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America Needs a Good JohnsonUsing Lyndon Johnson's Playbook Against Fascists and Their Enablers
Politicians are enabling fascism at every level of government. John Fetterman voted for 10 of Trump's 22 Cabinet nominees and became the only Democrat to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Chuck Schumer delivered Trump a 99-0 confirmation for Marco Rubio, then handed him legislative victories that cut $13 billion from non-defense spending. Twelve Senate Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act requiring detention of undocumented immigrants for minor offenses. At state and local levels, politicians ignore popular will on healthcare, voting rights, and economic policy while corruption flourishes unchecked. A Pew Research poll in April 2025 found that 74% of Democrats said their leaders were doing a "fair or poor job" pushing back against Trump. The people are demanding accountability and too few are delivering it. What's needed is President Lyndon B. Johnson's playbook for destroying political careers through tenacity.
Small, organized groups using pure intimidation can seize power. Now we need that energy genuinely grassroots and multiplied by ten thousand, weaponized against anyone who collaborates with fascism or betrays the public interest, regardless of party. The playbook already exists. Lyndon Johnson built the most sophisticated career destruction machine in American political history. Time to learn how he did it. Lyndon Johnson understood that power without the willingness to destroy opponents is just noise. As Senate Majority Leader from 1955-1961, Johnson transformed a traditionally powerless position into an instrument of absolute control. Robert Caro devoted 70 pages to documenting how LBJ destroyed Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds through McCarthyite red-baiting, then told him afterward: "It's only politics, you know." Senator Estes Kefauver gained national fame chairing hearings on organized crime, making him a presidential contender and therefore a threat. Johnson's response was methodical destruction. He blocked Kefauver from the Foreign Relations Committee despite Kefauver having more seniority, giving the spot to John F. Kennedy instead. Kefauver wrote an angry letter: "I have tried, Lyndon, to cooperate with you. Notwithstanding all of this, I have been turned aside on every request." Only when Kefauver abandoned presidential ambitions and bent the knee did Johnson give him a committee spot. Johnson's power rested on three pillars that activists can replicate at every level of government. First, control the money. Bobby Baker, Johnson's aide, nicknamed the "101st Senator," served as the "official bagman for Senate Democrats." Senators knew that opposing Johnson "could incur an inadequacy of campaign funds." Modern equivalent: identify every donor funding corrupt politicians, contact them directly, and compel them to see the error of supporting fascist enablers. Publicize every donor backing them. Make it toxic to fund collaboration with authoritarianism. People are saying you could even organize protests at the homes and businesses of high-dollar donors. This author isn't encouraging that, of course, but one can't help but notice it would be extraordinarily effective at making funders reconsider their choices. Force politicians to spend down their war chests defending themselves while their funding sources dry up. Make it financially ruinous to oppose popular will. Second, control the narrative. Johnson used the "Johnson Treatment," physical intimidation combined with relentless public messaging that painted opponents as disloyal or incompetent. Modern equivalent: viral social media campaigns defining the incumbent as a Trump collaborator or corporate puppet, paid digital advertising targeting their base with their voting record, earned media from endorsements and controversies. Make them defend every bad vote in every public appearance until other politicians don't want to be associated with them. Third, strip their legitimacy. Johnson determined what legislation reached the floor and isolated opponents through committee assignments. Modern equivalent: get activist organizations to deny endorsements to enablers, have principled elected officials refuse to campaign with them, make their collaboration with authoritarianism the defining narrative every time they appear publicly. The goal is making them politically toxic, someone other politicians don't want to be seen with. These tactics work at every level. City councils, state legislatures, school boards, county commissions. Politicians are terrified of organized pressure campaigns that threaten their careers. The federal system may be rigged, but a city council member in a red state can be forced to expand polling locations through sustained community organizing. A state legislator in a blue state can be compelled to support municipal broadband through relentless constituent pressure. Governors can be cornered into interstate compacts on healthcare when the political cost of refusal becomes unbearable. In red states, use these tactics to force politicians to expand democratic participation. Demand voting rights legislation, more polling locations, extended voting days, automatic voter registration, ballot access expansion. Make it career suicide to suppress the vote. Demand criminal investigations of secretaries of state who purge voter rolls. Many states have laws against illegal voter purges. If they're attorneys, file bar complaints for professional misconduct. Push for federal civil rights prosecutions. Make the penalty for disenfranchisement actual prison time and destroyed careers, not just recall elections. Primary state legislators who gerrymander. Target city councils that close polling places in Black neighborhoods. The federal Voting Rights Act is gutted, but state constitutions often have stronger protections. Force politicians to use them or destroy their careers trying. In blue states, use these tactics to build self-sufficiency and parallel power structures that don't depend on federal cooperation. Demand municipal broadband as a non-tax revenue generator that funds other public services. Force politicians to support publicly owned and operated utilities that keep money in communities instead of enriching shareholders. Organize for more ambitious interstate compacts on healthcare that create regional single-payer systems. Demand arrests and prosecutions of corrupt politicians of all parties. Get money out of politics at the state level through public financing, contribution limits, and transparency requirements. These policies have massive popular support. Politicians refuse to deliver them because they face no consequences for refusal. Make the consequences unbearable. Just show up at every public appearance your state legislator makes and demand they explain their vote against municipal broadband. Run challengers in local Democratic and Republican primaries who make corruption their sole issue. Force prosecutors to investigate politicians taking bribes or face recall elections. Use ballot initiatives to bypass legislatures entirely where state constitutions allow. Make every politician wake up every morning wondering if today is the day their career ends because they ignored what their constituents actually want. Zealots and extremists are winning because they want power more than we have wanted to stop them. That has to change. When they go low, we stomp them into the ground. We fight harder, fight meaner, fight dirtier than they do. No apologies. No mercy. Or we lose everything. The targets are everywhere. Fetterman and Schumer are useful examples of federal collaboration, but the real work happens at state and local levels where the system can still be cracked open through organized force. Every state legislator who voted against Medicaid expansion. Every city council member who approved tax breaks for developers while refusing to just build affordable public housing. Every school board member banning books. Every secretary of state purging voter rolls or refusing to have appropriate numbers of polling sites available. They all believe they're safe because no one has made them pay yet.
Right now, politicians enabling fascism face no consequences because their opponents are too polite to be effective. Time to learn from Johnson: be ruthless in service of what matters. Strip the decorum, embrace the grit, and make feckless and corrupt politicians terrified to ignore the popular will. Today's choice is simple: be nice and lose everything, or be ruthless and build the future people actually need.
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