This has been quite the chaotic week or so, and one of the byproducts of the nihilistic conduct being displayed by Donald Trump and his allies has been a decided end of Democratic cooperation, and I welcomed that development at New York:
Following the time-honored ritual of giving a new president a “honeymoon,” a good number of prominent Democrats made friendly noises about their nemesis after Donald Trump’s November election victory. Some, like Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, seemed inclined to cross the partisan barricades whenever possible, praising Trump’s dubious Cabinet nominations, calling on Joe Biden to pardon Trump to get rid of his hush-money conviction, and even joining Truth Social. Others, notably Bernie Sanders, talked of selective cooperation on issues where MAGA Republicans at least feigned anti-corporate “populism.” Still others, including some Democratic governors, hoped to cut deals on issues like immigration to mitigate the damage of Trump’s agenda. And one congressional Democrat, the normally very progressive Ro Khanna, promoted cooperation with Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, at least with respect to Defense spending.
This made some sense at the time. After all, Democrats, having lost control of both Congress and the White House, didn’t have much power of their own, and there was always the chance that having achieved his improbable comeback, Trump would calm down and try to become a normal chief executive in his final term in the job.
Now it is extremely clear that is not the case. The past chaotic week or so has convinced most Democrats that Trump has zero interest in compromise, bipartisanship, or even adherence to the law and to the Constitution. Musk and his Geek Kiddie Corps are ravaging agency after agency without the slightest legal authorization; OMB is preparing its own unilateral assault on federal benefits that don’t fit the Project 2025 vision of a radically smaller social safety net; and congressional Republicans are kneeling in abject surrender to whatever the White House wants. Democrats are resigning themselves to the mission of becoming an opposition party, full stop, making as much noise and arousing as much public outrage as they can. They shouldn’t be credited all that much for courage, since the new regime has given them little choice but to dig in and fight like hell.
OMB’s January 27 memo freezing a vast swath of federal programs and benefits, inept and confusing as it was, kicked off the current reign of terror. It reflected (and was likely dictated by) the belief of Trump OMB director nominee Russell Vought that the president can usurp congressional spending powers whenever he deems it necessary or prudent. Yet Congressional Republicans went along without a whimper. House Appropriations Committee chairman Tom Cole, who would have gone nuts had a Democratic president threatened his role so audaciously, said he had “no problem” with the freeze. The federal courts stepped in because OMB’s order was incoherently expressed, but there’s no question the administration will come back with something similar. As a sign of belated alarm over OMB’s direction, Senate Budget Committee Democrats boycotted Vought’s confirmation vote in reaction to this challenge to the constitutional separation of powers. After Republicans gaveled him on through without a whisper of dissent, Senate Democrats held an all-night “talk-a-thon” to recapitulate past and present concerns about Vought, a self-described Christian Nationalist and one of the principal authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a radically diminished federal government. He will be confirmed by the full Senate anyway.
Musk’s guerrilla warfare on the federal workforce and the programs they administer made the OMB power grab unfolding at about the same time look like a walk in the park. Even as his landing teams of 20-something coders took control of multiple agency IT systems and fired anyone who got in their way, Musk himself was on X making wild charges about the programs he was short-circuiting and all but cackling like a cartoon villain over his unlimited power. When Ro Khanna upbraided him for his lawlessness, he responded as you might expect, tweeting at Khanna: “Don’t be a dick.”
Khanna’s centrist Democratic colleague from Florida, Jared Moskovitz, had actually signed up for service on the DOGE oversight panel Mike Johnson created, despite its clear purpose as an ongoing pep rally for Musk. Now he’s out, as Punchbowl News reports:
“I need to see one of my Republican colleagues in the caucus explain the point of the caucus, because it seems that Elon doesn’t need them, because it seems what Elon is doing is destroying the separation of powers. And I don’t think the DOGE caucus at this moment really has a purpose … Whether I stay in the caucus, I think is questionable. I don’t need to stay in a caucus that’s irrelevant.”
Meanwhile, as all this madness was unfolding from the executive branch and its outlaw agents, congressional Republicans have been laboring through the process of putting together budget legislation to implement whatever portion of Trump’s agenda that wasn’t rammed through by fiat. Democrats are not being consulted at all in these preparations to produce a massive bill (or bills) that is expected to pass on a party-line vote and that cannot be filibustered in the Senate. Because of the immense leverage of the House Freedom Caucus over this legislation, the plans keep shifting in the direction of deeper and deeper domestic spending cuts at levels never discussed before. Per Punchbowl News:
“Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republican committee chairs initially proposed between $500 billion to $700 billion in spending cuts as part of a massive reconciliation package. Yet conservative GOP hardliners rejected that, saying they wanted more. They’re seeking as much as $2 trillion to $5 trillion in cuts.”
Democrats can’t really do anything other than expose the extent and the effect of such cuts in the forelorn hope that a few House Republicans in particularly vulnerable districts develop their own counter-leverage over the process. But whatever emerges from the GOP discussion will have to be approved by OMB, where Russell Vought will soon be formally in charge. There’s just no path ahead for Democrats other than total war.
They do have their own leverage over two pieces of legislation Trump needs: an appropriations bill to keep government running after the December stopgap spending bill (which Musk nearly torpedoed in an early demonstration of his power) runs out, and a measure increasing the public debt limit. These bills can be filibustered, so Senate Democrats can kill them. There are increasing signs that congressional Democrats may refuse to go along with either one unless Trump puts a leash on Vought and Musk and perhaps even consults the Democratic Party on the budget. If there’s a government shutdown, it couldn’t be too much worse than a government being gutted by DOGE and OMB.
Republicans hope that Trump’s relatively strong popularity (for him, anyway) will keep Democrats from defying him. But they may not be accounting for the 47th president’s erratic character. On any given day, he may do something completely bonkers and deeply unpopular, like, say, suggesting the United States take over Gaza, expel its population, and build a resort development.
Democrats still don’t understand just how transformative Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has been and the medium term consequences for American politics.
What Trump did:
1. Destroyed the de facto bipartisan consensus about deindustrialization not being a big deal, mostly via his attacks on American dependence on Chinese imports;
2. Defended people’s right to live in the places they grew up in, a rhetorical achievement with deep policy consequences via rejecting the Clinton/Obama framework of calling for people to “reskill” and move (and concentrate wealth further in just a few US cities’ neighborhoods);
3. Achieved a de facto end of the (forever) War on Terror, mostly by sticking to deadlines on withdrawal from failed country building in Afghanistan;
4. Started a (dangerous) return to historical patterns of isolationism (America First), not seen since World War II, and didn’t start a single war, not even a small one (even kept peace with Iran);
5. By keeping peace with Iran and expanding peace between Israel and Arab states may have led to the creation of a possible Middle East consensus on autocracy (and high energy prices), involving Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran;
6. Destroyed the bipartisan consensus on entitlement reform, declaring Social Security and Medicare as untouchable, allowing seniors to complete their alignment with Republicans without fear of getting their own benefits cut;
7. By declaring Social Security and Medicare as off limits, made the Republican narrative about deserving and undeserving Americans more coherent, making cuts to other welfare programs and the imposition of work requirements more politically viable (the opposite happened with the failure to dismantle Obamare -but refusing to focus on Obamacare also neutralizes a GOP vulnerability-);
8. Created an economic boom during Covid by signing on to Democratic proposals for extensive cash payments;
9. Moved the GOP away from opposition to (popular) gay marriage, while refocusing on a moral panic around children and gender;
10. further closed to door to any bipartisan agreement on immigration reform, consolidating the GOP on an enforcement only agenda, and successfully identified policy changes needed to get the abuse of asylum under control (policy changes Biden has had to adopt).
Trump’s most important legacy is consolidating the Republican belief that Democrats are so dangerous and despicable that minority rule is not only legitimate, but necessary. Even the use of force has now been legitimized.
The fact that he achieved this legacy and still managed to both increase turnout in general and support from minorities should be the most worrying for Democrats.
Because of shifts in support from the upper middle class (high regular turnout) to Democrats and from the working class (low information voters) to Republicans, high turnout and highly polarized elections may now favor Republicans.
Meanwhile, 3 years into the Biden administration, the media (specially liberal media) is still obsessed with Trump and Democrats can’t move past their strategy of using rule of law tools and arguments to try to control Trump’s return.
There is still no widespread understanding, much less agreement (among elite, activist and highly partisan Democrats), that democracy won’t be protected in the long term without major shifts in economic policies and the creation of at least a few new consensuses on some of the major social issues of the day.
As of 2020, Gallup reported that 17% of respondents said they had “a great deal” of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government while 26% said “not very much” and 8% said “none at all.” Two years later, with Biden having succeeded Trump, just 7% report a great deal of trust in the judicial branch while 31% report “not very much” and 22% say “none at all.” In two years, the Americans who put a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the judicial branch went from a two-thirds majority to a minority.
Consider the political implications of this in the context of Trump’s indictment. If Gallup is accurate, most Americans today put little or no trust in the federal judicial branch. It is correct for Democrats to repeat the “let impartial justice take its course” mantra. The problem is that most of the country believes the federal judicial branch does not provide impartial justice. To them, that manta will sound like an excuse.