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.
Damn, an intelligent article followed by three intelligent comments in a row. No wonder Democrats can’t govern for long — they think. If the GOP has shown us anything, it’s that thinking politicians don’t last long.
I think you are conflating two issues here – bipartisanship and accomodation of special interests.
there are indeed serious and legitimate questions about the extent of the compromises Obama has made with drug companies and financial firms and the Blue Dogs. Many progressives disagree wiht Obama on these decisions and I can’t remember Ed belittling their issues and concerns, although he sometimes indicates that he personally supports Obama’s choices.
But what Ed is talking about here is the media’s criticism of Obama’s strategy in relation to Republicans, which is a logically and politically distinct question. Your criticisms of Obama’s compromises are important, but do not directly related to what Ed is actually saying here.
And by the way, continually using canned pejorative terms such as “the chattering classes” or “the commentariat,” however emotionally satisfying, is neither honorable nor cogent. Instead of resorting to ad hominem, it would probably count as “mature and civil” simply to address arguments on the merits.
Can’t say I see the logic here. It seems to me there’s a very legitimate question as to whether Obama could and should have pushed the whole discussion to the left by aggressively calling out the Blue Dogs and the health industry from the start in a big national campaign. Look at how much Baucus and Ross take from Big Health. Then look at who Rahm yells at. Baucus and Ross, who are flouting their party’s stated platform? Nah. Instead, he yells at MoveOn for calling out the Blue Dogs.
The deals he has cut and defended on behalf of Goldman Sachs and friends don’t even look bipartisan, they just look corrupt. Likewise agreeing with PhRMA to ban drug price negotiations. How is that good policy for anyone other than PhRMA and the pols taking their bribes?
It’s only bipartisan in the sense that it has long been a GOP tactic to take bribes from the rich and big industry. Do you really believe these are the GOP’s “best ideas”?
In that sense, you seem to be saying that because Obama is _sincere_ in using GOP tactics to hurt the poor and the middle class, he’s the winner. Why would we want such a person to win in the first place?
The reason it’s unpopular (with the moderate, common-sense, pragmatic left) for Obama to do rightwing things is not because the right won’t join him. It’s because it’s rightwing. It’s because people who believe in fighting for the disenfranchised don’t generally like a President they just got elected on that basis to turn around and sell out the disenfranchised in favor of corrupt windfalls for the executive class and big industry.
You seem endlessly to avoid addressing the substance of this complaint.
Long after nonviolent protests had won major victories against segregation in the early 60’s a wide spectrum of critics continued to ridicule the strategy as obviously impractical. “the KKK isn’t nonviolent,” they said, “you can’t just let people walk all over you.” Many in the media equally dismissed the strategy as hopelessly naive and goody-goody. It was certainly well-intentioned, but sturdy realists like them knew it would never really work.
Fast forward to 2009. At each key step Obama takes the commentariat gravely explains that bipartisanship can’t possibly work because the Republicans won’t play along. Obama’s repeated invocation of the idea intellectually offends them becasue each time it is so rudely rebuffed (“no Republican votes for the stimulus”, “Wilson sneers ‘liar'” etc.)
Meanwhile, Obama’s agenda continues to gradually move forward and opinion polls show the public continues to recognize and approve of his efforts at outreach – and dislike the failure of Republicans to respond.
Of course, being the commentariat, the critics will always end up being right. When a health care reform package finally passes they will sagely explain that it was in spite of Obama’s efforts at bipartisanship, rather then because of them. That has to be the case because, as everyone knows, this bipartisanship thing obviously doesn’t work.