Pulling Wisconsin back from the brink
The Trump regime seems to be entering a death spiral. As it loses whatever popularity it once held, the power grabs become more desperate. This is a common trajectory for fascist demagogues. Trump has been deploying nazi strategist Carl Schmidt’s method of declaring emergencies to seize power since taking office in January. It isn’t working very well for him. That strategy is well-known (it’s more than 50 years old, and has been extensively fictionalized in popular media), and Trump is so transparent with it. The emergencies he declares are obviously bullshit.
Spiraling Trump seems hell-bent on creating a real political emergency. Between occupying cities or threatening them with “war” and exploiting the murder of his favorite propagandist, it looks like he’s actively, and increasingly seeking a civil war. Maybe he wants a pretext to cancel the 2026 midterms, because even after redrawing maps, MAGA candidates might still lose. Cheaters usually use duplicity, but Trump is too dumb and narcissistic for that. He just openly demands more seats, political prosecutions, and whatever’s going on with this.
The lack of subtlety and inability to see outside their own echo chamber has been the Trump regime’s primary undoing, because their political opponents in the Democratic establishment sure ain’t doing much. It might be fun to act like a centrist Democrat and sit back to watch these despicable idiots crash and burn, if not for all the damage they’re causing on their way out, and their potential to cause so, so much more. No. MAGA must be actively opposed and stopped, as quickly and effectively as possible.
Our bad options
Some accelerationists on the left might fantasize about giving Trump the civil war he seeks. Our side might end up winning that war because compassionate humane people do greatly outnumber unhinged bigots. Even so, civil war would involve a massive, unacceptable cost. Between the white supremacists, the cops, and the military, the right has way more guns and way more comfort doing violence than us. For most of us, civil war is too frightening to contemplate, let alone seriously prepare for. Instead, we organize against MAGA politically, culturally, and socially.
At Milwaukee Beagle, we specifically focus on politics, usually electoral politics. We don’t do this because we think that’s the one true way. We agree that politicians and elections alone will not save us. Writing about them is something we do because we are newshounds and wordsmiths. Frankly, Milwaukee Beagle is a low workload project for unpaid volunteers with jobs, families, and other myriad commitments. We do what we can do in our free time (or not do on the weeks when we get too busy to put out new articles). We’re worrying and angry about this shit all the time, anyway. Why not put our thoughts into words and share them?
We love and admire the more radical approaches to deeper cultural and social change that antiauthoritarians promote. Some recent examples:
Peter Gelderloos has a new three part series on Submedia that goes from big picture critique to regional struggles and urgent local activities.
adrianne maree brown’s more exploratory podcast offers radical and grounding visions of uncertainty.
Margaret Killjoy has long balanced concrete community preparedness with reassurances, like this recent reminder that there is no reason to fear provoking the fascists, because they are already going as hard as they can.
Kelly Hayes’s recent Movement Memos episode with Andrea Ritchie helps sharpen focus on the root problem of criminalization, which existed before Trump, and won’t be addressed by most of his opponents.
The actions and movements they’re boosting–diffuse but forceful, confrontational but strategic, cultural but substantive–are valuable. We try to support and promote Milwaukeeans who do them.
We also believe in what Angela Davis said about elections: “When we engage in electoral politics, it can’t be just because a particular individual is running for office… it is to enlarge the terrain of mass struggle.” At Milwaukee Beagle we do our best to educate Milwaukeeans and Wisconsinites about how to get the most out of our imperfect democracy even as it collapses. We hope this feeds back to enable action for broader, deeper, more radical change.
So… the elections!
As we’ve argued before, it is too late to abandon the Democratic Party and form a new, more radical opposition party. Many third parties are either structurally flawed authoritarians or small and usually irrelevant spoilers. The most active ones (Working Families Party and Democratic Socialists of America) tend to agree with us that endorsing or running people as left populist Democrats works best. The reality of the US is that only the Democrats are in position to check Trump in 2026. If they don’t succeed, electoral politics afterward will probably become pretty irrelevant.
The project we’re left with is replacing stagnant loser Democrats who will just tell bedtime stories for democracy and lose, with those who will actually fight for the working class and win. The centrist establishment in the Democratic Party has incredibly low approval ratings right now, so they are making a lot of noise trying to sound like fighters. After losing in 2024, Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chair is the party’s functional (or more like dysfunctional) leader. He made a supposedly fiery speech at the DNC’s first meeting, but, as detailed by Ken Klippenstein, the rhetorical flourishes and tone were not matched by actual substance. Gavin Newsome’s hijinx are similarly shallow and performative, or opportunistic. Whether he’s tweeting parodies, platforming extreme right sociopaths, complaining about the national guard in LA, or gerrymandering California, his actions are self-serving, rather than solidaristic.
We don’t need more Democrats who won’t do right by regular people unless we first help enhance their personal status, position, or fortunes. We need left populist Democrats. By rejecting donor class and corporate priorities, Democrats can build government that solves problems and serves people, pre-empting their resentments, and encouraging them to act on hope, rather than fear. That’s how to stop the apocalyptic and authoritarian ambitions of Trump’s Republican Party, openning up that more radical path toward overcoming globally destructive capitalism.
There will be many opportunities for Wisconsinites to influence the direction of the Democratic Party between now and November 2026. To keep track of them and collect articles about them, we’ve created this new page that lists elections chronologically, with brief summaries.
In conclusion, there’s a lot going on worth paying attention to. It’s not worth dropping other radical projects, community self-defense, or mutual aid work for, but voting doesn’t require that. Voting is easy. If we at Milwaukee Beagle take a few hours collecting information, will you spend a few minutes each of these elections reading it and cast your votes, or even make a small donation of money or time to shift the electoral landscape? If so, maybe we can chase fascists out of government, and enlarge the terrain of struggle together.
