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.
Tax Illegal Employers: A plan tp recover the cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers.
The Federal government should place a tax surcharge of $1.00 per hour or 10% of wages paid on employers of illegal immigration. The net funds collected should be divided into three equal portions which go to federal, state, and local governments, because each level of government spends money providing services to illegals and their families. As is the case with other unpaid taxes, those who report tax evasion to authorities should get a percentage of any taxes and penalties collected by the IRS. This plan aligns the interests of all three levels of government and individual taxpayers into seeing that the law is enforced and taxes due are collected. Since it’s an unpaid tax and not a crime, the government can collect without proving that the employer knew the employees immigration violation status beyond a reasonable doubt, making it much easier to enforce.
Illegal employers who claim they can’t find legal workers will be required to put their money where their mouths are by paying a surcharge on illegal labor.
Finally, if IRS officials are too beholden to corporate officials to collect the tax, we should allow individuals to bring suit under the federal tort claims act, allowing them to keep an even larger portion of taxes collected than they would receive for just reporting the violation to the IRS. This gives individuals who want tougher enforcement a path of action which is much more constructive than sitting at the border with guns. Also illegals would have an incentive to register as guest workers or take whatever path the law sets up to become legal and therefore financially more appealing to employers. Finally, if this isn’t enough to get American employers to give hiring preference to American workers, we could always increase the amount of the surcharge.
It amazes me that anyone thinks they can read the voters mindset on any specific issue based on the election results. I disagree vehemently with the Democrats position on illegal immigration, yet I always vote a straight Democratic ticket. Illegal immigration is a vexing problem all right, but it was dwarfed by dozens of other issues. I just don’t see how anyone can draw conclusions about a subject like this based on the election results. The writer is only deluding himself.
“Doing something about” the immigration issue usually means stopping and/or punishing immigrants. This is a trade issue, the other side of the NAFTA coin. American industrial farm products have decimated the Mexican agrarian economy, leaving people the choice of privation or emigrating to the US.
Whether or not this is the perception of the American public, it is the fact.
NAFTA is more widely excoriated in Mexico than in the US. To the extent the populist anti-corporate Democrats can, they ought to make this point. It isn’t working for anybody — except the corporate interests who can monopolize the gains.
One suspects, as you suggest, that the immigration issue was generated as a wedge for the election and will be relegated to the far back burner now that the vote is in.
Opposition to NAFTA must take one of two forms: repeal the agreements or intervene in the exchange. Intervening means creating new mechanisms to mitigate the environmental and labor problems and to make sure the net gain is a net gain for all players, not just for the corporations. This is a necessarily bureaucratic solution, but it is the only way to make it work in the context of corporate dominance.
It may well be that agriculture has to be dealt with under non-free trade terms. The subsidies to American agriculture cannot be matched in poorer countries. When a society loses agriculture, it loses not just another industry, but a way of life, a big panel in the fabric of its society.