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.
There’s no way in hell Obama’s going to pick Nunn for VP. There’s no reason to say why; anyone with half a brain knows why and it doesn’t need to be explained. Nunn’s just another old man in a country that’s had enough of old men.
Well, Steve Kornacki at the New York Observer offers one explanation — Nunn is Sistah Souljah:
“That Mr. Nunn is from a Southern state doesn’t hurt, and that some on the left have begun carping about his conservative record on social issues like gay rights is actually a political plus, too – a chance for Mr. Obama to reach out to center-right swing voters who roll their eyes at the liberal interest-group establishment.”
http://www.observer.com/2008/obama-and-cheney-option
Yeah, all of those soldiers who got early discharges for being part of the “liberal interest-group establishment” (for which read: queer) WILL just carp carp carp. They didn’t just start doing it, though. Where’s Karnacki been since the mid 1990’s? Apparently the choice of Nunn will reassure anybody troubled by the fear that Obama might have actually meant it about gays and lesbians being citizens too.
I actually agree with Karnacki on that point. It’s just what I’ve said before — if Obama picks Nunn, I won’t believe him on gay issues either. I’m already a skeptic.
“Lieberman’s position on military ballots in FL was dictated to him by the Gore campaign. It was only a “surprise” to those hard-line lawyers who were out of the Gore political loop. Moreover, Gore probably wouldn’t have even been in the position to win FL without Lieberman’s presence on the ticket (look at the 2000-2004 numbers in South Florida).”
I suppose I could have intuited the latter, but I’m happy to know the former. Lieberman’s statement at the time infuriated me. I honor our servicemen, but I don’t happen to think that the vote of a peacetime soldier in Germany is more important than that of a WWII veteran in Florida — and the latter were expected to follow the rules, sign their absentee ballots, and get them postmarked before Election Day.
Ducdebrabant:
I don’t think there’s any real chance of Nunn going on the ticket unless he offers something like the “repentence” you are suggesting.
Have to quibble with one of your analogies, though: Lieberman’s position on military ballots in FL was dictated to him by the Gore campaign. It was only a “surprise” to those hard-line lawyers who were out of the Gore political loop. Moreover, Gore probably wouldn’t have even been in the position to win FL without Lieberman’s presence on the ticket (look at the 2000-2004 numbers in South Florida).
Look, I hold zero brief for Lieberman these days; I seem to be “to the left” of a lot of Democrats who think he should be stripped of his committee assignment if he keeps attacking Obama; I think the mere act of endorsing McCain is enough grounds for booting him out of the Caucus as soon as is practicable.
But that doesn’t mean we have to accept a lot of revisionist history about Lieberman’s responsibility for Bush. If anything, Gore lost FL when he failed to push for a statewide recount from the get-go, as a lot of us felt at the time.
Thanks for the comments.
Ed Kilgore
It’s been pointed out to me on another site that a repentant Sam Nunn would be a very dramatic development and a real boost to gay people. So it would. The repentance is missing, though. He makes no apologies, offers no regrets, makes no promises, refuses to state a present position, and then he does something really surprising. He has the gall to claim credit for the fact that gay men and women, thanks to DADT, no longer have to lie on enlistment forms as they did pre-DADT. Thanks to DADT, perhaps, but very little thanks to Sam Nunn, who wanted to keep things exactly as they were. Neither DADT nor anything resembling it was his original position. If he’d had his way completely, they’d still be lying on enlistment forms and, I suppose, still be getting dishonorable discharges. You know, instead of just discharges. He’s a long way from admitting he was wrong, and that is a bottom line prerequisite in my view.
Sam Nunn could be a mistake if the Obama campaign is serious about winning Colorado, New Mexico or possibly Nevada. 2004 exit polls in Colorado indicated that 4% of voters were gay/lesbian. Many gay men (less so lesbians) hold a surprising positive view of McCain, particularly in these Western states. Placing someone like Nunn with such a distinguished pedigree of heterosexism/homophobia could prove a mistake. Why risk Colorado, New Mexico or Nevada (all will be very close) on the off chance you might pull in Georgia. At the very least, Nunn will need to do some explaining to these voters as to why he now thinks “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be revisited, and what are his current views.
More importantly, elevating a conservative, Southern white male into the future leadership of the Democratic Party is a mistake for 2016 and beyond. The Democrats need to look West, Northwest, and Southwest as they consider their future, not to the remnants of the old Democratic base in Dixie.
Perhaps Bowers is easier to differ with than Jonathan Capehart, whose article “Don’t Ask Nunn” was in the Washington Post last Wednesday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061002527.html
It may have been just a matter of time, but not quite as much time as it took Bowers. The comparison of Nunn to Lieberman may fail in one way, but unless Nunn enthusiastically embraces Obama’s program, I’d be very much worried about his independence turning into obstruction. He turned on a President of his own party already, when he was in the Senate, and what is the Vice President but President of the Senate? Another surprise like Lieberman’s jumping to the Republican position on putative military ballots in Florida without signatures or dates is not something I would care to see.
Nunn of course deserves credit for his work on non-proliferation.