The deepest threat to becoming an authentic voice in national politics lies in choosing between your identity, even your self-worth, and what you’re expected to represent.

The question becomes: Do you leverage your lived experiences to lead from a place of expertise and, hopefully, empathy, or do you channel those qualities into amplifying a platform bigger than yourself?

If Democrats intend to wrestle power from the sticky fingers of an authoritarian White House and return it to the people, they’ve got to lose their collective main character energy and focus instead on offering actionable solutions to the groundswell of voter dissatisfaction the Trump administration’s policies are creating.

What is main character energy, you ask?

The strongest example in American politics ever may be President Donald Trump’s unapologetic dismantling of U.S. agencies, policies and institutions intended to protect Americans from government overreach. He descended a decade ago from the second floor of his 58-story tower, waved to the cameras and knew immediately: I own them.

Trump believes the media, voters and government institutions are controlled by the strings he pulls, and why shouldn’t he? Barely four months into his presidency, he’s traded campaign promises of lower grocery prices and reshored manufacturing jobs for crypto schemes and business deals that aren’t rippling out or trickling down to anybody outside his billionaire donor circle.

And his base couldn’t love him more, even after he said Americans should

© The Hill