TL;DR
Trump turned the 250th anniversary of the Declaration into a celebration of himself, but the actual founders were a group of people challenging the most powerful man in their world.
Patriotism was never about deference to whoever holds office. It belongs to everyone who still believes in our ability to reinvent ourselves, and to be the inventors.
The most patriotic thing you can do this year is filing to run, or helping someone else do it, against the leadership that’s failing your community. Learn how at traindems.org.
America isn’t the only one with a big birthday this year! NDTC is celebrating its 10th anniversary. In the last decade, we’ve trained over 128,000 Democrats to win elections, watched our alumni flip seats across the country, and built the infrastructure that generates Democratic talent at every level of government.
But it hasn’t always been easy, and we’ve learned our fair share of lessons along the way. Now, we’re sharing all those insights with you.
This is the fourth installment of “10 Lessons in 10 Years,” a monthly(-ish) series where we’re reflecting on and reporting out our most important lessons from a decade of Democratic training. In each one, we break down an insight we’ve seen proven true time and again, across thousands of campaigns.
Some of these lessons we’ve had to learn the hard way. Now you don’t have to. Notebooks out, pencils up.
This weekend, America turned 250. It should have been a moment for the whole country to look back together at what we got right, what we got wrong, and what we still owe each other. Instead, Donald Trump did what he does with everything he touches: turning a shared anniversary into a paean no one asked for, dressed up as a celebration of the country.
So this month’s lesson is about reclaiming patriotism through the one act that, more than any flag or fireworks display, actually earns it: running against power.
Our Founders Were Insurgents
It’s worth remembering what actually happened 250 years ago. Our founding includes a dark and often contradictory history. A group of colonists looked at one of the most powerful empires on Earth and decided its leadership no longer had their consent. They organized, built coalitions across colonies that didn’t always agree with each other, and challenged power directly, at enormous personal risk. And we’ve repeated this cycle multiple times as we’ve learned, grown, and reflected on that fraught founding.
The idea that authority has to be earned, and can be revoked is at the foundation of this country. It’s our entire premise for existing as one nation, together, in all our disagreements.
But somewhere in the last 250 years (2016, anyone?) patriotism’s brand became the opposite of that: loyalty to whoever holds office, no matter what they do with their enormous power. Trump’s version of July 4th leans hard into that conflation because it benefits him personally. If patriotism is loyalty, then questioning him feels unpatriotic by definition. It’s a betrayal of what our country and the holiday that celebrates it, is actually about.
What We Train People to Do Instead
At NDTC, we’re backing the people who do the work that’s actually patriotic: running for school board against the entrenched incumbent who hasn’t delivered for public school kids. Running for state legislature in a district that’s supposedly unwinnable. Running for county commissioner because nobody else will.
Most of these candidates will never get a cable news hit, but every one of them is putting our founding principle into practice more than anyone on X or Substack. They’re looking at who holds power in their community, paying attention to where they’re underdelivering, and putting their own name forward to drive the change their communities need. The local races we support every day are a more faithful expression of this country’s guiding vision than any American paraphernalia that Trump can plaster his own face over.
That’s the muscle we exist to exercise. We believe that you don’t have to wait for permission to challenge the people in charge, and we train the skills to actually do it, do it well, and win.
This Isn’t About One Office
Like all of our 10 Lessons in 10 Years installments, this one isn’t about any single race. It’s about a larger perspective.
A country where citizens default to challenging power, generation after generation, is a fundamentally different country than one where they default to passive spectatorship, indifference, or straight-up unquestioning loyalty. Only the former builds a nation that’s durable, and that can outlast the latest dictator-in-chief and swiftly replace him.
But we know it’s a decades-long project, because we’re already a decade into this work. We’re celebrating ten years of NDTC this year, the same year the country is celebrating 250.
This country’s future belongs to everyone who still believes we can reinvent ourselves time and again, and who are willing to be the inventors. If this year’s anniversary stirs up a sense that your city council, your school board, or your state house could use someone who actually shows up, don’t let that feeling be ignored. Traindems.org is waiting for you with the skills to run, or to help someone else run.
Happy 250th. Our work continues. We hope you’ll join us.
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