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.
lgherb it has certainly been infuriating to listen and watch what has been going on. George Lakoff helped with his concept of reframing and avoiding words the GOP had managed to redefine. His perception of what drives the conservatives was helpful also. I personally think Drew Westin did an even better job in Political Brain.
With the Internet becoming a more frequent source of news and information to many Americans, we will hopefully reach more who are looking for answers that make sense in the reality of the huge problems the GOP has brought down upon our house.
Given the smaller numbers identifying as GOP, we do not have so much of a house divided against itself. We do have a lot of respectful, considerate and helpful conversations we could begin and maintain.
I like these comments very much.
“…the logical conclusion drawn is that those who actively denigrate these words and concepts advocate the antonyms of them. Social, religious, economic, and intellectual freedom became abhorred on an almost social subconscious level.”
“…the GOP will have been silently working to build a neo-aristocracy characterized by very distinct ruling and working classes; limited social mobility, tight integration of church and state, and strict limits of personal freedom.”
Perhaps just as important is not letting the opportunity the GOP has given us – creating a significant distrust of their party in American voters – by making them distrust us as well.
The proposed campaign by the GOP to re-brand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party” returns me to my ongoing bewilderment of how United States citizens allowed the word “liberal” to be demonized by this same collection of elitists. Starting with the so-called “Reagan Revoltion” and continuing through today, the conservative movement has flashed into the consciousness of the voting public the equation of the word “liberal” with the concept of “extremely undesirable” or downright “un-American”.
This mantra became generally accepted by roughly 1/2 of the voting public for nearly three decades without ever being fundamentally analyzed. How often over the last 25 years during the ongoing tug-of-war for the consciousness of voters did anyone actually define the word “liberal”?
Once one researches the definitions and etymology of the word “liberal” and the related words and concepts of “liberty” and “liberalism”, the logical conclusion drawn is that those who actively denigrate these words and concepts advocate the antonyms of them. Social, religious, economic, and intellectual freedom became abhorred on an almost social subconscious level.
This propaganda fueled the engine of conservative sound bites for years until this golden fuel rod became spent, necessitating this new branding effort. In scripting a new propaganda campaign, the strategy remains the same: define the competition based on the worst fears of the at-large psyche while never actively and distinctly defining that which they truly advocate.
How long will it take with this new campaign for the public to come to the revelation that in framing the Democratic Party as the equivalent of communists/socialists/nazis that the GOP will have been silently working to build a neo-aristocracy characterized by very distinct ruling and working classes; limited social mobility, tight integration of church and state, and strict limits of personal freedom.
Errors and omissions.
IRV is Instant Recount Voting.
Just occurred to me that in cases like the Franken-Coleman race, if the number of contested ballots could not give either candidate the percent needed to win, the IRV could be done and possibly save the need for the accuracy recount.
Sports analogy for IRV versus one candidate only voting.
It is more like winning the World Series than the Superbowl.
Time to start gathering statements from the Socialist Party, socialist leaders and scholars to explain why we are NOT socialist in the sense they are accusing. Interestingly, the political socialism in Europe, as opposed to communism, is described as democratic socialism. We know the GOP misspelling is not ignorance.
I find it very amusing that Bopp thinks the Obama administration can accomplish all of those items “in a few short years”. Granted it is easier and faster to destroy than to build. We have just had a hopefully unforgettable lesson in this from the Bush administration.
The grown ups in this country know it is a mess and cleaning it up is not going to be easy or quick. The GOP is determined to make a nuisance of themselves and obstinately refuse to make some intelligent changes in the party. The longer they do that the harder it will be to recover.
I am becoming convinced this is the right time for it to fade away. Either America and the world choose to decrease consumerism, and increase humanism, while taking out the power groups that have foisted financial control on us to grow the elite class; or we will continue down the slippery slope of failed civilizations and extinction. (See Jared Diamond “Collapse” and John Kerry “The New War”.)
There is a strong belief that we need a 2 party system in this country. I agree that we should not have, for all practical discussion, a single party system. What I would like to see is a system that encourages the growth and development of new parties, so that the power is spread more instead of becoming too concentrated in the leaders of a specific party; while changes in demographics, culture and social issues change voters priorities at a faster rate. Any group that has been functioning long enough is likely to become mired in it’s traditions and obstinate devotion to out dated philosophies.
Instant recall voting (IRV) would promote this as well as severely cutting down the Florida, Ohio and Minnesota debacles. In being allowed to vote for candidates in order of preference, the computer program can be written to start recounting if no candidate has a large enough percent of the vote (determined by the governing body that declares the winner) to win. In the races where there are 3 strong candidates, 2 of the candidates will represent the thinking of a majority of the voters. One is a strong party, the other an emerging party. The third party is a strong party that is losing touch with the voters. The new party has grown to represent the growing numbers of voters whose beliefs are consistent with the paths that society has started to pursue.
As elections are run and votes are reported, emerging party candidates will have a better chance to find out how much real support they have. Members of the Democratic party might very well prefer to vote for Greens – except for the horror of the Republican winning a three way. When many voters switch to a new party, other voters will start paying more attention to those candidates, increasing their strength until it reaches a critical mass. Putting the obsolete [GOP] party in the minority, letting the remaining majority party and the new one begin the philosophical competition for votes based on ideology, policy, etc.
Over time our Broken Branch of Congress will function much better as will the better Executive and then Judicial branches.
Better Government for All.