The reaction among Democrats to Donald Trump’s return to power has been significantly more subdued than what we saw in 2016 after the mogul’s first shocking electoral win. The old-school “resistance” is dead, and it’s not clear what will replace it. But Democratic elected officials are developing new strategies for dealing with the new realities in Washington. Here are five distinct approaches that have emerged, even before Trump’s second administration has begun.
Some Democrats are so thoroughly impressed by the current power of the MAGA movement they are choosing to surrender to it in significant respects. The prime example is Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the onetime fiery populist politician who is now becoming conspicuous in his desire to admit his party’s weaknesses and snuggle up to the new regime. The freshman and one-time ally of Bernie Sanders has been drifting away from the left wing of his party for a good while, particularly via his vocally unconditional backing for Israel during its war in Gaza. But now he’s making news regularly for taking steps in Trump’s direction.
Quite a few Democrats publicly expressed dismay over Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, but Fetterman distinguished himself by calling for a corresponding pardon for Trump over his hush-money conviction in New York. Similarly, many Democrats have discussed ways to reach out to the voters they have lost to Trump. Fetterman’s approach was to join Trump’s Truth Social platform, which is a fever swamp for the president-elect’s most passionate supporters. Various Democrats are cautiously circling Elon Musk, Trump’s new best friend and potential slayer of the civil-service system and the New Deal–Great Society legacy of federal programs. But Fetterman seems to want to become Musk’s buddy, too, exchanging compliments with him in a sort of weird courtship. Fetterman has also gone out of his way to exhibit openness to support for Trump’s controversial Cabinet nominees even as nearly every other Senate Democrat takes the tack of forcing Republicans to take a stand on people like Pete Hegseth before weighing in themselves.
It’s probably germane to Fetterman’s conduct that he will be up for reelection in 2028, a presidential-election year in a state Trump carried on November 5. Or maybe he’s just burnishing his credentials as the maverick who blew up the Senate dress code.
Other Democrats are being much more selectively friendly to Trump, searching for “common ground” on issues where they believe he will be cross-pressured by his wealthy backers and more conventional Republicans. Like Fetterman, these Democrats — including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — tend to come from the progressive wing of the party and have longed chafed at the centrist economic policies advanced by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and, to some extent, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They’ve talked about strategically encouraging Trump’s “populist” impulses on such issues as credit-card interest and big-tech regulation, partly as a matter of forcing the new president and his congressional allies to put up or shut up.
So the idea is to push off a discredited Democratic Establishment, at least on economic issues, and either accomplish things for working-class voters in alliance with Trump or prove the hollowness of his “populism.”
Colorado governor Jared Solis has offered a similar strategy of selective cooperation by praising the potential agenda of Trump HHS secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as helpfully “shaking up” the medical and scientific Establishment.
At the other end of the spectrum, some centrist Democrats are pushing off what they perceive as a discredited progressive ascendancy in the party, especially on culture-war issues and immigration. The most outspoken of them showed up at last week’s annual meeting of the avowedly nonpartisan No Labels organization, which was otherwise dominated by Republicans seeking to demonstrate a bit of independence from the next administration. These include vocal critics of the 2024 Democratic message like House members Jared Golden, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Ritchie Torres, and Seth Moulton, along with wannabe 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Josh Gottheimer (his Virginia counterpart, Abigail Spanberger, wasn’t at the No Labels confab but is similarly positioned ideologically).
From a strategic point of view, these militant centrists appear to envision a 2028 presidential campaign that will take back the voters Biden won in 2020 and Harris lost this year.
We’re beginning to see the emergence of a faction of Democrats that is willing to cut policy or legislative deals with Team Trump in order to protect some vulnerable constituencies from MAGA wrath. This is particularly visible on the immigration front; some congressional Democrats are talking about cutting a deal to support some of Trump’s agenda in exchange for continued protection from deportation of DREAMers. Politico reports:
“The prize that many Democrats would like to secure is protecting Dreamers — Americans who came with their families to the U.S. at a young age and have since been protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama in 2012.
“Trump himself expressed an openness to ‘do something about the Dreamers’ in a recent ‘Meet the Press’ interview. But he would almost certainly want significant policy concessions in return, including border security measures and changes to asylum law that Democrats have historically resisted.”
On a broader front, the New York Times has found significant support among Democratic governors to selectively cooperate with the new administration’s “mass deportation” plans in exchange for concessions:
“In interviews, 11 Democratic governors, governors-elect and candidates for the office often expressed defiance toward Mr. Trump’s expected immigration crackdown — but were also strikingly willing to highlight areas of potential cooperation.
“Several balanced messages of compassion for struggling migrants with a tough-on-crime tone. They said that they were willing to work with the Trump administration to deport people who had been convicted of serious crimes and that they wanted stricter border control, even as they vowed to defend migrant families and those fleeing violence in their home countries, as well as businesses that rely on immigrant labor.”
While the Democrats planning strategic cooperation with Trump are getting a lot of attention, it’s clear the bulk of elected officials and activists are more quietly waiting for the initial fallout from the new regime to develop while planning ahead for a Democratic comeback. This is particularly true among the House Democratic leadership, which hopes to exploit the extremely narrow Republican majority in the chamber (which will be exacerbated by vacancies for several months until Trump appointees can be replaced in special elections) on must-pass House votes going forward, while looking ahead with a plan to aggressively contest marginal Republican-held seats in the 2026 midterms. Historical precedents indicate very high odds that Democrats can flip the House in 2026, bringing a relatively quick end to any Republican legislative steamrolling on Trump’s behalf and signaling good vibes for 2028.
I saw Clark at Dartmouth College NH on Friday last week. Good crowd – I would say 200-300 plus on a brutally cold day. Not bad for someone not targetting the ‘college crowd’.
He was fine. But he wasn’t great.
He started by saying that he had lots of programmes, they were all on his website, where you could look at them, but he was going to talk about broader themes (Faith, Family etc). Which is okay as far as it goes, but the way he said it really gave the impression that the programmes had been generated by “Prez-Cand-Programmes-4-U”, with only a mild connection to Clark. Even on Iraq, he said he had a plan, but he didn’t lay it out.
Several aspects of his speech had prolongued longeurs, including a tedious finishing story about meeting a young man in Haiti who looked to America for his future, about 5 times longer than it needed to be. He also had a tendency to add “and other things” or like phrases to many of his proposals which tended to undercut the rhetorical effect (Cf. J. Caesar “I came, I saw, I conquered, and other things).
But he brightened up sharply in the questions and answers session. He could handle both the agressive questions and the Democratic true believer questions, with a bit of punch and humour. “Tommy Franks says I’m not his kind of guy. Well, he’s not my kind of guy”.
Overall, I thought him unfinished. And in need of a better speechwriter, fast. Even a few rudimentary tweaks would good a long way.
Ruy, you ask what would be a good signature issue for Clark to go along with taxes. I’m a psychologist, so I’m sensitive to how people build associations and impressions into opinions. Clark is a soldier, hunts and has guns, and favors capital punishment, so voters have multiple pieces of information telling them that Clark is tolerant of violence. This plays well with many moderates who feel that life is often dangerous, but it is anathema to most democratic primary voters. This is also a fundamental dimension of a person’s value system.
The way to counter a pro-violence perception is to create a pro-nurturance perception, and the main nurturance issues are health, education, and anything having to do with children. Bush understood this and balanced his conservatism with pro-nurturant positions on both education and healthcare (prescription drug plan), and thereby was successful in capturing enough of the center to get elected despite being to the right of Reagan. Clark needs this same balance, especially in the primaries to close his gender gap and make liberals believe his antiwar rhetoric.
If you dig into Clark’s position papers he has excellent proposals in all these areas, but they are long and complicated and have never been thematically unified. I think he just has to package them better. I would suggest a unifying theme (also tapping his soldier’s persona) of ‘Fighting for our Children’. He should talk about his plans for children’s health insurance, universal preschool and Head Start, college scholarships, child poverty, and deficit reduction as aspects of this ‘Fight’ (deficit reduction because it provides for our children’s future). He should bring up this theme early in any speech, refer back to it as other issues relate to it, and restate it when he closes. In some candidates a strong focus on this would seem to feminine, but for Clark it will just give him psychological breadth. Also, the great thing about using this as a signature issue is that, unlike most issues, it can help in both the primaries and the general election.
Question:
I had thought Clark’s GOP past was a moot issue, having read the September NY Times story excerpted below, wherein Clark reportedly acknowledges he once was a Republican.
But Clarkies elsewhere on the web are now saying Clark was “never” a Republican, and that the NY Times was in error in its report.
Can anybody here set me straight?
“Moving to fill in the blanks of his candidacy a day after he announced for president, General Clark also said that he had been a Republican who had turned Democratic after listening to the early campaign appeals of a fellow Arkansan, Bill Clinton.” (Adam Nagourney, “Clark Says He Would Have Voted For War,” The New York Times, 9/19/03)
paid archive link:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70F17FA385E0C7A8DDDA00894DB404482
Upper Left, what matters to Democrats is beating Bush. Howard Dean comes off like the smartest kid in eighth-grade trig class, always raising his hand, getting the answer right and then rubbing it into the other kids’ faces. He may have been right, but he’ll eat by himself at lunch.
Dean was out front on the war before anyone else did. Kudos to him. But don’t let that obscure the fact that he has insulted southern white males, he’s wrong on gun control, insulted Democratic lawmakers by calling them cockroachs, has a flimsy story about avoiding service in Vietnam, has made absolutely ridiculous statements about bin Laden’s guilty, took money for speeches from groups that had business with the state of Vermont while governor, had a secret commission advising him on energy policy ala Dick Cheney, is fighting to keep his gubernatorial records secret, has done an incredible flip-flop on tax cuts, brags about how he’s going to policize religion in the South and it has now come out that he dissed the political process in Iowa and praised Bush, calling him a moderate and a two-term president on a television show.
The dream candidate.
Bush, Cheney and Rove have a name for him. Chum.
I have posted an analysis of the entire “electability” question on the new thread (“What Do Bush’s Current Approval Ratings Mean”) above. I hope you will take the time to read it and respond. Thanks!
Regarding Clark: The reason Clark’s last minute conversion to being a Democrat matters is because of who votes in the primaries and why they vote. Who votes: more idealogically motivated and committed Democrats. Why they vote: It is the values stupid! By and large, people vote for the candidate they think best represents their values. There are a few voters who care about resume and experience, a few who have single-issue litmus tests, but the vast majority vote for the candidate they feel best represents their values.
What bothers me about Clark, and I believe will bother many other Dems when it is pointed out to them, is the fact that he was not clear enough about his own values to know which party he identified with. It reminds me of the old United Mine Worker song, “which side are you on boys, which side are you on.” Until 2002, Clark didn’t make up his own mind which side he was on. His lack of clarity on his own values makes me question what he would do if he actually won.
Now in 2004 he wants to lead our side into battle. I welcome him to our side, but I am not prepared to hand him command. I would love to see a Dean/Clark ticket, but I fear that before it is all said and done, there will be too many bruised feelings to make it possible.
I used to be an early Dean supporter, and there’s a lot I like about him… primarily his outspokeness about the war. I turned away from him because I don’t think he would be a strong challenger against Bush. At the risk of repeating points BrilliantIdiot made well, here is the case against him:
1. Lacks national security credentials. A big deal in 2004.
2. Is gaffe-prone. This is because he is impulsive, and has a bit of a tin ear for how his comments will be heard. Under this category also include his shakiness in one-on-one interviews. (I think the next time Russert has him on he’s going to have to wear a bib.)
3. On TV he comes off as arrogant and prickly.
4. He’s geographically challenged. It’s been more than 40 years since a Democrat who wasn’t from the south has won a general election. Moreover, he’s from a state with a population about the size of Cincinnati.
5. He’s exposed on Civil Unions. I think that what Dean did in Vermont with Civil Unions is great, but let’s face it… this will be the phony Republican issue of the year, and Dean is exposed on it.
Lest I give the impression that all I care about is tactics, let me also say that I would prefer it if he were a little more to the left on gun control and capital punishment, and a little more to the right on free trade. I don’t expect any candidate to be perfect for me, but Dean is less perfect than most.
Upper Left, you won’t be surprised to know that I disagree with your calls on the effectiveness of tarring Clark as a Republican (people like non partisanship) or an opportunist. (As if any human who runs for President of the USA isn’t opportunistic, or arrogant).
The trick is to not come off that way. Clark succeeds in this with a very likeable TV and real life personality. As interesting and smart as Dean is, as much as I actually like him, he often makes me roll my eyes with his superiority and churlishness. Clark has made fewer verbal gaffes than Dean in the last 2 months, and which guy has more political experience? Dean’s a talented politician – and great with pushing the base’s buttons Looks like Clark is even more talented, coming from nowhere to challenge like this….
I think it will be a meritocratic face off, though I wish Clark had an extra month to organize in places like WI. If Clark wins, it’s that much more extraordinary. However, I never thought that Dean (or anyone else’s) support was that firm to begin with. Voters are only starting to tune in now.
And you’re also not anticipating the negative press Dean will get when he announces his new tax plan (“changing his plan…flip flopping…..etc.). And that’s an issue Americans pay big attention to. As smart a politician as Dean is, he really blew it on taxes. And the damage is only partly fixable. And national security…..blah blah.
Be careful what you ask for, all you Clark supporters.
If this poll turns out to be reliable, and I believe it will, Clark is likely to start getting a lot more scrutiny and criticism. For the past month, Clark has quietly gone about his business while Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry have been slinging mud at Dean.
This constant hammering from the other candidates and the unrelenting negative press has stopped Dean’s momentum. The criticism Dean has gotten from the more Democratic leaning mainstream press like the NY Times, Washington Post, Newsweek etc. is fairly predictable. These guys have bought the “electability” argument hook, line, and sinker and are doing everything in their power to stop Dean.
Most of Dean’s so called “gaffes” have been comments taken out of context and spun in the most negative way. Dean is getting a complete colonoscopy on every word that comes out of his mouth. He is being held to a different standard than the other candidates, certainly a higher standard than Bush was ever subjected to. Lieberman, who has absolutely no chance, has gotten an amazing amount of press attention for his unrelenting diatribes against Dean. Dean is bleeding from a 1000 paper cuts, none of them is truly serious, but collectively they are taking their toll.
What has been more surprising has been the attacks on Dean from the right. If Dean were such a patsy for Bush, don’t you think the right would hold their fire until Dean had the nomination wrapped up? Why would they be helping the Democratic establishment and the main-stream media bash Dean now. Perhaps they are stupid, over-confident, and unable to contain themselves; or perhaps they actually fear Dean and what he represents.
It will be interesting to see if the media continue to give Clark a free-ride or if they will now start to give him a little more scrutiny.
My fear is that the Dems are now in for a protracted fight between Clark and Dean. Most of you, who have fallen in love with Clark’s resume, seem oblivious to his serious baggage in a one-on-one nomination fight. You may not care that the man voted for Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, or that he seriously contemplated running for office as a Republican in 2001, but a lot of Dem faithful will. This history combined with his glowing comments about Bush as late as 2002 make him look like an opportunist.
Dean has largely held his fire thus far because he was hoping he could overwhelm the field. Now that his momentum has been slowed by all the attacks, he is probably going to have to get mean. He has a lot of money, and a demonstrated ability to raise more. This could get very ugly, and no matter who ends up with the nomination, they may be damaged goods against Bush in the fall.
The dems have a great candidate with a centrist record, compelling populist rhetoric, a proven ability to mobilize the base, and the potential to excite a whole new generation of young democrats. So what does our party do? We stone the guy based on a poorly articulated, arrogantly assumed, electability argument. Instead, the establishment of our party gets all excited about a guy who wasn’t even sure if he was a democrat until 2002. As Will Rogers said, “I am not a member of an organized party, I am a Democrat.”
Ruy, I don’t know whether a single issue can be a silver bullet… particularly one like education, which is largely a state responsibility. Also, remember that Clinton had a rap as a big list-maker too, but people loved that about him. However, I will concede that a campaign’s message needs to be binded somehow (a la Great Society, New Deal, etc.) Clark’s theme of a “New Patriotism” has the potential to do that, although he hasn’t been hitting that note as much lately. It plays into his military background, and it snatches back a theme that the Republicans have been pretending they own. Moreover, patriotism works better than compassion as a spur to progressive action.
Let me also say that what I think has been overlooked about the Clark tax plan is that it is also tax simplification… another issue we have foolishly let the Republicans think they own! Voters will be very attracted to the idea of filing their taxes on a postcard; there is no sort of paperwork that we do as consumers and citizens that is more absurdly complex and enraging than a tax form. (A mortgage application might be more invasive, but it is certainly not more complex.) Remember, this is the most extensive involvement we have with the Federal government all year… no wonder people don’t trust government!
Finally, let me say this: of course Clark is more electable than Dean, and of course that’s important. Because of his personality and background, Clark is largely immune from the cultural attacks that Republicans specialize in. We would be running a war hero who’s never even smoked pot against a coke-sniffing frat boy who found the National Guard’s Champagne Squadron too much of a commitment. Another good omen for Clark: since October the media has not been able to find a handle for him — Clinton is slick and priapic, Gore is stiff, Bush is dumb, Dean is angry and arrogant — what is the caricature for Clark? They will probably find one (lest they be forced to actually cover the issues, God forbid) but he has flummoxed them so far.
Goodness, could you just drop #5 already? The idea of anyone to winning the nomination through superdelegates rather than primaries is horrifying. In a party that was recently denied a presidential victory despite having the most popular votes, if the superdelegates were to award the nomination to any candidate except the one with the most votes during the primaries would almost certainly result in a total party meltdown.
I support Dean, and I have no problem with your support of Clark, who is a fine candidate. However, please, drop #5 from your Clark strategy. I cannot possiblly think of a worse tactic for someone to pursue in an attempt to win the nomination. A brokered convention is the only circumstance where many ABB people like myslef would consider bolting on the nominee.
Sovok: I wouldn’t read too much into those favorable/unfavorable numbers. Deann’s unfavorable ratings are largely due to the massive pummeling he’s been taking in the media. If Clark were the frontrunner, he’d be taking that kind of pummeling as well. In fact, when he first announced, the media was full of “Who’s the Real Wesley Clark?” stories, with rumors and innuendo about how many of the people he worked with hated him, how he was overly ambitious, possibly insane, a liar, etc., etc.
All the Clark bashing has calmed down as Dean has been ascendant.
I agree with Marcia and Steve Cohen about jobs being a good signature issue. In fact, maybe I’m reading to much into it, but I think Clark may have hinted in his response that jobs will be a signature issue (“this may be the biggest challenge of all”). I know it’s a bit of a leap, but I’ve heard Clark go through the “laundry list” quite a few times. Jobs is often the one that he ends with, and spends the most time on.
The Pew Research Study Ruy cited also says that jobs is the issue voters most want talked about in South Carolina (39%, terrorism is 2nd with 21%).
I’m all in favor of more talk on education, but right now might not be the time for it.
Evan,
The other, more positive, way to look at Clark’s support among men is that it would help him narrow the gender gap at the expense of the Republicans in November. I think he has a good shot at winning back some of the lower-to-middle socioeconomic status men who have defected to the Republicans in droves in recent years, contrary to their own economic interests.
Greg
Ruy,
Actually the Gallup poll does give us a hint about Clark’s standing among independents/Republicans:
Dems/Dem leaners:
Clark: 45% favorable / 15% unfavorable
Dean: 45% favorable / 22% unfavorable
Reps/Rep leaners
Clark: 32% favorable / 38% unfavorable
Dean: 11% favorable / 58% unfavorable
All
Clark: 37% favorable / 26% unfavorable
Dean: 28% favorable / 39% unfavorable
Just one data point, but it seems safe to say that Dean does not appeal to Republicans at all.
“Effeminate”? “Turtlenecks”? “Delicate nature”? Is this what our political discourse has come down to? The man is a 4-star general who was wounded in action, for heaven’s sake.
I’m not sure that Clark needs another signature issue. He might, and if he does, it should probably be jobs….good jobs. But I like the fact that he has a “laundry list” of issues. To me, that shows that he’s a more well-rounded candidate who understands the myriad of problems that face us and has ideas on how to begin to address each of them. You’re probably correct, however, that he probably should concentrate on one or two at a time.
Remember Al Gore’s Prescription Plan for Seniors? The fact that it was basically all he talked about probably could be added to the list of political mistakes that were made by that campaign. A good many Americans had concerns about other issues, but those were never addressed.
No comment on the pronounced gender split between Dean and Clark? I can’t remember the exact figures, but it was lopsided–Dean’s support was biased toward women, and Clark’s was *very* biased toward men.
Considering that republican support is also biased toward men, I’m not sure what that says about the general election. I’m concerned that the men who support Clark now will prefer Bush come November. I’d like to see head-to-head matchups between Dean and Bush and Clark and Bush; so far I’ve only seen one such poll (and Dean came out ahead of Clark in it).
Regardless, I agree with you that it will be interesting to see what comes next. I’m a strong Dean supporter, but I do like Wes Clark a lot. I’m delighted to see the primaries shaping up into a race between my two favorite candidates–can’t remember the last time *that* happened.
Electability is such a weak reason to support Clark (his tax plan is the only policy reason to support him, and it only came out Monday), it reeks of the defensive posture Democrats took in 2002 and which got themselves creamed, and it isn’t even true that Clark is more electable than Dean. Clark, unlike Dean, will get raked over the coals for his recent words of praise and support for Bush and Republicans. He will also be as mercilessly portrayed as weak on foreign policy as any Democratic candidate, notwithstanding his background. The Repub’s will seek to discredit his militairy service and his capabilities. They will line up batteries of Generals who will question his leadership and point out that he was relieved of his duties by the Clinton administration. There is also the very real fact, although politically incorrect to point out certainly, that Clark is effeminate. There is no doubt that Repub’s will use his turtlenecks and his delicate nature to portray him as weak.
Liberals like Donkey Rising who continue to play up the Dean is unelectable meme should realize that they are only playing minor roles in a Republican driven attempt at self-fulfillng prophesy.
Is education really the signature issue this year? The cynical part of me (i.e. the laid-off part of me) sees even highly-skilled people losing their jobs, and often the greater your skills, the higher your salary, the greater your vulnerability. I would no recommend longer to my son that he study to enter my profession.
Ruy:
Thanks for askng the signature issue question. Implicitly then, you agree with me that the tax plan can be a signature issue.
You think he needs another right? What can come across as clearly as the tax plan?
Ruy: The Gallup poll shows a much smaller lead for Dean than previous polls in the last month (the Rasmussen poll out just a few days before showed 22 to 13). I understand that Gallup polled “registered voters” rather than “likely voters.”
Do the different polling methods account for the different outcomes? Clark’s sudden rise in this one poll seems like an anomaly