Democrats struggle over an opposition strategy
Trump generates his own opposition. Don't do things that narrow a potentially broad opposition coalition.
As a Never-Trump conservative, I’m all for an effective opposition to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
Not that I have any expectation that Democrats will craft one, as illustrated by recent events. Nor do I believe that crafting one is politically important in the short-term, defined as between now and the 2026 mid-term election.
Trump generates his own opposition. After two years of the first run of the Trump political soap opera, the body politic gave Democrats control of the House, picking up more than 40 seats. I fully expect the body politic to sour even more thoroughly on Trump II, which is even more chaotic with much darker themes.
One event buttressing skepticism about the likelihood of Democrats crafting an effective opposition was the backlash against the decision by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer not to trigger a government shutdown.
What Schumer did tends to be reported without sufficient precision. He did not vote for the Republican Continuing Resolution to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year. He voted against it. He, and enough other Democrats, voted for cloture rather than use the virtual filibuster to prevent a vote on the actual bill.
Many Democrats are angry at Schumer for giving up a moment of supposed leverage over Trump and congressional Republicans. The hypocrisy of this anger is stunning, even for politicians, since virtually every congressional Democrat criticizing Schumer for not using the virtual filibuster in this instance had previously righteously demanded that the filibuster be abolished entirely.
And leverage to obtain what? The Continuing Resolution only funds the government through the end of September. Republicans made minor changes to the previous CR, but the new one mostly just extends existing spending priorities and amounts. Which Democrats had previously supported and was negotiated last year, when Democrats were in control of the Senate.
The big ask by House Democrats, were their votes needed, was going to be language requiring the Trump administration to spend what Congress appropriates. That, however, is already law, codified in the Impoundment Act. The Trump administration takes the position that such a limitation on the ability of the executive not to spend is unconstitutional. It would be equally as dismissive of any new restatement.
The Trump administration is taking a wrecking ball through federal agencies. What’s the basis for believing that it would tremble and abate at the prospect of a government shutdown? I suspect that it would delight at the opportunity for Elon Musk to make unilateral decisions about which government workers are essential. At least some congressional Republicans would be uncomfortable, substantively and politically, with the government shutting down on their watch. But waiting for congressional Republicans to assert some independence from Trump has become a worthy sequel to Waiting for Godot.
This CR funding the government only through September was a fiscal sideshow, particularly since it largely reflects previous Democratic input. The real action is over what happens after September, and Democrats aren’t out of that game yet.
The House has passed a Budget Resolution providing a framework for spending next fiscal year, beginning in October. However, even though the resolution barely passed, that was the easy part. The resolution just provides general targets, but no specifics. And even that hasn’t been agreed to by the Senate yet.
The difficult part will come from the reconciliation bill and subsequent appropriation bills, all of which will have specifics. It’s easy to vote for a target of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, which is contained in the resolution. Voting for a specific list of $1.5 trillion in cuts is an entirely different matter, one that can turn members of Congress into former members of Congress.
It’s far from certain that congressional Republicans will be able to agree on legislation that authorizes spending past September. And that would put Democrats back in the game.
So, Schumer is being criticized for not shutting down the government over a short-term CR that largely reflects previous Democratic input by invoking a virtual filibuster that Democrats have universally condemned, to accomplish nothing but to make the lot of federal workers even more miserable, when the real fiscal action is just around the corner. This is not a party temperamentally prepared for strategic thinking.
The second event was the Fighting Oligarchy barnstorming crusade through Arizona and other parts of the country by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now, with Musk marauding uncontrolled through federal agencies, there’s a superficial plausibility to this framing. But that’s not what’s really going on.
What we’re actually seeing is a Trumpian version of crony capitalism. Business executives aren’t calling the shots, as in a true oligarchy. Instead, they are expected to bend a knee to Trump to avoid retaliatory regulatory scrutiny or to plead for tariff relief. And, for the most part, they are doing it.
It’s unsurprising that Sanders and AOC wouldn’t see it or acknowledge it. But Democrats generally should understand that the 2024 election was, in part, a repudiation of the woke progressivism that Sanders and AOC represent.
For the 2020 election, Joe Biden developed a unity platform with Sanders and largely implemented it. He was fully committed to identity politics, to the point of saying publicly that he would only consider a black woman for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Inflation and his frailty were the primary reasons Biden’s surrogate, Kamala Harris, lost to Trump. But a lack of enthusiasm for the Biden-Sanders progressive agenda was a factor as well.
Democrats badly need a pro-growth wing that understands and respects the indispensable role private sector investment capital plays and the tax and regulatory policies that foster it. The Democratic Party used to have one. There are seedlings of a renewal sprouting in parts of the intellectual left. But the Sanders/Elizabeth Warren view is politically dominant. The private sector economy Sanders would tolerate wouldn’t produce the revenue needed for the expansive government he favors.
Democratic and liberal activists want someone to give voice to their outrage over the Trump administration. And that’s understandable. There is much to be outraged about, even for those not on the left. And there’s no tactical reason for Democratic politicians not to give voice to that outrage.
However, irrespective of political infighting or barnstorming, what the Democratic Party stands for won’t be decided or even productively discussed until the Democratic presidential nomination process for 2028. That may be frustrating for those on the left, but it probably isn’t politically consequential.
The most inaccurate supposed political wisdom I’ve encountered over the last half century of political participation and observation is: You can’t beat something with nothing. In politics, it’s often enough to just be the other guy when the body politic has had enough of the incumbent. Indeed, at the federal level, that has been the story of the last quarter century, in which voters have serially toggled between the parties, not giving either party control of both the executive and legislative branches for very long.
The opposition to the Trump administration is potentially quite broad. After his erratic tariff policies, Trump can’t escape blame for continued inflation and an economic slowdown, if they occur. Nor if Musk’s random sacking of federal workers results in service delivery problems.
The country has no interest in picking fights with Canada, Greenland, or Panama. While there might be public support for reducing the country’s international footprint, there won’t be for gratuitously alienating allies along the way. Nor for cuddling up with autocrats threatening fellow democracies.
There is public support for getting tough on illegal immigration, but perhaps not for mass deportations to foreign torture chambers without any semblance of due process.
The assertion of emergency powers when there is no true emergency will get tiresome. The unwillingness to be constrained by congressional acts or the decisions of judges is worrisome across a considerable span of the political spectrum.
There is just concern about the damage Trump can do until all this catches up to Republicans politically. And reason not to be confident about my political judgment that Trump II will come a cropper on its own.
If Republicans can’t produce the votes to enact Trump’s fiscal agenda, Democrats might have an opening to do something constructive, rather than just shutting down the government as a futile gesture of protest. Perhaps Godot will finally show up, and congressional Republicans will show some independence. The real action is likely to be in the courts, what they hold and whether the Trump administration complies.
As tough as it may be given Trump’s in-your-face politics, the main thing Democrats should avoid is doing things that could narrow the broad potential opposition coalition. Not all potential anti-Trump voters are Never-Trumpers. Tactically, make voting for the other guy as comfortable for as many people as possible.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.