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 agree that this is unacceptable, yet it is not surprising. The old Democratic establishment does not want to reform its party “from the grassroots down” because they would loose power. The people would be in control, not the McAuliffes.
More here: http://www.politicalthought.net
With his habit of hurling epithets like “Republican lite,” Howard Dean is the best prime example of somebody who (in Nick’s words) “is deeply invested in restarting the DLC/liberal food fights” and would therefore be part of what Nick calls “the rump establishment.”
Dean has done much at the grassroots level and has much to contribute to the party, but he is far too polarizing a figure to be a plausible candidate for DNC chair.
It’s not a left-right thing really … what does that mean anyway? There are probably some “right” things that I could get behind. From where I am, a blue area in what once was a blue state, the party needs to remember its real roots — the people. Those inside the Beltway haven’t a clue, and because of that all they manage to do is try to emulate Republicans. Well, I’m not a Republican. And if someone doesn’t take this party away, far away, from that, I’d say it’s time for a true third party. Read Adam Werbach’s Nov. 3rd Theses (http://www.3nov.com/images/Nov3Theses_letter.pdf) for an idea about that. And forget about any nudges to the center. The party has gone too far in that direction already. And you know what it says to voters when one party keeps trying to look like the other party? That the other party’s right. And it’s not.
To me it’s completely about wresting the party away from the corporate/beltway leadership and building a grassroots party. That’s why I think Dean, Ickes and Rosenberg are the only acceptable candidates.
But really, I don’t think that there is any question that it should be Dean.
Except for being prematurely right about Iraq and bold about his criticisms of the Bush administration, Dean is not particularly liberal. He was part of the DLC at one point. It was however, his strong criticisms of Bush that got the Dems back in the race.
In this last election most of the volunteers on the Kerry campaign started in the Dean campaign. When his candicacy tanked, Dean started DFA, the organization raised $5 million contributed to over 700 candidates up and down the ballot and made a difference in some long shot and pivotal races.
What did Leo Hindery do in ’04? What did Wellington Webb do?
Moving left or right could pull in some swing voters is the classic political theory. But it’s wrong, most people are just not ideological. More important to the vast majority of people is: Does this party or candidate really stand for something? And that’s what Bush succeeded on making the election about: And more people thought they knew where Bush was coming from.
What the Democrats failed to do is to position the central question as simply: Does this guy have any clue about what he’s doing?
Those are the simple things that most people vote about, not ideological tests. And focusing too much on ideological tests detracts from the clear message on other items.
So definitely the most important thing is to stand up for something. That to me is the core problem right now – can one point at anything which the Democrats have stood their ground on in the past 4 years?
First , Kerry did not lose…the election was stolen through frudulent manipulation of the electronic voting system.
That said, Howard Dean is the only possible person to lead the Democratic Party.
We do not need to move ANYMORE to the center. The Democratic Party is already Republican lite!!!
It has to be Howard Dean…there is no one else articulate, passionate or honest enough. All this pontificating is diplomatic and appeasing but too corporate!
I agree with Nick Confessore that this is more a battle between an entrenched establishment and reform forces, with both sides having their fair share of both liberals, moderates and even a few conservatives.
Where I disagree with Confessore’s opinion is his suggestion that it is the OUTSIDERS, the REFORMERS who want to make this a battle about ideology. That may have been true a few years back, but my experience in the Dean campaign has taught me that the #1 reason people got involved in that effort was because they were sick and tired of Democrats rolling over every time the Republicans or the establishment media barked.
It had nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with testicular fortitude.
On the other hand, we have people like Al From and Peter Beinert who continue to frame the debate as one about ideology, as if they are the great defenders of the Democratic big tent against the crowd of pitchfork wielding radical lefties.
I suspect this may have something to do with where both Confessore and I are coming from. He is closer to the insiders than I am, so he can’t see what is so painfully obvious to us out here in the “heartland”.
“Pretty much anyone who is deeply invested in restarting the DLC/liberal food fights is by definition part of this rump establishment, since the distinction of vision between Democratic centrists and liberals pale next to the differences between the Democratic average and the Bush-era conservatives.”
I disagree. There a fundamental differences between DLC and progressive Democrats over, for want of a better term, economic populism that goes to the core of the party’s beliefs. While I would not dispute the need to shake up the party’s beltway establishment, that pales in the face of resolving what the party stands for.
I also thought the TAP piece presented a caricature of progressive Democrats, then and now. Gee, I remember when TAP wasn’t trying to emulate TNR’s rush rightward. Now with such items as this Tapped piece and the presence of people like Matthew Yglesias, I’m beginning to wonder.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way. From where I was working (for the first time ever, in a very red Florida county) all of the leadership and most of the effort came from DFA and MoveOn. I am shocked and infuriated that Kerry lost, that the entire national slate was beaten so badly, with a few brilliant exceptions. When someone suggests Joe Lockhart for chair, I want to scream.
. Top-Down or Bottom-Up .
I think that in addition to the Liberal/Dino conflict and the Washington/Heartland struggles there is the Top/Bottom struggle.
In the past the parties have been lead by the people on top, but with the Dean/Trippi group there was the start of a leadership from the Bottom. Many of us in the Virtual community are starting to suggest that it is possible to have a party that interacts with us rather than just uses the WEB as a way to gather money and foot soldiers.
It may be that this time the struggle for the DLC leadership is between those who want a classical party structure and those who whould like to explore if the party can really be organized as a Bottom-Up representative group.
If the Bottom-up’ers are represented then perhals we can develop the tools, community, etc. so that we can really separate the CORE democratic/progressive/populist… issues from those that are desirable or wedge issues, and then ofcourse proceed to properly frame/communicate these to the people who also believe in them.
It is hard not to come across as a sychophant, great post Ruy, I wish this could be fed into an amplifying circut.
I can’t say I agree. Since we live in an age where just a slight nudge to the center on a few key issues (partial-birth abortion? terrorism? gay marriage?) could mean the difference between getting a Democrat elected–both as President and to Congress–those small policy differences between Democratic centrists and liberals become very much personified, though they pale materially in comparison to the average Democratic views the Bush-era conservatives. Love the site and the book. thanks.