Democrats recalibrate their resistance to Trump
Democrats are not planning an all-hands resistance to Donald Trump.
At least, not 2016-style, when lawmakers, activists, volunteers and millions of angry voters mounted a party-wide effort to curb his newfound influence in Washington.
Where so much was once unprecedented, Trump is now familiar. Ahead of January 2025, the lack of a unified Democratic rebuttal to his second term is the latest sign that the party's just beginning to soul search, trying to figure out what went wrong before banding together to bash the GOP.
“The one thing we seem to know is the strategy of being an anti-Trump party didn't work any better than when we became a primarily anti-Bush party,” said Max Burns, a Democratic commentator. “In that transformation, we seem to have become unclear about what our actual pro-Democrat message is.”
“It's more like Republicans post-1960 than anything,” he said, “where the loss led to a real round of questioning about what our values are and what our strategy is.”
On the one hand, the month and a half post-election can seem like decades, as D.C.’s political class awaits the unpredictable transition of power. On the other, it’s just a blip in what many expect to be a long undertaking to redefine the Democratic Party beyond Trump’s shadow.
As voters who found sympathies with Trump inch closer toward a home with the GOP, liberals and moderates are in the messy process of figuring out their ideals, how to unite around them and how to message everything to the rest of the country. Results showed it’s not motivating enough to be against the MAGA president-elect, challenging a doctrine party loyalists have clung to over the past eight years.
While some still insist Trump’s re-election remains an existential threat, those voices have become more muted. Democrats’ “save our democracy” rhetoric, a fear-based approach effective in past cycles, tanked this time and many want a new way of operating after losing significant power.
The 2017 pomp and circumstance of rage solidarity has also died down. Back then, America’s raw political divisions and fear of the unknown prompted thousands to pour into the streets, protesting what they saw as Trump’s misogyny with a “Women’s March” and similar advocacy uprisings.
“It is clear that fighting back against Trump and MAGA will definitely look different this time than it did in 2017 because the circumstances are different,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn PAC.
“But there is energy to organize and push back that we know is there. The key will be understanding that we have to be strategic with how we deploy that energy,” she said.
Indeed, Democrats are slowly unpacking their recent losses with constituencies whom they saw move even further away from their party, questioning if being fully against Trump is the right approach.
“We're clearly not persuading labor, or Hispanics, or young people the way we used to, because our message is so vague now that it's hard to grab onto and rally behind,” said Burns. “Voters are angry, and they want populism, and they'll take a bad version over none at all, so Trump gets to sell his sham populism largely unchallenged.”
Progressives have started to try a new tactic. Some in the Senate and House have expressed a willingness to consider — or, even in some cases, enthusiastically embrace — Trump’s goals and administration picks. It’s different from the tone ahead of his first term, when the sheer shock value of many of his choices burned through any goodwill Democrats may have been willing to offer.
Some on the left are challenging Democrats’ default to reject Republicans just for the sake of party loyalty.
“I think the hypocrisy of opposing an idea you agree with because somebody on the other side also agrees is what is seen as one of the biggest problems with the two-party system right now,” said a former campaign adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
“Seriously, when you talk to actual voters, most who don't apply an ideological definition to their beliefs,” the former adviser said.
Others on Capitol Hill are already targeting potential areas for partnership, hoping to steer the party toward a common ground, at least in the earliest days of the partisan changeover. The most notable example is the budding debate around defense money, an early focus of Trump and progressives alike, where high spending from the Pentagon has been criticized by some prominent members of both parties.
One Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), is emerging as a leader presenting an alternative way to work with Trump-aligned members of Congress. He told The Hill that he would “welcome efforts” to engage with Republicans where their priorities meet, including on the military budget.
“I think it’s very important to not categorize everyone into left vs. right,” said Hassan Martini, a Democratic strategist and executive director of the group No Dem Left Behind. Instead, he said, his party should “really look into each person's comments and actions on an individual basis.”
Still, some top Democrats have reignited their adversarial style against Trump and his current allies, aiming for consistency in showing that they don’t endorse the right-wing agenda.
“Trump and congressional Republicans are already signaling that they are going to overplay their hand, and we will be ready to hold them accountable when they do that,” said Epting.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of the most outspoken figures in the so-called resistance effort to Trump’s first term, hasn’t changed her posture for his return to Pennsylvania Avenue. She’s been critical of several of Trump’s proposed Cabinet leaders, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the possible helm of the Health and Human Services Department.
Warren’s role on the Senate Finance Committee means that she will be a key figure in Kennedy’s confirmation fight, where she has already indicated staunch opposition to his views on vaccinations and other conspiracy theories.
“Say goodbye to your smile and say hello to polio,” the Massachusetts senator said in a recent video clip. “You know, I would laugh if it weren’t so scary.”
Democrats’ post-election slump has also caused many to turn their attention toward an election more within their wheelhouse: the Democratic National Committee chairmanship race. Lawmakers, strategists and activists believe they can now craft the direction of the DNC differently than what they had last cycle, where the pro-democracy messaging and large focus on abortion did not work in their favor.
Progressives fear that moderates will angle for more of the same type of centrism that caused Democrats defeats, while middle-ground stalwarts see too much liberalism as the reason they lost to Trump all over again.
A leading grassroots group formed out of Sanders’ 2016 bid, Our Revolution, circulated a memo this week pushed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and signed by hundreds of activists and donors calling for left-wing policies at the DNC.
“The Democratic Party needs a massive overhaul,” the petition reads. It lists four target areas for reform, including to “ban dark money in primaries” and “hold consultants accountable” over the DNC’s budget moving forward, as well as investing more resources into state parties. It also asks that officials “commit to a progressive platform and small donor democracy.”
“The Democratic Party must return to its roots as the party of the working class and reject the corporate influence and corruption that has led to a loss of voters and loss of elections to Trump (twice!)”