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.
Have fun with your couple of hundred dollars of federal tax rebate and your many hundreds of dollars of property tax increase. My wife and I bought a house two and half years ago. Our property taxes have increased by 1300 dollars in that time. This is no McMansion in the swanky part of town. Its a nice, quiet, typically middle-class, suburban neighborhood. Integrated, well-kept up, a nice place to live. $1300 in two and a half years. Meanwhile, services decrease and the states continue to struggle. Can’t tax the rich, you know. They might get angry. Can’t make the corporations pay taxes at all, they might take the jobs overseas…oh, they did that.
As many may have already heard, 62% of corporations that made over abillion dollars in profit last year paid NO TAXES AT ALL. Want to know the name of one of those corporations?
Halliburton.
I realize this is a complete change of subject…..Ruy, do you ever cover opinion polls from other countries? Is there any polling information from Iraq? I am very curious about how the prison abuse crimes are affecting the attitude Iraqis have toward the occupation. Also I’d like to see some polling results for Americans, too when they become available.
Thanks for all the ineresting articles .
A former economics professor stated that people vote almost exclusively with their pocketbook. Those former professionals that have had to take McJobs will not support the President again. When gas prices reach $2.25 a gallon (in Texas) folks will be ready for a change. When seniors realize they can still get drugs cheaper in Canada, they’ll send George packing. When the youth of America realize they’ve been handed a bill for a useless war, all for the benefit of the priveledged few. . ., well, it won’t matter cause they don’t vote anyhow.
I think that the public is eager to turn to a soft and safe cushion after the past month. Believing the economy is fantastic may be that cushion. I think that the lack of jobs with real wages or benefits, and the high gas prices and rising food prices is one reason that the cynicism and wariness remains, but with the way the media manages to guilt-trip people into believing that all this is necessary because of “the war on terra”, I don’t know how much longer the public doubts will last.
I don’t see that at all, James. The media cheering squad has been talking up the recovery since last Fall, and it hasn’t penetrated public consciousness yet. The job numbers might be the thing to finally do it if they’re perceived as “real” (which they never were in 1992) and ongoing. But, so far, people appear to remain resistant — partly because of the three years that preceded this, but maybe for some deeper reason. Is it possible the uneven quality of the Bush policies — the radical redistribution to the upper 10% — makes it an unevenly perceived recovery? Even if the economy is going well by standard measures, the percentage of the electorate truly feeling the benefit is too small to having beneficial effects at the ballot box.
Everyone forgets that the public has such low expectations for Bush, as does the media. When he apologized for Abu Gharib, the public acted like they had been touched by Jesus. And again, the same thing happens with the economy. The more the media shrieks about the economy, and the more fatigued the public gets about the horrors in Iraq, the more likely they are to support Bush based on the job numbers.
Or something like: “When was your last raise? How big was it? When do you expect your next one? If your answers to these questions were “I don’t remember, too damned small, and not anytime soon”, you can thank President George Bush and the entirely Republican-controlled federal government, especially as your boss flies by in his new luxury SUV because his profits are up so much. Have fun paying 40% more on average for your kids’ health coverage.”
The message that should be communicated to voters:
Bottom line on the improvement in the job picture under Bush: too little, too late. Grading on straight performance or on the curve, the man has failed miserably. Promoting Bush to an additional term would be succumbing to the soft bigotry of low expectations.