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.
A Democratic Alternative:
(1) Expand the private sector part of the retirement system by raising the maximums on 401Ks and IRAs, anb by going national with the Galveston plan (investment in conservative bank funds);
(2) Cut SS outflow by jumping the retirement age to 70 in the year 2025, shaving the top-level payment, and means testing all payments on a sliding scale;
(3) Replace the payroll tax with a flat tax on personal income from all sources with no ceiling; take the corporate share out of net profits not labor overhead.
The political result: (1) will appeal the free marketeers without getting a govt-run program in the stock market; (2) will be hard sell but will give Dems an image of decisive toughness; and (3) is simple tax justice.
This piece just firms up my opinion that Bush’s privatization scheme is dead in the water. This is my reasoning: One, he has had to use a huge amount of capital on Iraq as of late. Little is left to push this behemoth through Congress. Two, to finance the privatization Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling. The fiscal conservatives will not go for this and I think the public will outcry when they see the cost. Three, to quell conservatives (and maybe because the time is right) the issue of entitlements needs to be addressed. Certainly, this is a euphamism for cuts in social security and medicare and no one will like this.
I think the Demos can score much needed political capital in opposing the privatization plan. But as this piece aptly states, a cogent arguement with feasible alternatives needs to be crafted rather than the a “sky is falling” reactionary response.
Hey Ruy, how about some polling as to how the public feels about the increased public debt under the Bush administration, I haven’t heard anything about that in a while?
“If Social Security isn’t broken, the overall US retirement and pension system is and the public knows this. ”
Maybe part of the answer to your question is to define the problem. In what way is the retirement and pension system broken?
There was no compelling reason for the tax cuts, nor were they popular in opinion surveys, but they did them anyways. They’re very determined – but unless there is an equally determined opposition, they will get their way.
Democratic plan: First assure people’s basic retirement needs by keeping a system that invests in the most stable investment available, government bonds. Second, simplify the tax rules to encourage private savings and investments for retirement. Third, demand a Social Security Flat tax – tax all income.
Political plan: All out attack patterned after the Republican’s health care ambush. Attack the presidents motives, his rationality, and his math. Enforce party discipline. Make this the one issue that if you cross you’re out of the party.
Yes, there will be losses. But wouldn’t it have been better for the party to have kicked Zell Miller out?
We Need A Wage Policy
I think the central, domestic organizing principle of the Democratic Party should be to promote wage growth among the American workers. Real wages for median income workers have stagnated since the beginning of “Reganomics” almost 25 years ago, something I expect has never occurred before over such a long period of time. Just as Republicans chant “cut taxes, cut taxes” we should repeat “increase wages, increase wages.”
The math signifying the advantages to the middle class of wage growth over tax cuts is convincing. Take someone making $35,000 a year. For simplicity, let’s say he or she pays about $10,000 in taxes per year. A 10% tax cut equals a one time $1000 increase in such individual’s take home pay. But policies that generate a yearly real income growth rate of 3% mean that this individual will get at least a $1000 raise every year and the amount of raise will increase as his or her income increases. Moreover, while tax cuts are “paid for” by either cuts in programs that help the middle class or add to the defecit, which increases interest middle class individuals have to pay, extra wages do not have this negative budgetary effect.
So, how to raise wages? The best way that I can think of is through a tax incentive. For example, my understanding is that currently a business deducts one dollar of its income for every dollar it pays to its workers as a business expense. Why not give an “enhanced” write off for wage payments that represent growth above the rate of inflation, let’s say 1.5 dollars for every dollar paid to a worker as a “real” wage increase. Other ideas are more traditional. We need to constantly attempt to raise the minimum wage. Additionally, we need to advocate trade agreements that push up wages in foreign countries, a policy that helps by lessening the undercutting of our wages and by giving foreigner workers more money to buy our products.
While there may be some disagreement on specific policy proposals, I think wage growth should be the Democrats signature issue.
We need to decisively win the Social Security debate and then move on to bigger and better battles having demonstrated unequivocably that the Bush Administration was simply lying through its teeth on this issue. The general public is uneasily aware that it was lied to in the runup to Iraq, but is emotionally tied up with the message of patriotism in wartime/support the troops, they signed up and many feel that have to stay the course. But nobody enlisted in the War on Social Security. The Administration is publicly pushing growth numbers for 2005 (3.5%) that if plugged into the conventional model for Social Security (the Intermediate Cost alternative) totally fill the gap. The current model which produces the 2042 shortfall date is based on an economic model which predicted 2.7% growth for 2004 and 1.8% for 2005. Instead we are looking at 4.0% and 3.5%. Hello?
We just have to follow the numbers to create a crushing victory here.
2004 Social Security Trustees Report: Economic Assumptions under the Three Alternatives (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/V_economic.html#wp159107) &
2004 Report: Trust Fund Ratios under the Three Alternatives (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/II_project.html#wp106217)
And along the way establish the narrative: “They are lying to you. Again.”