Calling the second Trump administration “an existential threat to democracy,” Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin urged donors attending a campaign fundraiser for fellow Democrat U.S. Rep. Jason Crow to push party leaders to abandon their defensive crouch and get serious.

Delivering informal keynote remarks at the annual Crow Fest on Sept. 27 at Breckenridge Brewery in Littleton, Slotkin said voters across the country remain “laser-focused” on cost of living and are openly clamoring for a new generation of leadership, two pillars she warned Democrats to ignore at their peril.

Her rallying cry, however, focused on how the party and its leaders should respond to President Donald Trump and the Republican administration.

In an interview with Colorado Politics, Slotkin outlined how she decides what to prioritize amid a blizzard of daily developments.

“From the very beginning, when Trump was so clearly flooding the zone and doing 10 crazy things a day, I just went back to my training as a CIA analyst and said, ‘You know, you can’t focus on everything.’ So the things I’m going to focus on are both strategic and irreversible,” Slotkin said.

“So for instance, he wants to be a blowhard about buying Greenland,” she said with a grin. “I’m not going to worry. That’s not for me to engage on. But you start deploying the military, and making American citizens fear their own military, against the will of the local government — that, to me, is a core democracy issue, right? We were founded because we had an occupying military, and people turned against that military.”

Crow’s fundraiser, in its fourth year, drew more than 700 donors, making it one of the largest political events in the state this year. With about 100 more donors than last year, the shindig raised almost $200,000 for the Blue Colorado Fund, nearly double what it brought in last year, organizers said. The committee is backing the Aurora Democrat’s bid for reelection to a fifth term and supports Democratic candidates in Colorado and across the country.

In addition to Crow and Slotkin, prominent Democrats in attendance included U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Attorney General Phil Weiser, former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter and state lawmakers Jeff Bridges, Tom Sullivan, Chad Clifford, Bob Marshall and Briana Titone.

As night fell, Slotkin took to an outdoor stage recently occupied by a local roots rock band and told Crow supporters that since Trump’s election to a second term a year ago, national Democrats haven’t been sorted along the traditional ideological lines that have long defined the party’s wings.

“I will tell you that the differences among Democratic leaders are no longer, is it progressive versus moderate? That is no longer the debate,” Slotkin said. “The debate among senior Democratic leaders is how you answer the following question: Do you believe that Trump’s second term is an existential threat to democracy? Or do you believe that, just like Trump’s first term, that if we just hold and wait and let bad things happen, the people will turn on him, and this will be survivable, just like Trump One was survivable?”

Although she’d begun her remarks with a lighthearted tone — comparing Coloradans’ zeal for fancy outdoor gear to Michiganders’ devotion to tailgating, and ribbing Crow for elbowing his way into a group chat that included Slotkin and other Democratic congresswomen with national security backgrounds — the former CIA officer and Defense Department official didn’t mince words answering the question she’d posed.

“I’m here to tell you that, despite the fact that I might have more moderate views than some of you, I believe, with team No. 1, that Trump is an existential threat to the democracy, and it is our responsibility to organize effectively, to do something about that.”

One reason Slotkin said she felt an affinity with Crow — an Army Ranger veteran who, like Slotkin, first won election to Congress in 2018 in the Trump midterms, by defeating a longstanding Republican incumbent — was that he understood that “no team in history wins by just playing defense.”

“You must play offense, right? It is our responsibility as Democratic leaders to tell you how you can be a part of saving your country. And if you’re wondering, ‘Why haven’t I gotten the memo?’ It’s because of that storming and norming that’s happening at the top of the food chain in the Democratic Party,” she said, repeating a phrase she’d used earlier to describe party insiders’ attempts to hone their messages “behind closed doors.”

“So here’s what I’d ask of all of you: Continue to put that upward pressure on Democratic leaders to get their sh– together,” she said. “Because it can’t just be defense, defense, defense, all day long. We must play offense.”

Crow, who bracketed Slotkin on stage — and introduced his fellow lawmaker as a “total badass” — said it’s up to everyday Americans like those at the brewery that night to stand up to what he termed “a creeping authoritarianism gripping our country,” citing Trump’s deployment of troops to American cities and public instructions to the Department of Justice to indict his critics, among other recent developments.

“We see examples of those with seemingly the most power, In elite positions around the country, law firms buckling, CEOs bending the knee, large media conglomerates cowing, and it’s hard to see that and say, how can those with great influence and power and privilege not rise up in this moment?” Crow said.

“But this is not the story of those people. This is the story of everybody else,” he said. Crow pointed to a youth baseball coach in New York who intervened when immigration agents approached team members during practice this summer and a small town in Washington where 10% of its population turned out for the No Kings protest march.

“It’s the story of the people in this community filming, standing in the breach, wrapping their arms around our immigrants and our refugees,” Crow said. “We are the story, because fear is contagious, but so is courage.”

Crow said that although no one at the event had sought out the challenges ahead, it was up to everyone to be leaders in their communities.

“Our choice is only what we’re willing to do, if we’re willing to make the sacrifice necessary to do the work, to peacefully protest, to mobilize, to agitate, to organize and to take back our democracy,” Crow said, drawing cheers from the crowd.

“You will be those leaders,” he added. “This is our moment. We will not allow ourselves to be rolled over.”