Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution participated in an online chat on The Washington Post website yesterday, where he answered questions about Tuesday’s election results–many of them on the minds, I would imagine, of those who visit this site. All Mann’s answers are lucid and perceptive; I strongly recommend you checkout the transcript of his chat as an aid to your reflections on the election.
Thanks for signing up!
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
tds-wwc-roundtable
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
-
December 18: Democratic Strategies for Coping With a Newly Trumpified Washington
After looking at various Democratic utterances about dealing with Trump 2.0, I wrote up a brief typology for New York:
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.
If you can’t beat ’em, (partially) join ’em
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.
Join ’em (very selectively) to beat ’em
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.
Aim at the dead center
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.
Cut a few deals to mitigate the damage
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.”
Hang tough and aim for a Democratic comeback
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 agree with Cugel: payroll tax reform is an idea that is long overdue. Dems should play it up big!
Ruy,
Maybe by losing the election we really won. Given Mann’s dead-on assessment, could anyone come outta this smelling good?
Q: What do you see as Bush’s biggest challenge over the next four years?
Mann: Coping with the consequences of his first term: staggering budget deficits, federal revenues at their lowest level as a share of the economy in a half century, intense spending pressure for defense and homeland security, a mess in Iraq with no happy ending in sight, and serious security threats across the globe, from North Korea to Iran, from loose WMDs to terrorist organizations with little sympathy or affection from the rest of the world.
I think Mann’s parallel with the 1920’s was pretty accurate. I myself have been struck by the parallels between Al Smith and Kerry: Northeastern moderate Catholic attacked for religious reasons. Moderate position on social issues (prohibition or gays/abortion) characterized as totally off the board. And the ’28 election was followed by the Roosevelt and the New Deal. Unfortunately it took the stock market crash and the depression to make it happen. The sad part isn’t that the Repubs will fall flat; it’s that there will be a whole lot of suffering before that happens.
Everyone should read this article from the New Democrat (the DLC blog):
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=253002
They point out all the advantages Democrats had this time and
This summarizes their conclusions:
“The second obvious problem for Democrats was a “reform gap.” Having lost control of every nook and cranny of the federal government during the last two elections, Democrats were perfectly positioned to run as bold, outsider, insurgent reformers determined to change Washington, and the public was ready to embrace such a message and agenda. While Democrats did made a strong negative case against Bush, we never conveyed a positive agenda for reform. Indeed, Democrats often reinforced the idea that the GOP was the “reform” party by trying to scare voters about every bad or deceptive Republican idea for changing government programs, instead of offering our own alternatives for reform. In the end, we relied on mobilizing voters who were hostile to Bush instead of persuading voters who were ambivalent about both parties, and about government. Since Republicans did have a simple, understandable message, it was an uneven contest: message plus mobilization will beat mobilization alone every time.”
. . . .
“There will be a powerful temptation for Democrats to simply go to the mattresses, fight Republicans tooth and nail, and hope for a big midterm sweep in 2006. That would be a mistake, just as it was a mistake to believe that Bush’s weakness would be enough to produce a victory in 2004. It’s time for Democrats to clearly stand for values, principles, and ideas that will earn us the opportunity to become the majority party of the future.”
This argument is right on the money! The one thing Kerry and the Democrats failed to do is to make a serious reform agenda the centerpiece of their campaigns. We desparately need to coalesce on a central reform strategy and beat it like an army mule come rain or shine — just as Newt Gingrich did starting in 1992. Remember the Contract on America?
We need something similar that all Democrats can rally behind and really push. One thing that we never seem to talk about is PAYROLL TAX reform. When was the last time you heard either party talk about how much $ are taken from your weekly paycheck in the form of payroll taxes? We need to oppose Bush’s idea of ending all taxation on unearned income with our own tax proposals that will help workers, not millionares — payroll tax relief. This issue divides the Republicans from their base. Let them explain how they’re for every form of tax cuts, except payroll taxes. We need to be explicit about this and hammer away despite all the ranting and lies about it from conservatives. Ordinary people would be with us on this.
But it can’t be point 32 of a 62 point plan. We would have to hit it hard and repeat it endlessly to force a national debate on this issue.
i think that if any one person in america is responsible for the election defeat, it is the mayor of san francisco. the gay marriage issue was handed on a silver platter to the right wing religious zealots and rove. and when you give rove something to work with he always makes the best of it. the issue brought out millions of right wingers who may not have come out. if the issue would have been put on the back burner untill after the election, kerry would have had four years to figure out how to deal with it.