Democracy is in peril but not lost

By Ezra Levin, Indivisible Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director

I am devastated. I know you are, too. Everyone is searching for answers, and at the same time we’re all going through the stages of grief. I’m not going to be able to give full answers in this email, but I want to cover three things:

1. What we know and don’t know.
2. What this means for the next two years.
3. What we can do next.

What we know and don’t know.

I will do my best to keep this section fully fact-based. We can interpret and debate later, but it’s important we all understand the facts:

• We know Trump won across the board, with shifts in his direction in blue, purple, and red states. We were contesting seven Electoral College states — AZ, NV, WI, MI, PA, GA, NC — and he took them all, along with the national popular vote.
• We know we lost the Senate. At this point we know Brown and Tester have lost, and we didn’t pick up any of our reach targets in TX, FL, or NE. Trump will have a Republican Senate capable of approving his nominees to cabinets and the courts.
• We don’t know who will control the House and we won’t know for days. It will be very close either way. The House has no input on presidential nominees, but House control is determinative of what kind of oversight the Trump Administration receives and what kind of legislation Republicans can pass.
• We know abortion rights are broadly popular, with abortion rights ballot initiatives now winning majority support in Arizona, Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New York, and Florida (though majority support was not enough to pass the Florida protections into law).
• Indivisibles, here’s a fact: You crushed all the voter contact goals we had this election in every battleground state and across the country. You did your part and you did it brilliantly. And also we know this election did not come down to the breadth, depth, and quality of the ground game to GOTV. A good ground game is worth a point or two, and we lost by more than a point or two.

I believe a loss of this nature requires humility and exploration, not finger-pointing. While we might each have our own valid critiques of the campaign, this loss cannot ultimately be reasonably attributed to any single campaign strategy or decision. It is rooted in the failure to hold Trump accountable for his crimes in his first term. It is rooted in the fragmentation of the anti-MAGA coalition, including defections from corporations and billionaires like Musk and Bezos. It is rooted in the sinister evolution of media infrastructure and social media platforms. It is exacerbated by sexism and racism.

But above all, it is rooted in broad popular frustration and alienation that allowed Trump to successfully brand himself as a change candidate. We know this alienation is rooted in a sense that democracy isn’t delivering results for people, and a long term erosion of working class support. We have a lot more to learn, from a place of curiosity and humility, about everything that drove this outcome, but this much is clear: at the end of the day, we simply were not able to convince enough people that the threat of Trump or the promise of Harris outweighed their frustration with the status quo.

But I would also urge folks not to jump immediately to the conclusion: “Trump won, and that means fascism has majority support in this country.” Project 2025 is deeply unpopular. The MAGA agenda is deeply unpopular. The voting public is pessimistic about the path we’re on, has felt intense pain from post-COVID inflation, and saw Harris as a continuation of the unpopular incumbent’s administration. This was a change election — just like 2008, 2016, and 2020 — and we did not have the change candidate.

What I’m worried about and what this means for the next two years.

I’ll make this brief.

1. I’m worried about the MAGA legislative agenda.
2. I’m worried about the Trump administrative agenda.
3. I’m worried about Trump’s extra-legal actions greenlighted by a permissive judiciary.
4. I’m worried about our friends, family members, and neighbors in marginalized communities who will be targeted by an empowered MAGA’s bigotry and xenophobia.
5. I’m worried about what Trump foreign policy means for friends of democracy nationwide.
6. I’m worried national Democratic leaders will respond to this defeat as they did in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, looking to cut deals with Trump rather than do everything they can to limit harm.
7. I’m worried that people will see these results and believe all hope is lost

It’s this last worry that worries me the most, because if we fail to rally the people to the side of NO, we will surely lose. Fascists depend on feeding a sense of powerlessness and inevitability about their control. I am going to do my damndest to make sure we don’t give it to them.

Eight years ago, we wrote the guide to resisting the anti-democratic extremism of the incoming Trump administration. That Google doc grew into the burgeoning Indivisible movement of thousands of local groups spread across every state and just about every congressional district. That movement saved the Affordable Care Act in 2017, built the largest midterm margins in the history of the republic in 2018, pushed for Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, defeated him in 2020, won two impossible Senate runoffs in Georgia in 2021, converted an inevitable red wave to a trickle in 2022, won in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and New Jersey in 2023, and then was defeated in 2024.

It wasn’t enough to stop a second Trump term — despite the vitriolic, fascistic clown show of a presidential campaign, we lost. But all is not lost.

What we can do next.

The defining feature of the Indivisible movement is not analysis but community and action. At the end of the day, democracy is more than what political content we consume, it’s about what we do together. So let’s gather, in this incredibly hard moment, in community, and talk about what comes next.

I hope you’ll join me, Leah, and Mari Urbina for our pre-planned post-election check-in at 8:30pm ET tonight. We’ll share more thoughts and engage in a lot of Q&A as well. With that said, here are some additional thoughts of how we’re putting one foot in front of the other.

Democracy is in grave peril but not lost. This election is catastrophic, but democracy does not get decided in one election. Had we won, democracy would not have been saved. After losing, democracy isn’t gone. Tomorrow the sun will rise. On January 3rd, a new House of Representatives — possibly one with a Democratic Speaker — will be sworn in. In 2025, there will be a rich national debate defined by MAGA overreach and public backlash. And elections will indeed continue from the Wisconsin Supreme Court this spring, to the Virginia state election next fall, to the midterms in 2026.

We choose to organize. Democracy has suffered, and democracy will suffer more, but importantly — democracy is not dead. The fight for democracy continues if we continue it.

A fascistic ruling party craves obedience, acquiescence, and a sense of powerlessness from the majority. We will not give it to them.

The options are to surrender to the forces of autocracy, bigotry, xenophobia, and minoritarian rule. Or to organize the pro-democracy majority to reclaim its power. We choose to organize.

We know Trump will use his power to attack our democratic institutions and our freedoms. We understand the threat of an accelerating slide towards authoritarianism. We choose to organize.

We know the fascists installed in positions of power will seek to divide and conquer, focusing their power to terrorize marginalized communities across the country. We choose to organize.

There are more of us than there are of them. We choose to organize. And we will win.