Resistance: How should Democrats oppose Trump?

The reviews are in, said Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling in The New Republic, and the “so-called resistance” to President Trump’s second term is officially a flop. A new poll from Blueprint, a liberal research firm, found that 40 percent of registered voters think the Democratic Party “doesn’t have any strategy at all” for opposing Trump, while another 24 percent believe Democrats do have a strategy “but it’s not working.” Only 10 percent think the party has “a good strategy.” What’s even more depressing is that this poll was taken before Trump’s speech to Congress last week. While Trump boasted and lied, Democrats expressed their opposition with a “confused” series of gestures. Texas Rep. Al Green, 77, shouted “No mandate!” and waved his cane—which got him escorted from the House chamber and, this week, censured by his colleagues—while other lawmakers held up small signs bearing slogans such as “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicaid.” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) tried to sound “modest and patriotic” delivering the Democratic response, said Matthew Continetti in National Review. She calmly denounced Elon Musk and called for fixing the “broken immigration system.” But the stark contrast with Green’s “hysterical display” only served to showcase Democrats’ existential “identity crisis.” The party has no power, no leader, no coherent plan to take on Trump, and “no path out of the wilderness.”

The smartest thing Democrats can do now is “roll over and play dead,” said James Carville in The New York Times. They lack the votes to block Trump’s agenda, and last week’s pathetic displays only made the party look weak. Far better to sit back, stay quiet, and let Trump, Musk, and “the most incompetent Cabinet in modern history” remind voters of Democrats’ relative sanity, moderation, and competence. “It won’t take long.” Grocery prices are up, the stock market’s down, and Trump’s approval rating is “underwater” in new polls, with about 53 percent of voters disapproving of his performance. Democrats should commit to a “tactical pause” until that number hits the high 50s, then rouse themselves and “go for the jugular.”

“This is horrible advice,” said Norman J. Ornstein in The New Republic. We’re in a “headlong rush to autocracy” that requires Democrats to use the Senate filibuster and every other “tool in the rule book” to obstruct and delay Trump. Democrats in Washington may be powerless, said Perry Bacon Jr. in The Washington Post. But there are 23 Democratic governors and 15 states under full Democratic control that could mount a “better resistance” by opposing Trump’s agenda at a local level. They should treat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as a model, and study how the Republican whipped up popular opposition to President Biden’s immigration policies by sending the National Guard to the border and busing undocumented migrants to blue cities.

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“Attention is everything,” said Peter Hamby in Puck News. November’s “drubbing” taught Democrats two key lessons: First, that they have to drop the alienating progressive pieties; second, that MAGA is beating them, badly, in the new-media battle for “eyeballs” and engagement. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, at least, has heeded both lessons. In the debut episode of his podcast last week, the “perfectly coiffed governor” agreed with his guest, the ultra-MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, that it’s “deeply unfair” to let transgender girls compete in high school sports. Newsom himself has “cringe” tendencies that probably rule him out as his party’s savior, said Lauren Egan in The Bulwark, but he has the right idea. Until Democrats “find their footing” in modern media, they have no realistic hope of resisting Trump’s agenda—an agenda so destructive that “not trying isn’t an option.”