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.
Marcus, I hate to throw cold water on anyone’s hopes, but don’t get too excited about SUSA polls. They have often shown results well out of line with other surveys–in both directions; conversely, don’t get depressed when they show us doing worse than other polls.
In my home state, which gave Gore a 17% margin in 2000, SUSA showed a tie in mid-September and Republicans were exuberant. Two weeks later they showed Kerry leading by 15 points. I don’t think there was that great a swing here, because Maryland was never tied in the first place.
But I agree with your broader point about the states. Virginia and North Carolina are, I think, closer than most people think through probably not enough for Kerry to win them. And I think the press is overestimating Bush’s strength in NJ.
More good news from Mickey Kaus, leader of the “Kerry haters voting for Kerry” group of bloggers —
“Those dueling Ohio polls are reconciled here. They’re actually ‘amazingly consistent,’ says the now-famous Mystery Pollster .
His quite convincing explanation is not an auspicious one for President Bush. … Meanwhile, look at these results of the Survey USA robo-poll. Isn’t Kerry shockingly close in presumed Bush states like Virginia (50-46) and North Carolina (50-47)? That’s much closer than Kerry’s lead in allegedly in-play states like Pennsylvania (51-45) and New Jersey (51-43) … [You’re starting to sound like Ruy Teixeira.–ed I’ll lie down until it goes away.]”
MARCU$
According to NPR last night, Bush has not been to Ohio since early Oct., and his latest travel plans do not include it. Most certainly this is not because it is in the bag. Has he in fact written it off?
Very glad to hear about favorable battlegrounds, indies, and internals, but I have a question for the pros here.
I have now read several times in high-profile blogs that (in essence) “the incumbent needs to be 3-4 points ahead on election day because undecideds traditionally break for the challenger.”
I’ve been looking to this (and other trends) for reassurance, but I keep wondering: What if this year isn’t like any other year?
What if the “one-dimensional patriot” vote looks past everything else and buys W’s tough guy act? What if we’re still early enough into this war that cognitive dissonance is too weak to sway the electorate? (Nixon won, after all, and we’d been in Vietnam for years and years.) What if, in our first post-9/11 presidential election, the nation hears only Bush’s bullhorn in the voting booth?
That’s a lot of conjecture, but my question is this: How confident are you that this trend — late-deciders breaking for the challenger — will hold? Are other trends particularly vulnerable this year? I know it’s probably like casting the bones, but is anyone doing any analysis that might give us a clue?
Thanks very much, and thanks for all the hard work.
Ruy,
I was a bit surprised to see in the WaoPo article on voter registration, that the GOP bested the Dems by a slight margin in Florida. However, the ACT coordinator bragged that they spanked the Republicans in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa, in particular.
No way, am I conceding Florida, knowing we have a very real chance there, while I know the Bush supporters are in real denial, in the face of such success by the Soros groups.
But, is the Kerry camp factoring in these registration numbers with their internal polling?
George Bush is not leading in a single state that Al Gore carried in the 2000 election.
One presumes we’re taking Gore actually having likely won FL out of this equation, for wholly academic discussion purposes.
The one caveat with that statement, then, is that the electoral votes for the 2000 Bush states have increased overall by 7, with a corresponding loss in Gore states. This means an electoral deficit that increases from 4 (271-267) to 18 (278-260). This means Kerry absolutely MUST win at least one state that went for Bush in 2000, and it better have 10 or more EVs.
Either OH or FL will do nicely, of course, but even MO would do the trick.
I’ve been pointing out, though, that to make this election stick, we need to have an unassailable majority — we can’t have it hinge on one close state, the way it did in 2000. My hunch is that we may well have anywhere from 4 to 8 “Floridas” this year; even if there isn’t another EC debacle (and I do not expect a constitutional process to be followed if there is), we’ll have several state-level results challenged between election day and electoral college day.
Not to get too far off topic.
Any information on the latest ABC poll or WSJ/NBC
poll. There must be something funny with the internals in the ABC poll to show Bush leading by
5.
I sure hope you all are right and my expectations of a machine agenda of putting in Bush one way or another are wrong.
If Kerry can effectively neutralize the flipflop issue (halve the harm it does now), and the “nuisance/soft on terrorism” thing, he should have it. In the latter case, a major speech and going on the offensive intelligently would do it.
The incumbent needs to be up by 4 pts overall with which category of voter? Likely or registered?
I am concerned that the (unfounded) belief held by many, esp. the so-called security moms, that only Bush can keep them safe will override all other concerns once in the voting booth and could invalidate the conventional wisdom that undecided voters break overwhelmingly for the challenger on election day. I certainly hope this is not the case.
Slightly off-topic, but does anybody find it odd that the NY Times poll showed Bush’s approval rating as 44% while the Washington Post poll from the exact same day showed a much higher 53%?
I guess it could be a difference is the actual question the poll asks. But I find the Post poll a bit odd, considering it’s the only one where a majority approves of the president’s job performance.
Anyone have info on that poll?
Zogby Battleground
by Chris Bowers Oct 19
Maybe the wingers won’t be complaining about the new Zogby numbers after all:
Kerry Bush
OR 55.7 42.6
MN 54.2 43.1
WA 54.3 43.9
NM 53.6 44.1
MI 52.6 45.9
PA 51.8 46.1
NH 51.1 46.0
WI 51.3 47.5
IA 51.1 47.9
WV 45.8 48.6
AR 48.4 49.7
NV 45.9 49.8
FL 48.9 50.1
TN 47.8 50.3
OH 47.6 50.6
MO 47.6 50.7 Kerry looks very comfortable in OR, MN, WA, NM, MI, PA and NH, all of which show Bush, as the incumbent, completely out of contention barring a major October surprise. WI and IA are also very good, especially for a challenger (challengers over 51 always win). However, These numbers would lead to a 269-269 tie, as the undecided break in WV, but nowhere else, would push Kerry over the top.
On the plus side, if this is accurate, Kerry has all of the Gore states plus New Hampshire shored up, and can spend the significant majority of his resources trying to flipjust one other 2000 Bush state, all of which are very close. On the negative side, if this is accurate, Kerry comfortably wins the popular vote, but the electoral vote is tied and Bush wins in the House.
I’ll see you on the barricades if that happens.
If Kerry/Edwards win two of the “big three” (Penn, Fla, and Ohio), they’ll probably take the cake.
[and if they win all three, forget about it!]
But;
Maybe I’m looking at old polls, but Bush seems to be ahead in New Mexico. Also, recent polls have shown him with leads in Wisconsin. He’s tied with Kerry in Iowa and Minnesota.
I worry very much about these northern states breaking for Bush.
If Bush is ahead an average of 4 points in national polls is it possible that Kerry could still be leading in electoral college. Could he actually win electoral college and lose by 4 points on 11/2
regester as a Republican so you can get to vote and then vote Kerry.
.
Off the immediate topic of this posting, but…
I hope you’ll soon be discussing the internals of the current Gallup poll, which (surprise) turns out to have a sample that skews way to the right. Steve Soto at the Left Coaster has the goods.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003054.html
It’s really out of the candidate’s hands now. Barring a major gaffe, it will be events on the ground that decide this election. The dynamic is currently working against Bush. He can’t do anything to significantly shift the numbers, nor can Kerry. Events in Iraq, news on jobs and the economy, terrorist attacks, and gas prices will probably decide the outcome.