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. Who is the intended audience for this article other than NR readers? If I call the people I’m trying to engage in an arguments basically Luddites, Anti-American and Socialists over some pretty ridiculous strawmen (Does he really want more AI to replace the working class? I don’t get it?) Yeah, Leftist publications won’t print this because its a lousy article.
What’s happening is that working-class Hispanic voters really are no different than working class or middle class voters of Irish, Italian, Jewish or Slavic backgrounds. All of these voters from the mid-to-late 60s began drifting away from the Democratic Party either to become Republicans or perhaps a better descriptions is conservative-influenced independents. This was obvious in ’76 when Jimmy Carter should have won Illinois and California and New Jersey (and perhaps some more states) but didn’t because working-class voters in these states, especially in small and mid-sized communities and even in some big cities voted for Ford.
I think there comes a point for a lot of these voters where traditional affiliations cease as they become more a part of the American mainstream and such voters based their votes on what goes on nationally on questions of the economy, war and peace or the pandemic nowadays. To use the Nevada example, I can imagine a lot of working class Hispanics being put off when the casinos closed due to COVID-19, they’re out of work and they haven’t fully recovered yet to where they were back in 2019. Now you’ve got inflation on top of that in 2022.
So if the worse that happens is groups are more dynamic in their voting than just one party or another that’s actually a good thing. Having a segregated “white party” or a party of people of color is not good for American politics and just makes the polarization even worse. And there’s really not much the parties can do about it other than accepting this reality and run on a good record of governance to earn their votes instead of always assuming you’ve got their vote always.
It’s also disingenuous for Texeira to suggest he is forced to write in publications like NR because he has the this very site to use as a platform whenever he wants.
Wonderful article! I like particularly your highlight on getting bogged down in identity politics, instead of focusing on economic growth for all. There is, though, one important mistake. When you say that “useful public investments” wouldn’t have led to “more productivity, higher growth.” Public investment by Democrats, not only in infrastructure, but also education and health care, have supported higher productivity and overall growth. I have the data and charts, if you are interested. The superior growth in incomes of the middle class and poor under Democrats, compared to Republicans, is particularly striking.
Do you know of Rachel Bitecofer’s work? It seems complementary to yours. See, for example her comparative “head to head” video on the economy here: https://www.strikepac.com
Teixeira wonders why he is having so much trouble in his campaign to reform the party, particularly when there are kernels of truth to what he says.
Part of the problem is his constant references and links to vomit-inducing right wing media. Now he is using his praise from such media to try to convince us. Sorry, not working for me.
2+2=4 even if Stalin says so. 2+2 does not equal 5 even if the Buddha says so. The validity and even the truth of an argument do not depend on where it’s published.
IMHO, part of the problem with the Democratic Party’s brand favorability is the unwillingness of many Democrats to engage with people who do not agree with them. We fall into these groupthink tunnels that make it difficult to see that many of the people we believe “should” agree with us actually do not. We compound the problem by our inability to actually speak to people in ways that stand a chance of getting a hearing.
Finally, the single most important skill in politics is the ability to count. 50%+1 is an important number.
If only this were a question of “engaging with people who disagree with you”. I am referring to media celebrities and owners, not the people next door who may disagree on a few points.
Most of the former is dedicated to manipulation and does not concern itself with fact checking (please don’t try a false equivalence argument). Beyond that, it tries to get people riled up emotionally and often is hostile to any type of compromise. Good luck with engaging that mind set – if steadfast conservatives like Liz Cheney can be cast out for not being pure enough that doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.
I think there is truth to the notion that left wing people operate in silos which is often counterproductive, but I am also a realist about who is approachable or not.
And 80% of the people commenting in Democratic leaning forums are rabid partisans driving the rest away or into silence.