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 think activists in blue jurisdictions are punching below their weight in pushing Democratic party officials to develop a comprehensive agenda that addresses the issues that drove many centrist and even leftwing voters to support Trump and even more voters to abstain.
Activist are also punching way below the weight in terms of possibilities in addressing Republicans in nearby communities.
In fact most activist groups are doubling down in supporting unfair global trade, deregulated immigration and the culture wars.
Apart from gay marriage, most cultural issues don’t seem to be moving clearly in a liberal direction with the electorate, unlike Ireland.
Positions on free trade are reversing between conservatives and liberals.
DACA gets support but there is little evidence there is support for the kind of de facto open border policies now being advocated on the left.
Gun control has moved a bit, but there is little evidence gun control supporters will use it as a litmus test when voting, while 2nd amendment voters will. Will white middle class women deliver finally or will they break for Trump in the end (again)?
The Me too movement and the Black Lives Matter movement don’t have coherent policy agendas.
NFL protests probably backfire. There is no consensus on the left on changing the national anthem.
Congress has approved sexual harassment legislation to give cover to Republicans. While it is good to have more female candidates, the overall control of men over political institutions isn’t really questioned. Women will never have equal representation (or even be close to it) in legislatures in the US under this system.
Tax cuts are “opposed” but Democrats have offered only tepid support to alternatives and will probably end up keeping the vast majority of the cuts and maybe even add to them (restore SALT) thereby adding to the deficit.
ACA probably survived on its own. The evidence for activism from liberals being the decisive factor is not as compelling because that would mean Republicans are amenable to pressure, which they really haven’t shown on almost any issue. Trump’s contradictory promises probably ended up with him deciding to deliver on Obama’s idea of not imposing compulsory insurance.
It remains to be seen what happens with welfare reform. The debate over work requirements is not predictable, specially given that Trump promised not to mess too much with welfare while Bill Clinton signed welfare reform.
Trump seems to have little control over budgeting and the GOP Congress has been on a spending binge. Who will the electorate blame for trillion dollar deficits? Democrats seem to be all over the place.
Now Democrats have presented a tepid anti-corruption agenda that the media barely noticed.
At the same the DNC keeps getting tangled up in controversies over primaries and unfairly backing some candidates over others.
Will the House majority be large enough to impeach?
Pence, as bad or worse, must be impeached (and convicted) before or concurrently with impeachment of Trump.
The Democrats’ problem isn’t Pence or even Trump. Their problem is the Trump voter, who cannot be impeached and who would see the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump or Pence not as the rule of law but as the Democrats subverting the Constitution.