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 have nothing important to add except this:
In January 1942, Winston Churchill met with Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard an American battleship in the Atlantic. The topic was allied unity. Churchill agreed to expand Britain’s war against Japan if Roosevelt agreed that the defeat of Germany would be first. Both men agreed that, even though each side had to make some sacrifices, it served both their interests to work together. Therefore, each agreed to the others demands.
Later when a reporter asked Churchill how the meeting with Roosevelt went, he held up the V sign with his fingers.
“What does that mean?” The reporter asked.
“Victory,” Churchill replied.
Apparently, Kerry has settled on a campaign theme: ‘Let America be America again’.
What’s really interesting about the theme is that it is conservative in the true sense of the word. And it so aptly fits our current circumstance, in which a radical administration has taken a dull chainsaw to the carefully built edifice of American institutions and values.
on a topic closely related to ideological coherence and democratic party commonality, check out Mark Schmitt’s article from the American Prospect:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7765
The best quote of which:
“Liberalism is different from conservatism, not its mirror. Liberalism thrives when it has an opportunity to experiment, to debate, to test ideas. And when, in a time of futility, we also cut ourselves off from the historical roots of our ideas, we lose the benefit of the experience and experimentation that has gone before.”
I’m w/ paleo on this. bush has got to go and I’m willing to strike almost any bargain w/i the democratic party to ensure that.
but I wonder if what divides dyed-in-the-wool liberals from the DLC is the very reason dems have been on the shit end of the electoral stick for the last 15 years: namely, an utter absence of ideological cohesion.
true, dems need to entertain differing viewpoints but I think there’s ample evidence that the democratic party is more accurately described as a coalition of interests; the existence of southern democrats argues for that nomenclature.
I’m not convinced the party can ever meaningfully bridge its own internecine gulf. and maybe for the next 6 months we don’t need to. but after november, particularly if kerry loses, this divide—-however paper-overed it may have temporarily been—will need to be acknowledged, addressed, and redressed in some lasting way. otherwise, it’s deja vu all over again for the often hapless democratic party.
I’ve got great respect for Dionne, so I’m anxious to read his suggestions.
Coincidentally to the subject of this thread, Bob Novak has published the following article on Republican DIS-unity:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20040520.shtml
As to our democratic discussion, I will just say (after Lincoln):
“If we do not hang together, we will all hang, seperately.”
Whatever the divide is and which wing wins is irrrelvant. Let’s have the debate from the cat-bird seat. Let’s have some accomplishments without ideal goals rather than no accomplishments with ideal goals. Let us make it our agenda which will be implemented and we can debate which aspect to focus when in the process of implementing. Ariana Huffington says it well, “when you house is on fire, now is not the time to discuss remodeling.”
Coach, I don’t agree. I think the Republican party is far more united. When it comes to foreign policy and economic policy, little division. Only when it comes to the social issues is there a split, but they’ve managed to (1) reduce the emphasis of those issues within the party and (2) social liberals represented a smaller and smaller slice of the party.
While Democrats have general agreement on the social issues, they are far more split on the other two. When it comes to foreign policy, they are split over Iraq and interventionism in general. And a new split is emerging under the surface over the party’s continuing lockstep march with Israel. When it comes to economic policy, the division between the balanced budget/”free trade” wing and the greater spending/fair trade wing is more like a chasm. Should the Democrats get back in power, those divisions will reassert themselves with a vengeance.
There are serious differences in emphasis between the two wings, and these can lead to serious confilt, because one group might get their way while another does not.
For instance, the DLC is serious about courting investors and the business community. For them, Fiscal sanity is much more important than tax reform that denefits the middle class and working class. For Liberals, who are primarily interested in social justice for the working class and middle class, tax reform that benefits these groups is more important than a return to fiscal sanity.
Now both groups can agree they want both these things, but they actually are somewhat contradictory (not necessarily, but it would be easier to achieve either one if you didn’t achieve the other). Now, the Liberals have to worry that, because of a Republican House (and probable Republican Senate), the DLC will get what it wants most, a return to fiscal sanity, but the Liberals won’t get what they want most, tax reform benefiting the middle class and working class.
IF we actually realize the agenda in the article, it would be a huge success, in light of the Republicans desire to stop us from achieving any of it. My fear is that we will have a return of the Clinton years, where the centrists and DLC achieved so many more of their goals than the Liberals. While Clinton was much better than Bush, he was in many ways NOT ideal, and I think in some ways helped laid the groundwork for 2000.
But paleo, the fundamental differences are strategic or can be resolved empirically. These kinds of debates are healthy in general, if they are thought of that way, and both sides look for ways to productively make their case.
The goals, though, are very much the same.
I do not think the same can be said for the splits in the Republican party ( more of a theocracy, more of a libertarian govt.)
Party unity is always a good thing. I think it will be vital to the presidential election. Now we need to get the Nadar people on board.
But the “papering over” is the whole point of the piece. If Dems can make nice and stop quarreling long enough to regain the White House (and maybe the Senate), they can resume their internecine quibbles AFTERWARDS. The problem now is: What to do about Ralph Nader, with his long history of undercutting Democratic presidential candidates and a proven (2000) ability to pull aways crucial votes from the party?
Sorry. But there are fundamental differences between Progressive and DLC Democrats. They might be papered over in an election year. But afterwards, win or lose, they will reemerge. Kuttner’s and Marshall’s fuzzy and lowest common denominator article notwithstanding.