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.
Kerry ought to prepare policy speeches of equal length as Bush’s, and let the campaign demand equal coverage. It does not have to be immediate response as per Saturday Radio messages — but it ought to be roughly equal venues.
I have been quite supportive of Kerry’s apparent tact of remaining fairly silent on many apparent matters, but in the past week I have wanted Kerry to be much more critical of the apparent origin of the “torture” policy in the memos that passed between Bush and Gonzalas, that apparently assumed you could change the law of the land by simply declaring it “Quaint” and an old paradigm. Let’s get something straight. When a President participates in negotiating a treaty (as Harry Truman did in the 1949 Geneva Accords) and then recommends them to the Senate as a Treaty — and the Senate passes the treaty, it is the law of the land — period punct. If you want to change it, you have to go to congress, etc., etc. It might help if someone started talking about Article VI of the constitution — which is where you find the Treaty is Law language. Kerry really needs to offer an analysis not only of the Abu Ghraib pictures — but of the essentially passive manner in which Bush allowed illegal assumptions to filter down the chain of command.
Yeah, Carpe-
What’s the use in voting? I’m sure there’s a good episode of American Idol on tonight.
Carpe, I agree with you (except maybe for #5 and 6). And as reignman mentioned, the upcoming speeches on Iraq and the media fawning over those speeches, and the usual negative media coverage or non-coverage of Kerry and the Democrats, will make Bush rebound in popularity. It’s still his election to lose.
Look, Bush is gonna win, and here’s why:
1. Diebold
2. Florida is in the fix
3. The media is his buddy
4. We are no longer a democracy. That quaint notion ended
in November 2000.
5. Osama Been Forgotten will be found at the GOP covention in prime time and presented to Rudy The Hero Guliani as a trophy.
6. Conan the Barbarian will be out stumping for Bush, so all the star struck morons will think they’re voting for Der Terminator.
7. We’re a fascist country now, so hells bells, lets have more war.
Just my opinion cuz I have no faith left in the Murican peeplet anymore.
News: Bush falls off bicycle.
That’s what happens when you take off the training wheels.
I’m not so sure I agree with the premise that Democrats have been swinging between poles of despair and optimism. I believe that there is a certain amount of that which is simply a reaction to the way in which stories are reported. Understand that your average reporter, when he or she reports that the polls have the candidate in a dead heat, does not mention that this is a poor position for an incumbent president. Then the news changes and the polls figures change and it is reported as “President Bush’s position in the polls is weakening considerably on the heels of a report that…” Media loves scandal and shock and drama. Most of the Democrats I know are pretty level-headed. They take exactly the tone you suggest: cautious optimism.
Agreed. Bush will get a bump from his newest speech deal on Iraq. He’ll get another once Iraq gets its soverignty. He’ll probably do something on the 4th of July. He’ll get a bump at the convention, and another on 9-11, 04. But come the debates, Bush won’t be able to stop millions of dissatisfied Americans tuning in, and listening to what Kerry has to say, or at least what SNL does.
For those who need a quantitative analysis for their comfort blankie…
Check out this in Salon By James Galbraith…econometricists kick ass when it comes to numbers..
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/05/22/polls/print.html
Coming to our senses?
What the president’s declining approval ratings suggest about Americans’ judgment — and the prospects for redefeating Bush.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
By James K. Galbraith
May 22, 2004 | So you think the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal has broken the back of President Bush’s popularity? Well, I did too. But then I did a reality check.
Last February I ran an experiment with the first 37 months of Bush’s approval ratings…
Tick, tock — no matter what Bush said or did, Americans seemed to come to their senses about him at a steady rate. Except, of course, in the presence of a galvanizing foreign event or crisis.
Americans could be coming to a deeper judgment on Bush — perhaps about his competence, or trustworthiness, or character. And we could be coming to that judgment as a whole people. It could be that we are not irrevocably divided down the middle between blues and reds. Maybe some of us just take a bit longer than others to think things through.
The optimism is warranted and it really has little to do with horserace numbers or with history.
Especially not with history for the Bush presidency since 9-11 is fundamentally AHISTORICAl.
This leads to the fundamental reason for optimism. The Great National Coma is over. Iraq is a disaster and will continue as such. The economy is nowhere near as strong as the stock peddling pundits would have us believe and most importantly THE NATIONAL COMA IS OVER. Bush has made enemies not only of democrats, but lazy media who think they’ve been had, Chinese, Japanes, Russians, Europeans, Arabs, the entire Muslim world…a list as long as your arm.
The National Coma is over. Kerry must strike and strike hard. Whne I say SOON but that is the art of politics not the science…
THE NATIONAL COMA IS OVER:
“Not to get personal about it, but the president’s capacity to lead has never been there In order to lead, you have to have judgment. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none.
The emperor has no clothes. He is SO gone” Nancy Pelosi
I think these articles make good points. Let Bush hang himself. We need to register voters and work , work , work.
The Kerry campaign can win big if we organize and keep the pressure on Bush. But we cannot appear to be too greedy. Save that for after the election.