Where are the Democrats?

WASHINGTON, DC: In a recent New York Times op-ed, veteran Democratic strategist James Carville suggested a “daring political maneuver” for his party in response to US President Donald Trump’s shock-and-awe tactics: “roll over and play dead.” Unsurprisingly, his suggestion elicited howls of disapproval and scathing rebukes from Democrats across the spectrum. But one could argue, especially after the party’s feckless response to Trump’s joint address to Congress, that it has already taken this advice to heart.

There are several problems with such a strategy. For starters, the idea that Republicans “flat out suck at governing” is greatly exaggerated. Carville cites both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush (for whom I worked) as stumbling economically. To be sure, his critiques of Trump are accurate – namely, that his first administration accomplished little beyond tax cuts for the wealthy and 500 miles of a border wall, while his second is focused on dismantling the federal government. But Carville conveniently leaves out a key ingredient in the current mess: the Democratic Party.

Yes, Bill Clinton – the Democrat whom Carville helped elect in 1992 – got a lot done during his presidency, was re-elected by a wide margin, and left office with an astonishing 66% approval rating. But this productivity had a price: Clinton’s support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and mass incarceration, his repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (which separated commercial and investment banking activities in the United States), and his push to normalise trade relations with China created several downstream effects. Specifically, these neoliberal policies paved the way for the 2008 financial crisis and contributed to the yawning wealth gap that has pushed so many working-class voters into the arms of Trump’s false populism, or away from politics altogether.

The Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election – their second loss to Trump – not simply because of Joe Biden’s age or Kamala Harris’s policies, but, more importantly, because of the party’s decades-long shift away from labour and towards the well-heeled coastal elite. This new orientation caused the party to haemorrhage support not only among the white working class, but among Latino workers, too. Moreover, millions of voters in crucial swing states stayed home.

With Republicans in control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and with a six-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Democrats are undoubtedly backed into a corner and have limited institutional power to rein in Trump. But giving up the fight hardly seems like a successful strategy for winning back support. The current approach that most House and Senate Democrats are taking – making appearances on MSNBC and friendly podcasts while clinging to decorum – is no substitute for strong leadership and a unified front.

Where Democrats should be spending their time is in their own districts, in Republican districts, and in states that they have lost in recent years. That is the only way to develop a credible and clear-eyed plan to address America’s problems.

Democrats should also be encouraging the party’s state governors to stand up against the Trump administration’s most damaging policies. They should also focus attention – and wallets – on voters who are unhappy or fickle about their representatives in Washington.

Such engagement with voters and pushback against the administration are especially important because the current political landscape has shifted radically since the 1990s, when Carville was in the electoral trenches. Trump entered national politics a decade ago, and the highly organised, well-resourced, and relentless conservative movement supporting him has spent 40 years working towards this moment. As long-time Democratic strategist Joe Trippi recently noted on his podcast, this is a different time, and we are playing a different game.

As a result, while midterm congressional elections have traditionally favoured the opposition party, Democrats cannot bank on a successful outcome in 2026. Whatever happens with a government shutdown, a debt-ceiling fight, or more cuts to federal programmes, the Republican Party and its propaganda machine will continue to blame Democrats all day, every day, for the next 20 months.

Moreover, we should be under no illusion that the 2026 elections will run smoothly or efficiently. The Trump administration’s funding cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was tasked with combating foreign information operations, will undermine election security. Similarly, grants and payments previously made under the Help America Vote Act are facing scrutiny; slashing this spending could force state and local election administrators to do more with less, often in the face of hostile state legislatures.

If the Democrats opt to heed Carville’s counsel and watch the country burn, in the hopes that voters will reward them for the damage wrought by Trump 2.0, it means that they truly have learnt nothing. Chief among the party’s political missteps in last year’s presidential campaign was spending too much time talking about why Trump is bad, and not enough time explaining their plans for the American people. If the old adage “you can’t beat something with nothing” is true, then suggesting that the Democratic Party play possum is just more of the same bad politics.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.
www.project-syndicate.org

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