Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Progressives, put aside your justifiable detestation of Donald Trump and his Musky minions for one second, and answer this question:

Q: What’s the most important difference between MAGA Republicans and Democrats?

A: MAGA Republicans have a program for change.

Yes, it’s a terrible program: a toxic mix of pro-oligarchy economic policy, tribal-nationalist politics, patriarchal social values, and hatred of the public sector. But MAGA policies are based on a relatively coherent ideology that identifies what right-wingers consider the main sources of oppression – the administrative state, left-leaning universities and news media, undocumented immigrants, street criminals, and foreign competitors – and that promises to eliminate or transform them.

MAGA leaders believe that the American system is broken and that they know how to rebuild it. Therefore, once in power, they implement immediate measures to change existing institutions. True, these initiatives tend to be poorly thought through, arbitrary, and inhumane, and they generate legal challenges to the authority of the President and other executive officials. But social movements with a program for change frequently strain or violate existing norms. Furthermore, their advocates tend to take strong action, while defenders of the established status quo seem content just to talk.

Talk about role reversals! By acting as change-agents, the MAGA-pols have maneuvered the Democrats into the position of acting as backward-looking defenders of the Establishment. The anti-Trumpers mean well, but all their handwringing about the President’s authoritarianism, venality, and cruelty will not change the fact that his forces have a program for change, and they do not.

Most Democratic politicians do not think that the system is broken, only that it needs minor repairs. As a result, the policies and public actions they envision for the future differ hardly at all from those of a Joe Biden or a Bill Clinton. Most of them embrace a mishmash of liberal (but not too liberal) attitudes regarding domestic political issues and militaristic flag-waving (which they call “American global leadership”) in foreign affairs. Raise the minimum wage they say – but not too high, and don’t even think about altering the established system of private financial power and “management rights.” Tax the rich, but not too severely, and never talk about redistributing wealth to poor and........

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