“None of this feels like you’re fighting for us … The words are great, but I’m really not seeing any action,” said an exasperated constituent at a town hall event held in March by Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet.
According to reports, much of the anger in the room was aimed at the Democrats lacklustre fightback against Trump, and specifically a decision by some Democratic senators to support a Republican government funding bill in order to avert a federal government shutdown.
Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to support this bill attracted criticism from within the party. Opponents argued that rejecting the bill and forcing a government shutdown would have required Trump and Republicans to rethink their strategy and negotiate a more palatable deal with Democrats. Schumer, however, argued that it was a far worse option to allow “Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown”.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered a sharp critique of Schumer’s approach, saying “America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way”.
Some within the party viewed this as a missed opportunity by Democrats to portray themselves as an active opposition to Trump’s agenda, especially as Republicans currently control both parts of Congress – the US House of Representatives and the Senate.
To progress to a vote on a bill in the Senate requires 60 votes. With 52 yes votes on their government-funding bill, Republicans needed eight Democrats to switch sides. Schumer could have sunk the bill and shut down the federal government. But, as Time magazine’s Philip Elliott said, while Democrats had this option, they “lacked the bandwidth to sell it as the other guys’ fault, or put forth a unified plan on how to reopen the government on better terms”.
Nevertheless, the outcry within Democrat circles was fierce. Prominent progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said that “there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal”. The fallout exposed wider divisions within the party, as well as friction between Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Polling data released in March showed Democrats with a favourability score of 29%, the party’s lowest point since 1992. This came as some of the Democrats’ major financial backers were publicly critical of the party’s ineffective and lethargic opposition and withheld financial backing.
Effective Democratic opposition will require sustained work, which connects with and mobilises voters. Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that previous victories “demonstrated that long-term success involves many steps, from … political alliance-building to candidate recruitment, fundraising, registration drives, and get-out-the-vote efforts”.
Some Democrats in Congress are trying to hold the Trump administration accountable. Congressman James Raskin of Maryland and California Senator Adam Schiff have convened “shadow hearings” to highlight what they allege to be dubious decisions. Other Democrats have signed onto several court briefs that have challenged some of Trump’s executive orders.
Other notable Democrats are mounting a fightback by trying to rally their supporters. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have held a series of rallies that saw huge crowds of over 200,000 people turn out in mainly Republican-supporting states to hear their anti-Trump message. Sanders declared that the “future of the Democratic Party is not going to rest with the kind of leadership that we’ve had”.
Arguably the defining moment from this turbulent three-month period of Trump’s second term was the president’s “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, when he imposed sweeping new tariffs on many major trading partners across the world.
The economic turmoil that followed presented Democrats with a political opportunity. Yet their immediate response was restrained and lacklustre.
As the economic shock waves from Trump’s tariff blitz reverberated, Jonathan Chait, staff writer at the Atlantic, asked why was Trump facing sharper political attacks from his allies than he is from the putative opposition.
Weeks of market mayhem have given Democrats an opening to challenge Republican dominance in Washington ahead of next year’s midterm elections. A recent Morning Consult poll showed Democrats, for the first time in four-years, enjoying a three percentage point advantage (46% to 43%) over Republicans on economic competency.
Democrats will have greater leverage if Trump’s tariff policies lead to inflation, and prices rising or even a recession.
There’s just over 18 months until the next set of national elections in the US. In that time Democrats face the challenge of reconnecting with voters.
Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive grassroots organisation, Indivisible, gave an ominous judgement of the party’s current predicament, stating there have been “a lot of episodes over the last few months that have really soured people on whether the Democratic Party has … a clear assessment of the danger it’s facing right now”.
This warning aside, three elections held at the beginning of April gave Democrats cause for some optimism. In a contest for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, the Trump-backed candidate, who was supported financially by the president’s ally Elon Musk, lost by a significant margin in a state that Trump won last November.
In two congressional races in Florida, while the Republicans held both seats, results were far closer than those seen two years ago, signalling some disapproval of Republican policy.
Elaine Kamarck, a Brookings fellow, believes that the large demonstrations that have sprung up around the country over the past months have started to alter the mood within the Democratic party, and that’s something they can build on.
Richard Hargy, Visiting Research Fellow in International Studies, Queen's University Belfast
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.