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.
Ed,
thanks for the response. It appears you posted while I was composing. I appreciate the clarification. It looks like we are more in agreement than I thought.
Tom.
Joe, I take your point and I probably missed that nuance in my pique. Thanks for highlighting that.
What irritated me initially is the implication by Reid et al that we out here in the real world need to just shut up and that our attempts to speak out against these kinds of unprincipled power plays by the Blue Dogs is somehow “unfair.” It isn’t unfair at all, nor is it premature. I have every right, as a lifelong contributing Democrat, to criticize members of my political party when I think they deserve it. And I think the Bayhs and the Liebermans deserve criticism when they team up with Republicans to start wars and to scuttle bankruptcy reform and to throw monkey wrenches in budget legislation to save this economy and to advance the Democratic agenda for which they were elected.
Kilgore doesn’t have to use such loaded, inflammatory mischaracterizations to make his point, i.e. “those who want to lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-‘traitor’ camp”. His dismissive tone, it seems to me, is a deliberate attempt to marginalize the views of progressives and centrists. By tossing out these loaded terms the points that you suggested he was making get lost in ever more heat and ever less light.
Thanks for all the comments. I guess I’m a bit taken aback by the idea that I’ve willfully offended any progressives. Joe Corso’s right: the whole point of my post was the Bayh crossed a critical line on a huge vote, and needs to stop putting himself forward as representative of “centrists” or much of anybody else in the Democratic Party.
As for the “S word,” “sincere”: hell, I can’t see into the man’s soul, but neither can anybody else; I find it easier to think he’s drunk his own anti-deficit kool-aid than to think he’s made some shrewd, cynical political calculation. As these comments and many others suggest, he’s terribly damaged his own standing in the Democratic Party, and no, I don’t really buy the idea that he’ll get more attention now than he would have gotten as leader of a 16-member Democratic group in the Senate, so long as he voted for the budget resolution.
So if Evan Bayh was as conniving as so many folks clearly think he is, then he’s a really poor conniver.
On one small note: to those who think Bayh’s vote for the higher exclusion and lower rate on estate taxes proves he doesn’t care about deficits, I would point out that this was the default position of virtually all Democrats until the total repeal enacted in 2001 sunsetted (at least those who didn’t support total repeal, and there were a disturbing number of those, BTW). So maybe Bayh is just trying to be consistent on this one thing. It certainly doesn’t make his opposition to the budget resolution look very brave or noble, does it?
In any event, what’s more interesting than how I or anyone else construes Bayh’s motives is the main question I tried to raise in the post: will anyone follow him now? I doubt it.
I think we’re having a problem with the word “sincere” here. the word has positive connotations that seem quite inappropriate in this context.
Does this help — a craven,amoral, money-sucking hyena can be a sincerely craven, money-sucking hyena.
correction – in the second paragraph I meant to say that Bayh was clearly in the “first” category, not the “second”
Tom:
It seems to me that Ed is making a distinction between two notions of “centrism” – as he says “between “centrists” who do want to stand aside from the Democratic Party and cut deals, and those who don’t.”
He is characterizing Bayh’s behavior as clearly in the second category and calling on him to resign in favor of in favor of “senators whose agreement with and loyalty to the Obama agenda is much less in question” if they want to be “anything other than a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors.”
As a labor-progressive Democrat myself, I don’t see any of this as insulting a progressive perspective. There are some moderate Democrats I disagree with on issues but very much want in the Democratic Party. Then there are guys we’d be better off without. I think Ed’s trying to make that distinction and not trying to put down progressives.
Here’s a little item Ed, that maybe you can address with respect to “sincere” Evan Bayh:
Thanks to the efforts of Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and others, a bill allowing bankruptcy judges to cram-down mortgage payments for troubled homeowners hasn’t seen the light of day since it passed the House in early March. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is actually thinking of pulling the cram-down provision from the legislation, since it has met such fierce resistance, fueled by a misinformation campaign based on Mortgage Bankers Association talking points.
This is the kind of stuff, anti-constituent and anti- big D Democratic, that people find objectionable. Please explain to me, during these very, very tough times, that Bayh would play this kind of game. What “sincere”, “principled” objections does he have to amending the draconian bankruptcy bill, which he supported? I’ll look forward to your explanation, because I cannot understand it.
Source:
Wonk Room » Mortgage Modifications Hitting Roadblocks, As Cram-Down Bill Languishes In Senate
That’s quite a stretch, Ed. If Bayh is such a sincere “deficit hawk” then please explain his support of reducing the so-called death tax.
I agree with the gentleman above. You are completely misreading the objections to Bayh from progressives and others. It isn’t a “loyalty test” at all, and it isn’t a matter of being a “traitor.” The man is without discernible principles. The man is anti-constituent.
Bayh’s vote on the budget will provide abundant ammunition to those who want to lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-“traitor” camp
You know, Ed, I hope that at some point we can have a discussion without you insider strategists going out of your way to insult us with your glib, willingly obtuse “misunderstanding” of online progressives and centrists and what we are trying to do. I guess you gain some cred with your more right-of-center media buddies when you piss off “the libruls” but at some point that isn’t going to work any more.
Will you try to meet us halfway for a more constructive discussion? That would entail you actually listening and trying to understand what the objections to Bayh’s position is.
Nothing is more irritating to this old-time labor Democrat than for my perfectly reasonable positions to be constantly mischaracterized. It isn’t getting us anywhere that we want to be when you keep doing that.
lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-“traitor” camp even though 14 members of the “Bayh group” voted with the rest of the Democratic Caucus
Ed, I think you’re misreading the left blogosphere’s perspective. It is precisely this kind of random, ride-the-fence vacillation, untethered to any identifiable principle or fiscal rationale, that raises hackles.
This, however, sums said perspective up perfectly:
a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors
Add “and get their mugs on television” and you’ve got a post fit for the Great Orange Satan.