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.
Thanks
RE: accuracy of polls. Polls are accurate to the degree that one year’s vote looks like the next year’s. What’s different this time? New voters. If the reports are to be believed, there are something like 1 million new voters this year. And let’s face it, the vast majority of unregistered voters in 200o were not Republicans. My guess is that the opinions of these new voters is just going underneath the radar of must conventional polls.
The Republicans will try voter supression techniques in places like Detroit and Miami, but I think folks are on to them.
Kerry by 2 points. And the Yankees in 5.
Bush’s Job Approval Drops to Record Low 42%; Kerry Up By 5 Points Over Bush 47%-42%; Iraq Disapproval Rate Rises to 64%; Majority Says US Headed in the Wrong Direction and “It’s Time for Someone New” New Zogby International Poll Reveals
Posted by Kari at October 5, 2004 01:21 AM
Kari, I think you have hit the target for a lot of
the variation in poll numbers. Zogby has been
consistent with Bush at a 47% approval rating, dangerous for an incumbent. Polling has become
more difficult over the past few years with technology like caller ID, and more people using
cell phones to communicate. It makes it very difficult to measure the creditability of poll numbers. I would recommend watching the voter
registration numbers, and crowd sizes at campaign
events over the next few weeks. They will be as telling as the polls.
Steady Eddie –
Zogby doesn’t push undecideds at this point, so his poll has a higher number of undecideds than most polls, which do push undecideds. Also, Zogby has always weighted by party ID, while media polls and Gallup do not. This means that media polls pick up an “enthusiasm factor” from the party that feels energized. My reasoning is that the party that is most energized at any moment will be more interested in taking part in a political poll, so they will be over-represented in the polling results.
So, after the Republican convention Republicans felt enthused while Dems were downcast because of Kerry’s lackluster August. Republicans responded more heavily, creating the illusion of a large Bush lead. This created more enthusiasm among Republicans, and further depressed Dems, and the result was reinforced in the next round of polls, though not quite as strongly as after the Republican convention (most polls showed the gap closing in the week before the debate).
Following the debate, Dems felt greater enthusiasm so they responded in larger numbers than before, creating a bounce for Kerry that was also mostly illusion.
This races hasn’t really moved all that much in the past month, but the enthusiasm of each party has wzxed and waned, creating a false image of a large movement.
For those interested, I’ve posted my latest (10/4) survey of 47 Electoral College tracking / prediction / projection / forecast sites HERE.
Executive summary: A static week, with things fundamentally unchanged from the previous survey. Bush continues to lead with 284 to 291 votes, compared to Kerry’s 228 to 243, a margin of about 50 votes, the same as last week.
Data-crunching 101–an attempt at self-education
I just was dinging around (technical term, yes) with the results from the most recent Pew Poll, which found that 48 percent of 1,002 RVs supported Bush compared to 41 percent supporting Kerry. (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=227)
Tell me if this was a sensible interpretation of the data, but here’s what I found:
Using a combination of the Pew background data (http://people-press.org/reports/tables/227.pdf) and a handy Java applet that solves linear equations with three variables (http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~chamness/equation/equation.html), it appears that the partisan split for the 1,002 respondents is as follows:
333R, 303D, 366I (basically 33%, 30%, 36%)
By comparison, I ran the same analysis for the 9/11-14 Pew survey (again of 1,002 RVs), and got a split of:
303R, 336D, 363I
Where I’m going with this is this: if the 10/4 poll had reached the same number of self-identified Rs, Ds and Is as for the 9/11 poll (assuming that it’s the sampling and not the self-identification that’s changing) with the voting tendencies of the 10/4 crowd, the 10/4 poll results would have been something more like 45.4-43.6 in Bush’s favor, not 48-41. One might then note that this shows a slight shift from the 46-46 split actually noted on 9/11, but by now I figure I’ve hopelessly tortured the data nearly beyond recognition.
Long story short, what I really wanted to explore and perhaps demonstrate is that the Pew poll didn’t reach the same crowd now as before, and that if they had spoken to a similar group, the poll margin would be even tighter. Please, someone who really knows what they’re doing, tell me if I’m playing along intelligently at home–mathematically, not politically, Smooth. 🙂
Ruy –
I know you must be very busy, but we’ve heard very little from you during what should be a busy time for EDM.
I can find poll results – I think we all keep up with that, and the blog is rapidly descending into a poll summary. The only recent analysis has also been very poll centric.
What happened to politics without numbers? You know, for those of us who got a D- in Qualitative Methodology.
Contradicting Ruy Teixeira’s assurances of the last several months that Ralph Nader’s entrance into the race would not adversely affect the Democratic ticket this time around, John Zogby says what a lot of others have been saying. Nader is cutting into Kerry’s vote.
The question now is, what does Kerry do about it. He can’t afford to use his precious campaign funds to speak to such a small audience with television. I think the best course of action would be for surrogates to hammer away at the fact that Nader owes the GOP big-time for getting him on so many ballots.
That has to be embarrasing to Nader and his supporters, many of whom, I’m sure, are not aware of the fact that right wing reactionaries have been holding them up. That hammering should be done now, especially in Florida, by someone like Bob Graham and in Ohio (if Nader made that ballot) by Dennis Kucinich. Time is of the essence.
I think that the polls are showing that Kerry played well to the electorate but it is still a really check him out sort of attitude before committing to him as the next president.
All I know is that I think that he is going to do very well in MN. Kerry signs are currently unavailable due to the demand locally. Also there are large numbers of Kery Edwards signs being reported stolen in the red areas (primarily western MN). In MN sign theft/vandalism is generally a sign that the republicans are running very scared. I am very hopeful that the debates will result in real bounces for Kerry in the swing states.
Pete
I don’t know if anyone is noticing, but the narrative when I do a google search of the major American media, despite the polls, are trying to minimize the fact the race has tightened. The narrative seems to be a long the lines of either pointing out segments in which Bush is ahead or pointing out aspects of polls in which Bush is doing well. When they talked this weekend about Kerry’s 2 point lead, it was called a tie. When they are talking about polls showing Bush with a lead, even if it is a small lead, they say Bush has widened his lead. If one reads the numbers closely, they are nothing new and are adding nothing new. They are just being spun a certain way. This is why I am concerned in the long run about the way the media controls the narrative. I read abook called What Liberal Media which brings up my concern that I believe will have to be addressed by the progressive movement long after this election, and that is the right ward swing of the media. It’s been mentioned by several other bloggers, but the fact that so many of the reporters seek to create a narrative that is almost a forgone conclusion strikes me as difficult for ourside. For example, the poll coming out tomorrow showing Bush with a 5 point lead- Why do I suspect it will be given more weight than other polls? If the goal is truly to give a fair and balanced view why not simply say the polls are showing different things and why hasn’t this been the narrative throughout or better yet just show what we all know (all of those of us who are honest that is) – that the two candidates are in all likelihood tied. I read something about the proprietary nature of these polls, and I got to say I think that plus their sensationalistic nature, plus need to create a dominate narrative are a henderance to Kerry right now.
I believe Zogby’s poll is still the most accurate of any organization. They were the only pollster to correctly predict the outcome of the 2000 election. They came remarkably close to Gore’s actual count.
The reason Zogby hasn’t shown a big post-debate change is because he showed the race accurately after the GOP convention. The fact is, there WAS NOT a huge Bush bounce after the GOP convention. Zogby is right; the polls showing a big swing to Bush and then back to Kerry were never accurate in the first place.
I’m all for these new polls, though. It puts doubt into the minds of the Bushies and allows Kerry free positive coverage. It’s about time our media doesn’t slime Kerry.
sorry i guess i got the gallup numbers reversed in my mind in the last comment, but the rest of the substance is right, on the issue of the “gap gap”.
Again, Kerry/Edwards AND in the media the flipflop spin needs to be forcefully confronted as the “mere spin” that it is, and soon
I just saw an ABC-Washington Post poll that shows Bush ahead among likely voters 51-46 but that the lead is only 3 points among registered voters. I don’t know how accurate this poll is but it does show the importance of turnout. In conjunction with the NY Times article on Sunday that showed that hundreds of thousands of new voters have registered in Battleground states we MUST make sure that these new voters get to the polls.
More good news for Kerry. CBS/NYT polls has the race even, with each man getting 47%. That’s downs from an 8 point Bush lead before the debate. There seems to be no question that the more people see of Bush/Kerry side by side, the more they lean Kerry.
The big media polls are crap. Kerry gained maybe +2 from this first debate. He will probably gain another +2 from the next two debates.
Prediction:Barring an October surprise, Kerry uses the debates to estabish himself as a viable commander in chief and goes on to win by a small margin (48% Bush, 51% Kerry). On election night the polls show an average Bush lead of +1 or +2.
Bush’s lead is down to 3% among RVs in the new ABC/WP poll. And, Kerry’s support is very high among occasional voters.
did anyone see the latest WaPo poll? Bush still leads by 5 with LV.
cloudy-
I particularly like that last point. If Kerry is going to nail Bush on his selective misrepresentation of his views, now is the time. I’m really happy to see him doing it.
Steady-
I don’t think it’s the days since the debate thing. I’m really not sure what’s driving it. Some could be weightings. Maybe Gallup, Newsweek, et al. weight in some way that creates more variability? From an academic standpoint, there ought to be some really interesting work flowing out of this set of polls once the result is known.
ABC/Washington Post has Bush by 5, a one point bounce for Kerry.
Approval at 53%, which is a good enough for the president to win comfortably.
BTW, the economy is clearly doing better than Iraq, so I think convention wisdom is wrong that Kerry will do even better in future debates.
My conclusion: This could be Kerry’s high point, because this last debate focused on the president’s weakest point.
Of course, maybe I should have capitalized “could”, and also admit I’m biased.
Once again, that web address for anyone interested in helping not only voter reg in the swing states but the battles to stop regs from being disqualified:
http://acthere.com/
As for the voter reg article in the NY Times, I’m not sure how, but some figures on how many of these are Democrats and how many Republicans and how many Inds would be interesting. As I said, considering that Nevada is such a small swing state (only 5 electoral votes), over 200,000 new registrants in Clark County (Las Vegas) alone should have a massive impact, and they talked a lot about Ohio also. The article suggested, contrary to what I reasoned in my previous post, that new registrants almost certainly have LOWER turnout on the average than RVs as a whole. The major exception would be concern about the draft, and here Bush’s comment that he believes in an all-volunteer army should not obscure the fact (other than his untrustworthiness) that a draft of some kind to require service OTHER than in the military, like the domestic national guard without the danger of being sent overseas, which would ALSO have an opt-out provision for military service in non-combat areas for a shorter time perhaps (hence “voluntary” or claimed so) IS a very real possibility as a way of boosting military recruitment, something lagging behind needs. This recognition should be a MAJOR motivator for millions of votes, if made clear in a wide range of media venues. (I hate to sound negative, but as a progressive leftie I have to voice my suspicion that we might have a return of some kind of draft with EITHER party, but that doesn’t tell us what impact it will have on the election).
As for the polls, several interesting or odd points stand out. Before the debates, the results varied over a range of about 10 points difference in the gap between Bush and Kerry. Now not only the gap has closed, but the “gap gap”. The total range is only four points for FIVE separate polls mentioned here, all since the debates: Carville, Zogby, Gallup, LA Times, and NEWSWEEK, all with a gap of (+2 to -2) all within the margin of error. Funny, I would have though the opposite would be more likely — that after a sudden disturbance like the debate in the relative popularity of the candidates, the “gap gap” would be wider after showing more consensus, but that’s not what happened. Also interesting is that the Democrats (Carville and Zogby) show Kerry doing slightly worse (-2 and -1 respectively) than the commercial polls, who show him tied or with a statistically insigificant edge.
That makes me a little suspicious of the commercial poll swings. Both Carville and Zogby show maybe a few percentage points, which seems more realistic — after all, there was no cataclysmic poll swing after the famous Nixon-Kennedy debates, certainly not in excess of 10 points in the poll ratings!
I like the new aggressiveness of the Kerry ad that says “Bush lost the debate and now he’s lying about it”. Somewhere there needs to be a clear explanation of the global test and A CONFRONTATION, POSSIBLY BY EDWARDS IN THE DEBATE, WITH THE FLIPFLOP SPIN, AS THE “MERE SPIN” THAT IT IS. You don’t want to be plagued in the final two or three weeks of the campaign with that as an issue when the focus should be on the deficit, jobs, tax cuts for the rich, the environment, and the Medicare scam. Establishing in a quick media debate of less than 10 days that the flipflop spin is often erroneously cited about Kerry and, along with that point, a “mere spin” no more true of Kerry than of Bush or others is crucial soon so that it will be as close to a wash as possible as an issue as they enter the final phase of the campaign.
What’s odd about that Zogby poll is that he shows virtually no movement from his own pre-debate polls. Sept. 8-9 showed a 47-45 Bush lead, becoming 47-44 in the Sept. 17-19 version. With the current, post-debate poll at 46-45, the differences among the three are not much more than noise.
How is it that Zogby is not picking up significant movement from the debates, whereas the big media-bought polls showed an arguably unrealistic big swing to Bush, and now a big one back again to Kerry? Could it be that the respondents in the first day or two of the poll were hesitant to state any change of preference based on the initial spin or their own responses to the debate (assuming their responses mirrored those in all the instant polls)? If that’s so, then polls on later days should show a more pronounced swing to Kerry.
Many people might be reluctant to state a conclusion about their vote based on one debate alone, but that would at least suggest a rise in the number of undecideds, which clearly didn’t happen. If Zogby pushed the undecideds hard to state a preference, why would they fall back into the pre-debate pattern?
I’m not necessarily criticizing this result at all — it may well be an accurate characterization of the electorate at this moment, and it is pretty consistent with most of the other post-debate polls — but it does take some explaining when compared to Zogby’s pre-debate polls.
Any hypotheses out there?
“Only 13 percent of undecided voters feel that the president deserves re-election . . . ” Reminds me of the recent Daily Show skit where the guy says the world will come to an end if Bush wins but he’s still undecided. In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, “Good grief.”
The thing that frightens me the most is the (lack of) ethics of the Bush administration, as evidenced by its actions. From conflict of interest to hiding facts to rewriting facts to secrecy to misuse of science –it is really firthening. Take a look at the website http://www.howbushoperates.info/ for a short introduction to the unethical operations of this administration. By their deed shall ye know them.
If Independents favor Kerry and there are more Dem’s than Rep’s, how can Bush be leading in any poll?
This is assuming that roughly the same percentage of each party suports their candidate (~90%).
I’m thinking most of the undecided aren’t going to be able to vote for Bush, so who else are they going to vote for? If there are still “undecided” voters after the third debate, they’re just going to either stay home or vote for Kerry, because if they tune in to the third debate, they aren’t going to be able to truthfully say that they don’t know enough about Kerry to vote for him.