Democrats say one factor is definite: 2025 will not be 2017, in terms of the beginning of the Trump administration.
Two months after their grueling and disappointing White Home loss to President-elect Trump and their failure to win again the Home or hold the Senate majority, Democrats acknowledge that lawmakers are going to have to seek out locations to work with Trump throughout his second time period.
Democratic strategist Joel Payne mentioned the outcomes “have had a chastening effect” on the get together, forcing it to rethink the best way it does enterprise and the way it seeks to speak with voters who’ve soured on Democratic officeholders.
“Smart Democrats right now are listening and processing and taking in the political environment with an open mind,” he mentioned.
“You are going to see Democrats go to places that are viewed as unfriendly and partner with people who seem unlikely allies in an attempt to better understand where the electorate is,” Payne added.
The temper and outlook stands in stark distinction, Democrats say, from eight years in the past when Trump gained a shock victory within the 2016 presidential contest.
After Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s defeat in an election the place she gained the favored vote, the time period “resist” was coined in opposition to Trump and have become a daily a part of the Democratic vernacular. Within the subsequent years, Democrats sought to constantly oppose the president, refusing to help Republican laws and launching a string of Trump-related investigations.
Democrats additionally impeached Trump twice.
However Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons mentioned he expects members of his get together to tone down the rhetoric and antagonism within the first months of Trump’s administration. Democrats, Simmons predicted, could be “selectively combative” in responding to Trump’s actions, taking a lesson from the outcomes of the presidential race.
“I don’t think any voters are looking for Democrats to fight Trump at every turn,” Simmons mentioned. “They need one thing that yields outcomes that matter. You’re both making an attempt to do one thing that issues otherwise you’re a part of the issue.
“That’s why I think saying ‘no’ isn’t a great strategy,” he mentioned, including that there might be few Democrats who will praise the president straight however many who might be open to quietly working with Republicans.
In a New York Occasions op-ed this week, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) wrote that Democrats shouldn’t be the get together of no in the course of the second Trump administration.
“I know my party will be tempted to hold fast against Mr. Trump at every turn: uniting against his bills, blocking his nominees and grinding the machinery of the House and the Senate to a halt,” Suozzi wrote. “That would be a mistake.”
Whereas the congressman mentioned he’s “no dupe” — saying a few of Trump’s strikes and machinations supply “little reassurance that he is ready to embrace the bipartisanship and compromise essential to a functioning democracy” — he urged these in his get together to “try something different when it comes to the president-elect.”
Democrats are nonetheless within the thick of conducting election postmortems, largely reaching the conclusion that they will’t merely be the anti-Trump get together. Voters within the 2024 election wished palpable options on the financial system and the border, and so they weren’t happy with the Democratic response, get together operatives acknowledge.
“They weren’t interested in hearing what we had to say,” one aide who served on Vice President Harris’s presidential marketing campaign mentioned. “That’s the underside line.
“I think we have to get to a place as a party where we’re listening to what voters are saying, not just pretending that we’re listening and coming up with our own theories of the case.”
Even within the lead-up to Trump’s second time period, some Democrats have already expressed a willingness to be supportive of the president-elect’s Cupboard picks and his proposed initiatives.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) instructed the Detroit Free Press in November that whereas some within the Democratic Celebration would oppose Trump’s nominees throughout the board, she mentioned she would vote for a few of them.
“Others I may not, but I got to see the full file paperwork,” she mentioned.
And after Trump introduced the formation of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among the many first to announce his help for the initiative, which might be co-chaired by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Elon Musk is right,” Sanders wrote in a submit on social platform X. “The Pentagon, with a price range of $886 billion, simply failed its seventh audit in a row. It’s misplaced observe of billions. Final yr, solely 13 senators voted towards the Army Industrial Advanced and a protection price range filled with waste and fraud.
“That must change,” he added.
On the similar time, Democrats acknowledge that they will’t give Trump carte blanche. They nonetheless imagine — even when voters have expressed doubt — that he’s a menace to democracy and {that a} second Trump time period could possibly be harmful as a result of there wouldn’t be so-called guardrails for the president-elect in a second time period.
“That’s part of the problem we’re wrestling with,” one Democratic strategist mentioned. “Trump goes to suggest some loopy s‑‑‑. It’s not like a few of these proposals are going to be affordable.
“Also, let’s not forget that I don’t think he wants to work with us,” the strategist added.
Nonetheless, some Democrats acknowledge that they’ve to vary their method if they need the outcomes to be totally different within the midterm elections in 2026 and within the subsequent presidential election in 2028.
“I think Democrats are signaling that if there’s some good s‑‑‑ happening with Trump, we can rock with that,” a second strategist mentioned.
