In “Democrats grapple with their own message in Trump 2.0,” Sarah Ferris and Lauren Fox write, ” President Donald Trump is already testing the limits of Hill Democrats who have vowed to be less antagonistic the second time around….Privately, Democrats have largely agreed it’s time to end the capital-R resistance to the newly sworn in president. Then on Trump’s first 24 hours in office, he freed those who violently attacked police officers protecting the Capitol four years ago.”

Elected Democrats know that the chances or reversing Trump’s pardons and commutations of the January 6 perpetrators are nil. But they also know that Trump’s credibility is damaged every time the public is reminded that five police officers died as a result of the insurrection and 140 officers were injured by the rioters. Honest conservatives can’t support ganging up on police officers who were doing their job protecting our elected officials of both parties. The pardons and commutations, on top of Trump’s own convictions, make a mockery of the GOP’s pretense of being the party of law and order.

However, as Ferris and Fox note, “The natural inclination is to fight, fight, fight, fight,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a centrist Democrat who represents a Trump-won district on Long Island. Suozzi stressed that Democrats need to be more disciplined in their politics to avoid their more reactionary tactics: “That’s what’s got us to this point.”….Even so, he and others acknowledge they can’t ignore when Trump allows January 6 rioters to go free at the same time he is pushing to deport other violent criminals. “I mean, come on,” an exasperated Suozzi said.”

“On the pardons specifically, [Democratic House Leader] Jeffries privately told Democrats on Wednesday that they should hammer Trump’s decision to free January 6 rioters in a way that makes clear how it risks the safety of the American people, according to two people in the room. And the focus was less on Trump but on the complicity of House Republicans — the ones who will be on the ballot in two years.”

“Democrats have also tried to contrast how what Trump is doing isn’t actually helping the Americans who voted for him,” they write. The flood of executive orders is like Trump’s mass announcement of cabinet appointments, designed to confuse and distract his opponents.

“I think he’s trying to flood the zone,” with executive orders, Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said. “Trump got hired because he thought he was going to help bring grocery prices down, what does pardoning literally hundreds of criminals who attacked police officers have to do with bringing grocery prices down?”

With respect to the confirmation hearings, “While a hearing for Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth saw blistering questioning about Hegseth’s personal life, including one particularly tough exchange with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia on Hegseth’s marriages and an unexpected pregnancy, other hearings — including those for Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent and Department of Homeland Security pick Kristi Noem — were relatively civil by partisan standards, and focused far more on policy disagreements than personal animus.”

This is understandable. The Department of Defense is the big prize. It involves 3 million armed services members and workers and a budget of 841 billion dollars, and the potential for contractor corruption is a kleptocrat’s dream. In the modern era, at least, the Secretary of Defense has been headed by a leader who has some gravitas. Those days may be over. The Democrats now need two Senate votes to defeat the Hegseth nomination.

“This guy is clearly not qualified,” Warner said of Hegseth. “I’m supporting a number of Trump’s nominees. I voted for (Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA John) Ratcliffe, I voted for Bessent, but there are some of these that are way beyond the bounds.”

However, “We’ve gone back to our playbook which is, ‘attack him,’ instead of actually dealing with the fact that the party doesn’t have a message, doesn’t really have a spokesperson,” one senior House Democrat said of the strategy. “We’re just going back to the shrill attacks.”

“They have a permanent information ecosystem. We don’t,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said following the lunch. “They define us and we don’t get to define them. No matter how good our messaging is here, it doesn’t get reflected, reverberated and amplified like theirs does.”

That sounds like something that can be fixed.