All Democrats must say “no” to working with Donald Trump and his lazy, shiftless thugs who want to steal the labor of our bodies, the sanity of our minds, and the beauty of our natural resources. Democrats need to say “no” to him, on everything, with the same forceful confidence Trump displays.

Any collaboration with Trump will yield nothing more than humiliation, anyway. Al Gore met with Ivanka Trump about climate justice only to have a climate denier nominated to helm the EPA, the ExxonMobil CEO named to lead the state department and a witch hunt against any government scientist who has gone to a climate change conference. Similarly, labor leaders who signaled they were interested in working with Trump in repealing Nafta were shown to be chumps when he named a fast-food CEO to oversee the labor department.

But there is a more important reason than salvaging dignity that Democrats shouldn’t do business with the president-elect: every time they say “I hope to find common ground with him,” they are saying that their pet issue is more important than the fact Trump has said Mexicans are rapists, “you can do anything” to women, Muslims should be registered or banned, the exonerated Central Park Five still deserve to be executed, and differently abled people deserve to be mocked. Each time a Democrat says “yes” to Trump’s choices or meetings or policies, they are normalizing his hate, ceding any moral ground they might be able to muster in future fights.

Give America the chance women around Trump don’t get, Democrats, and say “no” every time he tries to screw us.

Democrats need to stand firm, too, because it’s good politics – if not just morally, then pragmatically. Bizarrely, the Democrats always say yes to the dream of bipartisanship, even though the Republicans in opposition have routinely said “we are going to destroy you,” make good on their threat and are rewarded at the ballot box for doing so.

Imagine what the Republicans would be doing if Trump had won the popular vote by nearly 3m votes but, because of less than 100,000 votes in the upper midwest, he’d lost the electoral college: they’d be suing for recounts across the land, casting aspersions of voter fraud on black and brown-majority districts, and giving not-so-tacit approval for armed militias and the KKK to intimidate electoral college members into changing their votes. (Actually, you don’t have to imagine this sort of scenario: just recall how Republicans said no to Obama from day one, denied him a US supreme court pick for a year, and promised to give Hillary the same hell if she became president.)

If the Democrats are unified in taking him on on every front, they might just win some victories of their own. And Trump may help them by overplaying his hand so much that Democrats win a few Republican defectors.

Regardless, if Democrats signal that Trump’s misogyny, racism, xenophobia and war on intelligence are worth condemning at all costs, they will signal to the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for the president-elect that some elements of government will at least try to protect us. They could help shape a society and future politics where it’s not just angry white men’s lives that matter.

This refusal to play nice won’t happen, of course. The Democrats are rolling over, hoping they can cut themselves a deal or get a place at the table, no matter the harm coming down the pike towards the people they are supposed to represent. They are breaking the first dictum of history professor Timothy Snyder’s 20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency: do not obey in advance.

Yes, Democrats are already abandoning us. Still, still a black, gay journalist who doesn’t want to be be even more harmed by the state, appreciates using the first amendment for his livelihood, and enjoys breathable air and potable water can dream at Christmastime, can’t he?