I think there's a couple different things being conflated here, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.
First, I generally agree (and have said many times) that Dems and leftists need to avoid hyperventilating, doom-crying predictions about what Trump will do in the future (like "he's going to put gays in cages!" or "he's going to try to stay in office forever," etc.). It worked against Dems in 2016 when they made all sorts of horrible predictions about what a Trump presidency would mean, and while Trump 1.0 was an objectively awful president, whose policies or lack thereof did real harm to a lot of people, the sky didn't fall and the country didn't descend into chaos and pigs didn't start flying. So when the same predictions got recycled in 2024 it fell flat with a lot of people. It made what was objectively a bad presidency seem not so bad because the predictions were so much worse.
Second, it is generally unhelpful and counterproductive for Dems to paint with a broad brush with pejorative terms applied to Trump's supporters (racist, fascist, "deplorables," etc) because nobody ever sees themselves as those things and using that sort of language just pushes people away.
But I simply can't agree that we should never apply labels like "authoritarian" or "fascist" to Trump (and the members of his administration and media mouthpieces), because it is important to put his actions and words into their proper political and historical context for people who might not understand that context. It is important, for example, to say and explain why stuff like these statements by Trump or his influential minions is overtly fascist rhetoric:
"In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible; they'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and to destroy the American Dream"
"It's time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single leftist organization."
""The Democrat Party must be classified as a domestic terror organization and their members and leaders treated accordingly."
Calling the press "the enemy of the people"
Saying that the "Democrat Party . . . supports everything that God hates."
"[Immigrants] are poisoning the blood of our country."
"There is [a leftist] ideology that has steadily been growing in this country, which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. . . . It is an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence. The fate of millions depends on the defeat of this wicked ideology.”
"The power of law enforcement, under President Trump’s leadership, will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom."
Calling out rhetoric like this as overtly fascist rhetoric is important to help illustrate to people how far outside the modern American political discourse statements like this are. To not call out this rhetoric as extreme is too allow it to be normalized. Similarly, to not call out the Trump admin for its overtly authoritarian tendencies (many of which were explicitly outlined in Project 2025, which Trump laughably denied any knowledge of) - such as the the shameful example I gave of its lies, deception, and utter disregard for the law in immigrant deportations; the EO on birthright citizenship; the desire to suppress and punish critical speech; the willingness to leverage the executive power of the President to compel and coerce universities and businesses to do what the President wants them to do; etc) is to give the impression that they are all within the realm of ordinary political policy disagreements, rather than fundamental attacks on the legitimacy and power of the rule of law and the other branches of the federal government.
So while I agree that sometimes the use of pejorative labels can be problematic - especially when applied to followers rather than leaders of a political movement - I simply can't agree that when Trump walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, we shouldn't call him a duck.
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