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.
Being that Bush has been re-elected (legally/officially) or
not, what differance does all this really prove or mean.
Like it or not, unless on 1/6 the Congress (Representitives &
at least 1 senitor) contest the election and somehow
the contest stands and Congress selects the P & VP.
(Kerry & Edwards ? unlikely under a Republican Congress,
wishfull thinking anyway).
We are now stuck with Bush for 4 more years. I’m not
sure about wanting him impeached either. Cheny would
then become P.
I’m just thinking that Bush is the lesser of two eveils, for
whatever better feeling that gives.
Is there a future in trading off intensiity of support for the war against breadth of support for the war, given a climate in which only 60% of the potential electorate, maximum, votes, and less than that in the next, mid-term cycle?
The 51% solution has worked so far, why would the Republicans not stick to it? As long as they get to determine by fair means — propaganda — or foul — Diebiold — 51% of *what*, it’s good enough to win.
I think Ruy understates it when he says Bush is “not out of the woods on Iraq yet.” Iraq is already a fait accompli disaster–it can only get worse and more humiliating. The election will inevitably result in a Shiite-dominated government that will most likely demand an accelerated, if not immediate, US troop withdrawal. Then all the sacrifice will have been to replace Saddam with a pro-Iranian Shiite Sharia-based government that will hand over oil redevelopment contracts to Russia, France, and Germany.
And I have to take issue with Larry when he says “God help us if we convince ourselves that in order to gain support from those currently on the other side we have to be more like the other side.”
I’m not sure what he means by being “more like the other side.” I don’t expect Democrats to initiate political strategies with an Orwellian super-state as the ultimate goal. But, the fact is that the goal is to win elections.
If Karl Rove had a revelation and became a Democrat overnight, would we not rejoice that the most cunning political strategist of the age was now on our side? Face it…he’s the Mariano Rivera of politics! And the Democrats lost not because the Republicans are such fascists, but because they are better at presenting their crap as ice cream. The Democratic campaign suffered an utter failure of marketing. We all know the list of mistakes. …
But high on the list of Democratic mistakes was to think that issues matter above all else. I’m not sure Rove is as tanked up about this war as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. But he accepted it as the baggage he had to take into the campaign. He dealt with his handicaps very, very well.
Let’s remember next time that the goal is to take office, not to run a “campaign we can be proud of” as the losers always say. A winning campaign is one to be proud of.
Jeez, Larry, the election was for only a four-year term. If your apocalyptic scenario is right, then Dems will certainly be returned to power in our lifetimes–quite possibly in four years. Hopefully it won’t be, but we certainly can regain power anyway.
And if you look at the polls you’ll see not only Bush’s ratings slipping to or below pre-election levels, but you’ll see Democrats registering as equal or better than the GOP in terms of public image and party identification. That’s not what I call a “reviled” minority.
I discovered your site today and have bookmarked it so I can read it regularly. I applaud your enthusiasm and your optimism about somehow being able to return the Democrats to the majority. But I think you need to get ready for a lifetime of being the loyal opposition, a reviled minority that can only succeed by cutting deals with the governing party, or by parliamentary strategies to block the worst of what the government would like to do.
The Bush administration no longer cares about their approval ratings, and rightly so: They don’t need another electoral win. They are now free to pursue their global domination and personal wealth accumulation goals without concern for public opinion. We should not be gloating that their poll numbers are slipping. We should be trying to obstruct them when we feel that they are wrong – on preemptive war, civil rights, social security, the death penalty and so on.
It has taken at least a generation for the GOP to get control of the debate, but they have worked at it relentlessly behind the scenes since the 1970’s and they now are in charge of the most powerful election-winning themes: religion, bigotry, greed and blind patriotism. It will take until these people are dead before the left can hope to explain itself in ways that the general public can embrace, and God help us if we convince ourselves that in order to gain support from those currently on the other side we have to be more like the other side.
I have to wonder when torture becomes a war crime and when do war crimes become high crimes and misdemeanors under the impeachment provisions opf the constitution.
Will the media start talking about impeachment being a correct response for enabling torture.
jim