golden opportunity. Fortunately for you, there are nearly as many billionaires and oligarchs in America as there are deportable immigrants for Trumspters. Everywhere we turn in America, we witness the injustices of money. They are the elephants in the room you can no longer ignore.

It’s a revolution of the angry commoners against the rich oligarchs, bigger and bloodier than Trump’s own political revolution against liberals: Bloodthirsty MAGA, meet Bloodthirstier Democrats, more numerous, angrier and more justified!

Anger should serve both parties. Trump turned whites against nonwhites, and you, Democrats, must turn working Americans against the rich, who got rich only by stealing money from them. How else could the rich become rich and the rest become poor? Isn’t protecting America from the tyranny of the rich oligarchs the very heart and soul of the Democratic Party? What would be more “American” than fighting tyranny, both political and economic?

Nothing is more clearly recognized in America just now than this simple age-old fact: The rich will get richer and the rest will get poorer. All else is irrelevant. For your own political survival by reviving America’s working class as your political backbone, you must pick your singular line of attack. In politics, the ends always justify the means: Fight and win, and do good, and all your sins are forgiven.

The perfect storm is here for you: Trumpsters have fired thousands of political workers, but not a single rich oligarch. Wall Street is just as fat and sassy under Trump as under liberal democracy before: With no radical change, the rich will continue to be rich and the rest continue to be poor and the American working class is sick of being poor in the richest country in the world.

Trump beat you with his patented “red meat” of immigrants (against) and tariffs (for), just to show who is boss: Punishing immigrants and slapping high tariffs on foreign goods make white America feel good, never mind their actual benefits or practical consequences.

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Democrats, you need your own red meat, tastier than Trump’s. You must arouse the working Americans from their slumber to smell the Democratic red meat —redder and meatier. Trump has immigrants and elites as his target and you have billionaires and oligarchs, who always plot against the working Americans.

Attack them mercilessly and without pity. To defeat Trumpsters, you must fire cannons, not flail with knives. Lead the working class and storm the barricade.

Don’t ever make long speeches with boring statistics: Just few words and fewer points, over and over. Trump mastered the art of talking to third-graders. You must outdo him by learning how to simplify for first-graders. Don’t talk down to American voters but don’t overestimate their intelligence. Trump never did and won.

Hammer away at the heartless and inhuman way the super-rich live and play, fattening their wealth by robbing the working class. Broadcast their fancy yachts and champagne parties in contrast to a minimum-wager standing miserably next to his broken-down clunker of a car. Show Bill Gates’ $150-million mansion next to an evicted family, and repeat the fact that Gates makes in 10 seconds what it takes most Americans a month to make. Do this simply and repeatedly until people cannot see the rich without seeing the poor in contrast.

The evil of the rich few is for all to see in plain sight. Repeat, repeat and repeat again how the super-rich live and how common people live, work and die, with inadequate health care, poor food for their kids, and many struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Tell the working Americans that rich people only make themselves rich, nobody else, and, as some of your more radicalized Democrats have already said, you can wait forever for your gravy train that will never come.

Democrats, you must outdo Trump also in dramatics: Declare your own “hit list,” short and loud. Promise that you will tax the rich to death and free Americans from the tyranny of their money. Be relentless and pitiless with your message: Attack! Attack! And Attack some more!

You must fight the rich, not submit to them or, worse, imitate their lifestyle. Americans must see that they are losing their jobs, health care, and roof over their heads while the capitalist rich expand their wealth every second. The poor, by the time they finish reading this column, will have become poorer!

Finger-point to Trump and repeat: “See? Trumpism is nothing but a handmaid to the super-rich oligarchs! There will be nothing left for us the working people or our children!” Such a single-minded attack is what brought Trumpism to power and you must copy his strategy and tactic, only more savagely and more relentlessly.

Democrats, don’t be timid or snooty or weary. Here is your last hurrah: Scream over and over, “It’s the oligarchs, Stupid!”

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.