WESTMINSTER-"Vermont is what America should be," said U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, speaking on Aug. 30 in Westminster in a rolling green meadow under sunlit skies and towering elms and black maples.
Approximately 75 Windham County Democrats met with the senator to eat barbecue and hear about the state of American democracy. The report was not good. But then, the Democrats expected that.
"We all are sharing a horror that there's state-sponsored discrimination," Welch said. "We all are horrified that there has been a meanness that has been unleashed, pitting people against each other, and that is coming from the top."
And, he continued, "it is totally alien to anything and everything that we believe. So does that mean we're discouraged? We can be concerned, but we can never, ever be defeated."
Vermont values should be leading the way, Welch said.
"What makes me so proud of being with you is that we share something pretty special here in Vermont," Welch said. "You know, we were the first state to ban slavery in our constitution. We led with civil unions, the right to vote, and marriage equality. We get it, and we're an example to so many other people all around the country who share our values and our commitment to one another."
Among those who came out to the picnic, sponsored by the Windham County Democratic Committee, to hear Welch were several state legislators, including Sens. Nader Hashim and Wendy Harrison, both Democrats representing Windham County, and Reps. Michelle Bos-Lun (D-Windham-3), Michael Mrowicki (D-Windham-4), and Leslie Goldman (D-Windham-3). Several Selectboard members from Windham County towns also attended.
Welch, in a suit and baseball cap, is a worried man.
"The biggest challenge in many ways that all of us who know what's going on, who every day are just appalled by it, who just can't believe the meanness and cruelty that is baked into the daily activities of [President] Donald Trump and the folks around him, the self-adoration, is that we just can't allow ourselves to lose heart and lose faith."
Shattering the rule of law
Welch said that America was currently experiencing a Constitutional crisis where the rule of law is being shattered.
"All of the things that we took as given, that the rule of law applied, that the Constitution applied, those norms are being shattered, of course, by Trump," Welch said. "And that's the reality."
He listed some of those things.
"What is Trump doing in Gaza? Why is he doing that to the Federal Reserve? Why is Robert Kennedy being allowed to destroy our health care system? Why are not they allowing us to be able to get vaccines for the first time?" he said. "What does that mean for our kids who need polio vaccines and measles vaccines?"
"Why are they, before our very eyes, destroying institutions?" Welch said. "It is becoming more apparent to more and more people that this administration is about destruction."
It may have been hyperbole, but Welch said that Trump, who now openly calls himself a dictator, wakes up every morning thinking about what else he can destroy.
"And there's not an ounce of effort to reform something or improve something," Welch said.
This administration is deliberately cruel, Welch said. He told a story about his niece, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at the State Department for 10 years and was given five minutes to clear out her desk.
"That's cruel to her, but it's cruel to the aspirations that this country has had," Welch said. "That's what is happening there is happening at the Centers for Disease Control, it's happening at the Federal Reserve. And there's not any underlying agenda about improving USAID or making the Federal Reserve work better, or having the Centers for Disease Control work better. It's Trump just wrecking the place. And it is actually so astonishing, because it serves no purpose other than to demonstrate that he can do it. It's like he's saying, 'I'm doing it because I want to do it.'"
For Congressional Democrats, this is heartbreaking, Welch said.
"What I'm seeing that is causing me enormous heartache, is that in the Congress of the United States, my Republican colleagues in the Senate and my former colleagues in the House are giving up their own authority and responsibility and delegating it to the president," Welch said.
"So we do not have the usual constitutional separation of powers. We've had a United States Senate where my Republican colleagues, on the important questions, will defer to Trump. It's whatever the president wants. And of course, in the House, it's even worse. [Rep.] Becca [Balint] has to deal with that."
Welch said that Republican senators are willing to champion whatever destructive agenda the president has. This has led to the weakening, if not the destruction of, the democratic system of checks and balances.
"They're reinforcing his behavior," Welch said. "We don't have that system of checks and balances, where there is a competition of power between the Congress, the executive [branch], and to some extent the judiciary.
"Basically, the Republican Congress has given a blank check to the president who wakes up every day figuring out ways to abuse that power."
What is to be done?
The question he most often gets asked, Welch said, is what people can do to preserve our system of government.
"That's the question of great urgency on each of our minds," he said. "But there's not, as we all know, a simple answer."
Welch said Congress subverts his experience in the Vermont Legislature (1981–1989 and 2001–2007), where he was minority leader (1983–1985) and then president pro tempore (2003–2007). Then, he said, Republicans and Democrats learned to work together to solve problems.
"Sometimes I was in the majority and sometimes the minority," Welch said. "But in Vermont we just get it. The goal is to solve some problems and do it in a way where we can make some progress. We would actually compromise in order to get buy-in from folks who disagreed with us.
"We win some and we lose some, but we had a lot to be proud of. That's not the way it's working where I am right now. It's Trump's way or no way."
One solution to the chaos in Washington right now would be to work to elect Democrats, Welch said, citing important mid-term gubernatorial elections coming up, including races in New Jersey and Virginia this November.
These first contests often serve as political bellwethers for the following year's larger election cycles.
The Democrats are fielding "tremendous candidates," he said, including Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, who also served in the U.S. House of Representatives along with Welch, who served eight terms in that chamber from 2007 to 2023.
"And don't mess with them," he said, calling the two candidates "wonderful, gentle, but very tough."
"That's where there's going to be an opportunity for voters to weigh in on the direction of the country, and there's going to be a response politically to the outcome of those elections," Welch said. "It gives some wind at our back, or some wind in our face. But I'm optimistic about their prospects."
One long-term goal for Welch, he said, is to eliminate the U.S. Supreme Court decision known as "Citizens United."
The court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck down a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold."
That legislation, overturned on First Amendment grounds, prohibited nonprofits, businesses, and labor unions from independently voicing their support or opposition to federal candidates.
According to the website of the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech: "In the years since, Citizens United has become a lightning rod for discussion about the state of campaign finance law and the First Amendment rights of corporations and unions. Supporters applaud the ruling as a landmark victory for free speech that creates new avenues for political outsiders to run competitive campaigns without the support of party leaders. Critics claim the decision increases the political power of corporations and the wealthy at the expense of average citizens."
Welch called Citizens United a back-door channel to "dark money" - money whose origin a political candidate is not required to make public - effectively leading to widespread corruption during election seasons. He said the only way to shut it down would be a Constitutional amendment.
During the last election in Vermont, a right-wing group funded by oil billionaires and adopted by Gov. Phil Scott started attacking the state's attempt to slow climate change ["Fossil fuel friendly political groups shift focus, and money, to state," News, July 10, 2024].
"There is dark money, and they're not just targeting Vermont," Welch said. "They're targeting anywhere that isn't Trump country. This is one of the cancers in our democracy. Corporations and unidentified individuals could give whatever amount of money they want. We saw that in the extreme last election, when Elon Musk gave $280 million to the Trump campaign. That's an incredible threat to our democracy."
Welch reminisced about his first Congressional campaign in 2006, when he ran against Republican candidate Martha Rainville, then just retired as adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard.
"She was an extremely competent and very honorable person," Welch said. "She and I had a cup of coffee as the campaign was getting underway, and we made an agreement: No negative ads. We shook hands on that. It was the last contested Congressional race in the history of the United States of America where there were no negative ads. The next year, the Supreme Court decide[d] Citizens United.
"If Martha and I were running after Citizens United, we couldn't enforce the agreement that we made," he said, noting that the ruling would have allowed the Koch brothers - the wealthy political activists whose organizations have poured money into right-wing causes and candidates - to back his opponent with multiple millions of dollars administered through shadowy political action committees and other organizations that are one or more steps removed from the actual candidate.
"That dark money, that excessive money, that unlimited money that comes obviously from interests that are about winning an election to get people who will appease them and enrich them and disregard us - that has to be changed," Welch said. "And that is a real challenge."
One audience member asked Welch about the current attempt to prematurely redraw district lines for the U.S. House of Representatives - customarily done every 10 years following the U.S. census and the reapportionment of the body's 435 seats based on shifts in population - in order to eliminate Democratic districts in the upcoming elections.
Texas just did so on Aug. 29, despite the Democratic Party minority fleeing the state to deny the state Legislature a quorum for a special session. (Vermont, with one single district covering the entire state, is small enough that congressional redistricting can't ever be an issue here.)
"The redistricting, first of all, is a Trump agenda to suppress the vote, right?" Welch said. "Except for his voters. That's number one. Number two is that it is so blatant that it is something that hasn't been done in my memory. I don't think it's been done at all.
"Trump called up the governor of Texas, as you know, and said, 'I want five more Republican seats.' And they just had a special session in the Legislature and redrew the maps with the explicit goal of getting five more Republican seats."
Welch called this "a nuclear 'mutually assured destruction' situation."
California is currently fighting the same redistricting ploy.
"I hate this gerrymandering before the next U.S. census is completed," Welch said. "It's not good for anybody. But that's the world we're in, where there are no norms."
Another attendee asked why the Democratic leadership appears so disorganized and defeated: Where is a leader with a strong message to foster unity?
Welch said that the midterm elections in 2026 will probably bring forward new leadership. He pointed out that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were little known on the national stage, yet they came forward and won the presidency. He thinks something similar could happen in the current election cycle.
"There are a number of folks who are out there testing the waters, testing their messages, seeing what kind of support they get," Welch said. "Some of those folks are going to run for president, and we don't know where that's going to go. But it's what happens when a leader does emerge who has those extraordinary talents of being able to speak in a way that resonates with most of us."
Hard questions
Another attendee wanted to know why Welch refuses to use the word "genocide" when talking about the Israeli government's strategies and policies surrounding Palestinians and the war that erupted after Hamas attacks against the country and kidnapping of Jewish hostages in 2023.
Welch pointed out that the whole Vermont delegation opposes sending arms to Israel.
"I think Democrats are appalled by what is happening in Gaza, and want the United States not to be complicit in it, and that's going to be a big issue in the next presidential campaign," Welch said.
But using the word "genocide" is polarizing, and Welch said he wants to be able to persuade his colleagues without being confrontational.
"What I'm thinking about, more than anything else, is how can I use the position I have as a United States senator to alleviate, and hopefully end, the suffering of people in Gaza," Welch said. "And that affects the words I choose."
He said that when he voted against sending military aid to Israel that is used in Gaza, he did so "when I was standing with just two other United States senators, and I got a lot of criticism, as well as some appreciation."
"But I want to keep the focus on the suffering of what's happening in Gaza and our complicity in it, and that means I have to persuade as many of my Democratic colleagues as I can to vote with me on this. It means we have to persuade as many of our fellow citizens as we can," Welch said. "So I don't pretend to know whether I'm right or wrong about when or when not to use that word."
Welch said he is seeing "a lot of discontent" in the country right now.
"We're not alone in that," Welch said. "But what can I do, right here in Westminster, right now, to stop this? Well, the reality is what we have to do in Vermont is keep the faith. I can't overstate the importance of local efforts and local commitments to building community."
In the end, the Democrats have to keep exposing Trump and his administration, Welch said. Meetings such as the one in Westminster is one way to do that.
"A lot of what we have to do is expose the reality of what he's doing," Welch said. "It's like on immigration, people wanted a secure border but they didn't want their neighbors being rounded up, right? You've got to get the word out. People have to see what's going on. I do believe Vermonters are ahead of the curve on where we're at. But there's a lot of folks who did vote for Trump.
"Now he's doing things that are really hurting everyday people. It's making it so they can't get vaccines. It's making it so they can't repay student loans. It's making it for our small businesses with these tariffs that they don't have any control over their expenses.
"Every single thing that he's been doing, when you break it down and expose it, has been very harmful to everyday people in our small businesses," Welch said. "So a lot of the responsibility we have is to get that information out."
Vermont values are American values, he repeated.
"I can't overstate the importance of local effort and local commitment to building community," Welch said. "Tending to the home fires is really, really important."
In talking to his colleagues from all around the country, he sees that "there are a lot of picnics just like us here in Westminster."
"We can't see where the country will be in a month from now, or two months from now, or three months from now, but we're going to have these elections coming up, and I do believe that's where we'll have an opportunity, in a concrete way, to demonstrate that the resistance is growing in power," Welch said. "We have to take that on to the midterm elections, and then we have to take that, obviously, into the next presidential election."
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.