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.
No Republican has ever lost Ohio and won the Presidency likely for two very good reasons I can think of:
1. Ohio is worth 20 EV making it one of the biggest swing states. You really can’t write off 20 EVs and have a lot of chance at the whole thing.
2. Ohio is a slightly right to the middle of the road state and any Republican not carrying it will also likley be loosing many other states.
NO causal relationship with the Ohio thing. It’s just a battleground state. 3 seperate influences, Farm Belt, Industrial Midwest, and appalachia. It is true that no Republican has won without carrying Ohio. But that just means Ohio is illustrative of trends in battleground states and not a causal agent.
As other states gain population and Ohio loses it, this relationship may break down.
As far as the 4 big states, 2 are blue (Michigan, Pennsylvania) The other two are up in the air (Ohio, FL) I’d like to see Kerry take em both early so I can go to bed.
Based on your comments I have told everyone I know that Kerry will win. I just hope it’s not hopeful spin.
There is a very real possibility that Bush will lose the EV and win the popular.
Oh, the Gods are nothing if not amused.
cheers.
If Kerry carries three out of four of those battleground states or more, then even if he loses WI, he seems to be leading in Iowa, he would win. Is it true that Kerry might carry Arkansas? That seems unlikely.
On the Osama tape, which could determine the outcome of the election, it is curious how the right has had NO problem proclaiming without condemnation in the media and insinuating in the campaign that Osama favors Kerry. Krauthammer (in the Washington Post a few weeks ago) and now Safire (in the NY Times) and lately — with a flap from the Kerry camp — FOX have insisted WITHOUT EVIDENCE that this is so. But now there is evidence of the opposite but liberals are squeemish or dutifully cowed. (Kerry, unlike on flipflop, where both he and the mainstream media, including liberals, were all but silent for 5 months, only raising the issue AFTER the Republican Convention, obviously can’t speak to this issue. On flipflop, Jonathan Chait devastated the spin, then went on to explain away press silence (none dare say ‘justifying the lying’) on the issue.
Here’s a letter on the Osama tape that I sent to the NY Times. Like my last 50 letters, they surely won’t print this one either. But progressives really should have forced the mainstream media to confront this issue:
To the editor:
William Safire’s “Osama Casts His Vote” (op-ed, Nov 1) is remarkable for brazenly levelling the potent standard Republican charge that Al Qaeda released the tape to help Kerry, but then diverts attention to other subjects without making any substantive argument to back his point. Using a semantic method of argument, that bin Laden is “echoing” the Kerry campaign in suggesting that Bush is deceptive is itself a transparent sleight of hand — as if bin Laden could not possibly have gotten that bizarre notion anywhere else. But then, to top off the argument, he claims, as do all Republican and many Democratic pundits, that the tape helps Bush substantially.
So bin Laden releases a tape certain to help Bush in order to help Kerry? The more powerful argument, meekly given short shrift in passing by Maureen Dowd in “Will Osama Help W.?” (op-ed Oct 31), that “some intelligence experts suggest” that Osama prefers Bush for the latter’s foolish belligerence, fits the facts of the situation. Dowd also understates the case: Bush has failed to pursue Al Qaeda full force since the Afghanistan War, while also handing jihadism “Christmas” in the form of the Iraq war. Why wouldn’t and doesn’t bin Laden prefer Bush, a preference consistent with his actions?
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I know that this is an uncomfortable issue, but the playing field has been one-sided, and, as in flipflop, this could decide the election. Even if Kerry, in spite of all this and the distortions of the Matt Bai Oct 10 article that became the theme for the last three weeks of the Republican campaign, manages to win, in a truly level playing field, the Dems should have been able to take the White House and the Senate, and put the Repubs in danger of losing the House. But as things have gone, a reverse of 1994 just goes against the grain of the machine agenda.
You note that “no Republican has ever won a presidential election without carrying Ohio.” Indeed, I have heard this factoid repeatedly in various media reports over the past few weeks. In most reports, there is an implied causal relationship between Repubs winning Ohio and winning the White House–a causal relationship I find questionable at best. (Why Ohio–i.e., what is the special relationship between Ohio and Repubs? I also note that I have heard no report concerning the relationship between Ohio–or any other state–and Dems winning the White House.)
Anyway, just wondering if you can shed some light on whether there is in your mind any such causal relationship, or whether this is more a curiosity than anything else.
Thanks for the insightful blog.
I share your analysis, but you are clearly following assuptions that undecideds do not swing to the incumbent. Are your sure, given the emphasis on terrorism/security that seems to trump the Iraq war and economic/health care issues.
It looks like the polls are still over sampling republicans in the national tallies. The state polls seem to be more accurate. What about the Democracy Corp poll…any news yet. Also, the Repubs are still trying to go to the appellate court for the State of Ohio to appeal the decision by the lower court. Is there any news? Thanks for these wonderful and insightful updates on the Polls.