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.
Hi, I saw an interesting web log by the Iranian president who declares Kerry as the winner. It is worth seeing. I think he is the first person to call the winner.
It is no supprisae to me that Gallup dis counts minority voters. I know people all across this country and not one of them has ever had a friend who ever was polled or participated in a poll. Gallup like all the rest of these organizations know where to go to geth the results they want just like I would if I were to conduct a poll. Even in cities where the majority population is African American we seldom get polled and when we do it is for the wrong reason, nothing of a positive nature. African Americans need to ignore these polls and do wht we need to do, VOTE. Most polls are not biased they are usually from conservative organizations and Gallup is no different, control your own destiny do not allow gallup to do it.
As one of the few political bloggers of color on the web, I have been asserting the fact that minorities are underrepresented in national polling, for some time now.
When blogging or posting on this subject matter. my reasoning is invariably met with silence.
Gallup has a semi-defense on their blog, http://www.gallup.com/election2004/BLOG/. To summarize, they say that the 2000 exit poll data is untrustworthy and that 9/11 is going to make Republican turnout higher!
My question as I have been following your and Steve Soto’s coverage of the Gallup bias is very much the same as Lester Mann’s. Why hasn’t Gallup been called on to defend this? Why haven’t we had Gallup spokespeople being asked why they believe, for example, that black participation will be down several percentage points this time around?
We all, of course, know the answer in its simplest form — that the SCLM simply doesn’t do its job very well. But it’s past time for Gallup to have to answer for its methods, and for USAToday and CNN to have to explain why they are not troubled about their association with this clearly slanted poll masquerading as a venerable, objective, shall we say “fair and balanced” source of information.
–stu
Adrock:
I think you are making the wrong assumption: that they care about being accurate. Polling is a business. This iswhy their models are proprietary. They have a vested interest in defending their projections, not in making certain that their projections are accurate. This is why Gallup attacked Moveon’s full page ads. Not merely b/c they thought their modeling was right (I can’t know whether they do or do not know it is right). But, what I can assert with a relative high degree of certainty they have a vested financial interest in being perceived as right. This brings up one of the issues w/ private sector approaches- (I am a true business guy in that I believe that a lot of issues should be subject to the efficiencies of the private sector). But, there are some issues that are questions of the public interest or at least one should fully understand that there is (through full disclosure) there is a conflict of interest (transparency).
bruhrabbit, that last line is encouraging news:
“Basically, it argues, as have several others, that Kerry has more room for growth than Bush does.”
I just wonder how different the final pre-election polls will be from the actual results. Last time around, we’re many of them off by at least 3%? I would have thought they learned from their mistakes, but maybe not. Then again, maybe it doesn’t really matter at all and we’re paying too much attention to polls to early in the race.
Roy,
I appreciate all the hard work you have done with respect to Gallop’s bias.
My question is, do negative poll results (when they are this close) necessarily discourage voter participation for the candidate who is trailing? I always thought that the opposite was true. I was thinking that poll results this close to the election might actually work in Kerry’s favor.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue Gallop’s bias, I’m just wondering if anyone has done any research on whether the effect is necessarily harmful for Kerry.
Randy Farr
This is a two edged sword.
One the one hand, if the Republicans actually believe these biased polls, they are less likely to over-act (i.e., more than already) to suppress the vote, stymie the proper counting, etc.
On the other hand, Democrats believing these polls might not vote, thereby making the polls self-fulfilling pruphecies.
We must be sure to educate the Democrats, independents and other “unlikely” voters about this and encourage them by all possible means to vote anyway, while slipping around letting the Republicans know.
Of course, Karl Rove probably is already well aware of this. The desperation of the Republican leadership is obvious to those with eyes and ears, and even the media’s shrill attachment to Bush-deregulation does not appear to be working any more.
Let’s hope, pray, and work for the basic principle that Americans are NOT as stupid as we are led to believe, and that the other side WON’T be able to rig enough votes to steal this one, too.
Keep up the good work!
mhr
This from today’s Slate’s “Election Scorecard”
Update 1:15 p.m. ET: New polls give Bush hope in New Hampshire but shore up New Mexico and Wisconsin for Kerry. The gradual isolation of Gallup in the latter two states makes us wonder whether to reexamine Gallup’s numbers elsewhere.
That last sentence is gaining some resonance.
Ruy,
Why isn’t Gallup defending itself? They have a long standing reputation to protect. Why aren’t they slamming critics like you and Charles Cook? Is it because your criticism isn’t landing on the front page of mainstream media?
This was a fantastic post. From my reading of the polling literature this critical perspective on the likely voter models is taking hold and becoming a new common sense. I wonder how to take the next step and develop a new and better LV model that could be lobbied for? What would its features be?
Gallup should be renamed Gwallup, GW-all-up.
Nielej: At the heart of science are replicability of findings, and transparency. That is why an emphasis is placed in the journals on disclosure of how the experiment was conducted–so others can (in theory, at least) seek to replicate the finding or disconfirm it. Pollsters who do not disclose their methodologies–for understandable proprietary reasons–prevent any possibility of replicability, and also prevent the sort of transparency that is essential for others to scrutinize the methodology used for possible bias or the use of assumptions which, even if they do not stem from conscious bias, cannot be adequately supported.
I disagree with frankly0. What other pollsters are doing by abitrarily weighting their results to 2000 exit surveys (why stop at 2000? why not weight them to 1992 or 1988, or why not weight them to the 2002 mid-terms?) they are introducing EVEN MORE bias and partisanship. Gallup is simply going out and reporting their raw findings. That is science–partyID weigthing is art.
Jimbo:
Almost every poll- NYT/CBS, Zogby, Ramussen, ABC, NBC, Survey USA (to name just a few) and multiple state polls (not the least of which OH and PA show Kerry ahead, and FL shows a tie w/ Bush polling in many under 50 percent). So other than the WaPo and Gallup poll how are you coming to your conclusion. RVs by the way also, if I am not mistaken, weight for demographics. Moreover, Kerry, and this is something that is crucial, I don’t think needs a momentum- Bush does. Why? Because Bush is the incumbent. But, just to let you know the internals I have been reading from both Ruy’s site, RealClear Politics, Mystery Pollster and several other sites indicates independents are breaking for Kerry and he still has not obtain the full weight of his base which is also trending Kerry- although Bush has- there is an excellent article about base support over at Salon that was put out back in the Summer/Spring that you should read. Basically, it argues, as have several others, that Kerry has more room for growth than Bush does.
To PM Summer: When you think about it who really has an interest in what, when it comes to these polls?
I am confident the Bush campaign sees enormous value in pro-Bush polls which they want to affect the dynamics of the race, as opposed to merely measuring accurately the current snapshot.
If you are a business doing, say, marketing research you have every reason to want the most accurate possible results, assuming you want to make the best possible business decisions.
If you are a political campaign, however, you employ your own private pollsters to tell you what is really going on, so as to be able to make the best decisions about where to deploy your resources and place the emphasis in your campaign strategy. When it comes to publicly reported polls, you may conclude that publicly reported polls showing your side doing much better than it really is doing are all to your advantage. You don’t care that they present an accurate picture. In fact, you don’t want them to give an accurate snapshot. You already believe you know what the real picture is from your private polls. The publicly reported poll is a tool of advocacy, not measurement, from your campaign’s standpoint.
Look at it from the perspective of the newspaper reporting the poll. USA Today’s Monday headline, citing the Gallup poll showing Bush up by 8 among LV’s, was splashy, eye-catching. Translation: good for sales. No one–well, almost no one–will remember a week from now which newspaper reported which poll. And many of those who do remember will draw no negative conclusions about your newspaper if there is a huge swing from one poll to the next. They are as likely as not to scratch their heads and wonder what led to the “swing” as to doubt whether there really was a “swing” at all. Call it the allure of numbers if you will. With some, numbers have a surface aura of credibility, regardless of whether that is merited in the case in question. You know the saying–“statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics.”
But don’t pollsters have strong incentives to “get it right”? As I’ve suggested here awhile back, it is far from clear that anyone–the public or the media outlets that contract with them–really cares how well a pollster did during the course of the race, when it comes to deciding which polls to report on and emphasize, and how to report on them, in the future. In fact, it does not appear to me that either most of the public or the media outlets that hire pollsters and report their findings even really cares about how well the pollster predicted the *final* results in previous years. Think about it–do you ever recall a TV or newspaper piece reporting a poll result insert any reference whatsoever to the previous performance of that pollster? Is Gallup hurting for business as a result of their poor recent track record in recent presidential races? I am aware of one WSJ and one NYT article of late which did not report new poll results but which instead explored some of the methodological issues that arise as a result of these polls. But this is not the sort of stuff that likely draws a lot of attention from most ordinary citizens, many of whose eyes glaze over when it comes to such discussions.
An admittedly imperfect analogy is to sportswriters who offer predictions on how teams will do, either for a season or for particular playoff games, say. I have at least seen some football prognosticators post their performance results for the previous week or for the season. But I’ve seen nothing like that when it comes to including the track record of pollsters in the course of reporting on a particular new poll result.
When you come right down to it, none of the stakeholders–the public, political campaigns, publicly-reported pollsters, or the media outlets that hire and report on their efforts–has a consistent, strong stake in accurate *publicly reported* polls during a political campaign. And at least one side in this campaign may well see poll results which very possibly are highly inaccurate as a key peg of its campaign strategy.
It’s remarkable–one might even say outrageous– when you think about it, think about the relative stakes for a society involved in these kinds of disclosures. And when you consider that it is not at all unusual these days to see a report on a new poll result be the lead story in a major newspaper or media broadcast.
I think, the correct way to screen for likely voters is :
1. Ask the screening questions, but do not pre-determine the weights.
2. Instead, using the demographic profile information, find the weights to be assigned to screening questions so that the selection from the polled sample matches the best-known demographic profile ( i.e., last election extrapolated with any well-determined trends).
3. Once the scores to be given to each answer to the screening questions is known, compute the poll results.
I appreciate the attempt to keep the focus on what the polls are actually showing, but what I found disturbing in the Gallup poll was not the 8 point margin in LVs (though USA Today in particular did play this margin up in their headline Monday) but the 3 point margin among RVs. Ok, the internals do favor Kerry, some of the other polls are showing Kerry in better standing, he’s running better in the swing states, if Zogby can be believed, and so forth. Still, what I’m seeing is the momentum that had been shifting in Kerry’s direction after the first debate has largely stopped, even among RVs, which, as I understand it, is the most optimistic scenario for Kerry, unless there is a systematic sampling bias that is excluding Kerry RVs from the poll.
jwb
However plausible Gallup may think its Likely Voter questions and formula might be apriori, the fact that it has demonstrably false implications such as the severe underrepresentation of minorities and young people would send any polling organization with aspirations to objectivity and science back to the drawing board.
I don’t know whether to attribute Gallup’s methodology to arrogance or partisanship. But science it is not. They should strive to rejoin the community of the reality-based.
Ruy,
I realize this isn’t your area (and I appreciate this), but what do you think might be the REASON for Gallup skewing their sampling this way? I have always held Gallup in esteem, but this kind of sampling can serve no HONEST end. Is this like a cooked set of books? Does the Public get one set (this one), and the Dark Lords get a more accurate set?
How can Gallup stay in business if their polling is skewed so as to achieve predetermined results, as these appear to be?
Superb analysis.
Although this addictive site is becoming almost a full-time read already, I wonder if Ruy or pressed staff could occasionally take apart the kind of “poll analysis” the BBC TV news aired last night (Tuesday) with a Republican pollster spinning like crazy?
(BBC seems to me to usually come full circle over a period of days; but last night’s segment could have been… a straight Gallup press release.)
Could it be that they are factoring in successful efforts at voter suppression activities?
Gallup’s numbers, then, would only be accurate if their sampling accurately represented the degrees to which minority and underaged voters were going to be disenfranchised this year. But please note that I would never suggest that there were any efforts being made at the grassroots to disenfranchise any particular group of voters.
I’ve been doing politics for a long time–and for as long as I can remember the adage ran that good weather favors high turnouts and high turnouts favor Democrats. All the fancy number crunchin’ Donkey Rising is doing is certainly welcomed news, but seems mostly to validate the folk wisdom that if a lot of people show up, the Democrats will win.
A news story I read today suggest that Washington state is expecting an 84% voter turn out. I suppose that rates as “a lot of people.”
Ruy:
May I say that you are likely to find ALL the polls, exceptong Zogby perhaps, to have similar flaws. It is my view that pollsters are having a very difficult time structuring representative samples – more so than ever. It is my view that there is a very serious question as to the validity of most polls and that these flaws may lead to the largest error rate in polling history.