Five reasons for progressives to take hope and stay engaged in 2025

Good riddance. That’s the first thought that springs to mind for a lot of caring and thinking people as they contemplate the passing of 2024 into the history books.

Despite numerous moments of accomplishment and progress, the late-year decision of 49.9% of the American electorate to return Donald Trump and his uniquely toxic combination of narcissism and megalomania to the White House has been enough to leave much of the rest of the country throwing up their hands in despair and searching their bathroom cabinets for sleep aids and anti-anxiety meds.

Maybe you’ve had similar thoughts. What disasters now await? How will we survive the next four years? How can I avoid consuming the news for the foreseeable future?

It’s an understandable reaction. Especially for those of us who reside in swing states where the 2024 election often felt like a relentless, nerve-jangling assault, the temptation to turn inward, tune out the grim noise that’s sure to come, and focus for the time being on adjusting one’s own psychic oxygen mask is powerful.

And yet, as a few deep breaths and a moment of quiet contemplation reveal, the hard truth is that now is no time for those who believe in peace, tolerance, sustainability and democracy to abandon the world of policy and politics. Not only is there a tremendous need for engagement and activism to help blunt the worst of what the Trump-Musk kakistocracy promises to inflict on the nation, there are important reasons to feel a sense of hope – and even optimism – for where we are and what remains possible in the coming years. Here are five:

1) Trump is likely at the pinnacle of his power. It’s true that Trump is a unique figure in American history with a rare and disturbing hold on most of the other elected officials in his party. But he is also a rapidly aging, frequently confused and notoriously undisciplined and mercurial lame duck politician who has only razor-thin majorities with which to work in Congress. He and some of his supporters may harbor and espouse grand ambitions, but his first term record indicates little chance that he will actually pull many of them off. It’s true that significant damage lies ahead, but a true sea change is American democracy remains unlikely.

2) Public opinion remains progressive on most issues. Notwithstanding a few unfortunate outliers (most notably immigration policy, where irrational fear and lies have caused many Americans to forget what our nation stands for) American public opinion continues to trend progressive on numerous issues – from the climate crisis to healthcare to tax fairness to abortion rights to LGBTQ equality. And as the decision of GOP lawmakers to, at last, bend to public opinion on Medicaid expansion in North Carolina demonstrated, what voters think still matters.

3) The far right lost big in North Carolina. A lot of Americans are certainly very conservative. And many, who eschew labels and ideology made clear they were willing to give Trump another try. But as the recent election in North Carolina demonstrated convincingly, the far right is not a majority, nor likely to become one. Instead, the voters of a GOP-leaning state rejected the Republican nominees for governor, attorney general, lt. governor, superintendent of public instruction and state Supreme Court – Mark Robinson, Dan Bishop, Hal Weatherman, Michele Morrow and Jefferson Griffin – in favor of five moderate-to-progressive Democrats: Josh Stein, Jeff Jackson, Rachel Hunt, Mo Green and Allison Riggs.

4) The existential issue of our times demands our attention. There remain plenty of reasons to be deeply concerned about the global climate emergency that is wreaking havoc on our planet and will continue to do so for decades to come. And Trump’s election won’t help. But it’s also true that, as Bloomberg News reported last week, humanity made several important advances in 2024 – from the rapid growth in the deployment of solar power and electric vehicles to the demise of coal to an array of new investments and important scientific breakthroughs. If ever an issue cried out for continued and sustained engagement, this is it.

5) U.S. demographic trends remain on a positive course. Like many wealthy nations, the U.S. is home to an aging population and that certainly is helpful to the political right. As the Pew Research Center reported a few months’ back, the older an American is, the more likely they are to support conservative candidates. But it’s also true that the nation’s future — young people and people of color — favor progressive candidates by a wide margin. As the minor inroads among some groups Trump made in November make clear, these trends aren’t ironclad. But on the whole, in such an environment, a political movement based on the idea of building a brighter future, rather than somehow attempting to reclaim the past has to be much better positioned in the long run.

So, farewell 2024. One wishes you’d ended on a better note. But 2025 is here. Let’s get back to work.