In a scene from one of my favorite new TV series, “The Pitt,” a young doctor in training works feverishly to save a man’s life. He continues chest compressions as the more experienced nurses and doctors nearby watch the patient’s vitals deteriorate. The young man keeps pumping, sweat beading on his forehead, desperation building as he tries to will the man’s heart to beat.
After a Herculean effort, he is ordered to stop. Time of death is recorded. The young man’s crushing disappointment about losing the patient is overwhelming. He wonders if he has a future in the life he has chosen.
It’s like being a Democrat in 2025.
The 75,019,230 people who voted for Kamala Harris for president, including the 1,728,159 in Colorado, have been looking for a pulse in the party as truth, justice, equal rights and everything the country supposedly stands for is being destroyed.
Vital signs have been weak despite the desperate efforts of grassroots Democrats taking to the streets in a snowstorm on Presidents Day, and burying the offices of their representatives in calls, emails and letters, pleading with them to do something — or at least say something.
It’s left many — especially young Democrats — feeling angry, abandoned and hopeless, with no future in a hostile country that threatens their personal freedoms seemingly at every turn.
Which is why recent town halls with Democratic representatives have felt a lot like emergency rooms with hundreds of people trying to apply a defibrillator into a moribund minority party barely clinging to life.
This month, more than 1,500 people packed a high school gym in Lakewood for a town hall with Rep. Brittany Pettersen. Attorney General Phil Weiser, Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom and former Rep. Ed Perlmutter also attended, attempting to reassure everybody that they were doing everything they could to stop the wrecking crew in Washington.
It’s not an easy sell.
The crowd demanded action. They called for leadership. They wanted to know what Democrats were doing to protect their rights, the government programs on which they depend and the country’s standing in the world.
There were no easy answers.
“While Democrats are not in power, we are not powerless,” Pettersen said. “It’s all of us working together and keeping this movement and sharing our stories to fight back.”
She said Democrats were filing lawsuits, introducing bills and resolutions, and holding townhalls in an effort at “holding our Republican colleagues accountable.”
The results so far are thin gruel for her voracious constituents.
Last month, Jason Crow’s town hall in Aurora drew an estimated 1,400 people with many more watching in an overflow venue.
While Crow didn’t pretend to have the power to stop the wholesale dismantling of the federal government, he seized the opportunity to rally the crowd.
“I don’t believe that an unelected, unaccountable billionaire who didn’t come before Congress to be accountable should have a right to your information, a right to our payment systems, to be hiring these young, unclear people that used to work for him to access our classified systems,” Crow said.
Rep. Diana DeGette, who along with Sen. John Hickenlooper, has held telephone town halls instead of in-person events, used the vote last week on the bill to increase the debt ceiling as a chance to take a public stand against the administration.
“I voted no on the government funding bill because it will only enable Elon and Trump to further their chaos and confusion while ceding congressional authority to the executive branch. They want to slash Medicaid and VA benefits to give tax cuts to billionaires, and now Elon is talking about cutting entitlements like Social Security. I refuse to vote for a bill that will allow Trump, Elon and DOGE to cut benefits for millions of Americans, fire federal workers at the Forest Service and VA, and further damage our government,” she said.
Bennet and Hickenlooper voted no as well, but other Senate Democrats caved and voted for the measure after the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, reversed his position and supported it.
Hickenlooper called it a “dangerous power grab.” Bennet said he opposed it because the Republicans “refused to work with Democrats.”
They lost. It passed.
And the Democrats’ handwringing continued. In an effort to get ahead of the debacle, Bennet has scheduled a series of town halls in Front Range cities this week.
Rallies and news releases can only go so far, though. Many at the town halls said they wanted more.
They want their representatives to articulate a clear vision that confronts the lies and the bigotry coming from the executive branch. They want someone to have the courage to speak up for them. That’s what they thought they were voting for.
And while they wait for that, it’s safe to say the Democrats’ barrage of digital fundraising messages is utterly counterproductive and tone-deaf.
Last week’s email blast from Barack Obama was particularly cringe-worthy: “Today, I am asking you to do something that will give Democrats across the country hope that the next election will be different,” it said, in a fundraising appeal for the Democratic National Committee.
That message and hundreds of others just like it are filling spam folders everywhere.
It’s as if the house is on fire and when you call the fire department, they tell you to send money.
Not helpful.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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