March Madness - Get me a team of brawlers

Basketball is a pretty apt comparison for what’s been happening in our politics. Republicans might not be the best athletes, but they foul, trip, and tackle on every single shot. It’s a nasty win-at-all-cost style but it works because they know the refs won’t blow the whistle. On the other side of the bracket, Democrats are continually shocked at the repeated unruly violence but seem determined to avoid nastiness and instead focus on a strategy of debating the officials about the unfairness of rough play. All of us watching know that if this keeps up, the final score is going to be ugly.

Like it or not, the game has changed, and a growing number of citizens are rightfully terrified that too few Democrats are up to the challenge.¹ They are right to be frightened, lives are at stake, our democracy is in peril, the climate is teetering, and addressing any of it depends on Dems putting Ws on the board. Fast.

It’s not like anyone is unaware of the stakes. We’ve heard them all a thousand times from a thousand different political podiums including mine when I ran, but so far, actions do not match up to the urgency of that rhetoric.

There are a few who understand the situation. Chris Murphy² has been a stalwart voice of resistance. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been consistent in their fight against the widening wealth gap.³ Martin Heinrich is all over the threat to our public lands.⁴ But this does not constitute the sort of broad action necessary to meet the moment.

That’s why frustration is boiling over. It’s almost as if concerned Americans are yelling “Get us a team of brawlers - and do it now!” I agree. It’s time for sharp elbows in politics (winning elections) and in governing (championing bold new policy).

Protests are happening everywhere across the country. Fox News does its best to pretend they are astroturfed with people paid to stand and wave signs. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are just the desperations of everyday Americans who feel their jobs, lives, and security being ripped apart.

It’s the good folks of Butte Montana who treated Ryan Zinke to hundreds of middle finger salutes in the Saint Paddy’s Day parade today. It got so ugly that he decided to stop walking and get into a vehicle for the remainder of the parade. (an aside - if you have not been in Butte on March 17, you are missing one of the great American experiences!)

It’s Skelecore, a “grunge rock and bittersweet ballad band” in Bozeman MT that helped organize a protest yesterday that grew into more than 200 people marching through the streets to the courthouse.

Skelecore Bozeman’s Democracy march post

It’s brave kids confronting Ryan Zinke about DOGE in at Glacier high school.⁵ It’s working people in Missoula who get pissed enough to organize a public lands protest of over 1000 people.⁶ This is all a movement devoid of the guidance of professional organizers, or NGOs or political campaigns. It’s grassroots, desperate, powerful and beautiful.

Democrats must be the party of these brave folks. We have to be the team of working people, youth, energy, change, and progress. That means we cannot allow our actions to be constrained by old rules, traditions, and norms. Voters will see through that contradictory bullshit and demand something new.

First things first. We have to win elections. That will take candidates who are unafraid of making the case anywhere or anytime. All the better if they are imperfect and unscripted because this is the way real people act. We should encourage candidates who can communicate and sell because that's important. We need to represent the values of broad majorities and dispense with the fear of offending someone.

My son Lander is 20 and I hear his voice echoing as I write. He’s one of these fans seething in the stands. Young people like him fully understand the dangers of DOGE and MAGA but they can’t afford homes, they are working people who pay higher tax percentages than billionaires, they are terrified of losing public lands, they are Americans who could be instantly bankrupt because of medical bills. That’s why they insist Democrats deliver big, meaningful change. “We need a lot more FDR and a hell of a lot less Cheney,” Lander tells me. And he’s right. Dems must campaign so people know we are serious and then deliver in life-changing ways that match the rhetoric.

People like Lander and the other Americans rising up are tired of the excuses. They may not be bracketology experts, but they all understand a basic competitive truth.

You can’t win if you don’t go on offense.

1. https://www.axios.com/2025/03/14/house-democrats-angry-chuck-schumer-shutdown

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/us/politics/chris-murphy-democrats-trump.html

3. https://www.coloradopolitics.com/elections/2026/bernie-sanders-aoc-schedule-anti-trump-fighting-oligarchy-tour-stop-in-denver/article_328cce0c-0119-11f0-877d-2b35fc61b2b9.html

4. https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2025/03/06/heinrich-alleges-trump-administration-aims-to-move-public-lands-into-private-hands/

5. https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2025/mar/15/zinke-talks-trump-layoffs-and-education-to-students-at-glacier/

6. https://www.kpax.com/news/missoula-county/roughly-a-thousand-people-rally-in-missoula-to-protect-public-lands