Democrats encouraging compromise with MAGA GOP only help normalize right-wing extremism

Too many in the party buy the lie that the new president is a pro-worker populist while ignoring his obvious plutocratic and authoritarian agenda

U.S. Capitol. March 24, 2013. Photo: Patrick Thibodeau/Creative Commons

This piece was originally published at The Hot Screen.

If you’ve been able to stomach paying attention to U.S. politics since the November election, the news has been bleak. Donald Trump has nominated the incompetent and the ultra-wealthy to key positions in his nascent administration, confirming that oligarchy, looting the public purse, and demolishing effective government in favor of personalistic rule are among his administration highest goals. He’s also signaled that he intends to continue the attack on democracy that previously culminated with January 6, with plans to illegally pursue bogus prosecutions against political “enemies” — perhaps most notably by naming corrupt lackeys like Kash Patel to key law enforcement positions, and in open collusion with congressional Republicans.

All of this was to be expected, particularly by those who opposed Trump’s election and needed no further convincing of his destructive goals. What many of us did not not expect, though, was for the Democratic Party to essentially back down from confronting Trump, as he’s used the transition period to advance his corrupt, authoritarian vision for America without serious challenge. Even as Trump demonstrates that he lied about his concern for working-class Americans, and sees the presidency as a vehicle for self-enrichment and anti-democratic “retribution,” congressional Democrats have not only shied away from full-on confrontation — some have even indicated their eagerness to work with Trump and the GOP on areas of supposed common interest.

In a vital recent column, Jamelle Bouie ties together the various threads of GOP threat and Democratic retreat in a way that I haven’t seen anyone do since Trump’s election. His focus is on how the Democratic Party is failing to act like a true opposition party, and instead is offering a weak message that encompasses a willingness to cooperate with the GOP alongside a desire not to get “distracted” (in the words of House Minority Leader Representative Hakeem Jeffries) by issues that don’t bear directly on the economic well-being of Americans. Bouie diagnoses this strategy as flowing from a deeply passive understanding of politics and a lack of faith in the Democrats’ ability to motivate or persuade voters.

Crucially, he points out that even judged by the Democrats’ own preferred strategy of allowing Trump and the GOP to make a hash of things and discredit themselves so that Democrats might ride to the rescue, the party should be working even before the new president assumes office to ensure that voters hold Trump and the GOP accountable for predictable failures. For instance, “If Democrats, following the pocketbook strategy, want voters to blame Trump for any price hikes during his administration, they need to do everything they can now, in as dramatic a fashion as they can manage, to make Trump the culprit — to give voters a language with which they can express their anger at the status quo.” Bouie rightly compares the Democrats’ languid attitude to that of Trump, who, as Bouie describes, spent the last four years reviving his public reputation after a failed presidency to the point that he’s now back in the White House.

Bouie points to two other major reasons for Democrats to take the initiative. First, Trump is not nearly as strong as he wants us to believe, due to his incredibly narrow House majority and a lame duck status that will become far more apparent in the second half of his term. Second, they’ve got a responsibility to those who voted for Harris and who oppose authoritarianism. He concludes by urging Democrats to take up the fight and to stir up drama that will get people’s attention and rally support:

It is not a distraction to vocally oppose Trump’s would-be nominees or highlight his extreme intentions. Democrats should look at every aspect of the next Trump administration as an opportunity to do, well, politics — to demonstrate their values and show the extent to which this president has no plan to pursue the public good. The quiet and supposedly responsible approach of the past four years is a dead end. Attention is the only currency that matters, and Democrats need some to spend.

Bouie neatly captures the dynamics of how the Democrats are responding to Trump II and the basic flaws in the party’s strategy; his piece should be read widely, and has the potential to help galvanize rank-and-file Democrats to pressure their elected representatives to action.

In this spirit, I want to dig a bit more into what strikes me as a really central part of his critique: the failure of too many Democrats to grasp that Trump and the GOP have fundamentally changed, and are continuing to change, the basic premises of American politics in a way that renders a Democratic playbook of compromise and detachment deeply self-defeating. Broadly speaking, far too many Democrats are approaching the second Trump administration as if ignorant of his first term failures (including his failure to help working-class Americans in any meaningful way), his propensity to lie shamelessly, and his clear intent to rule as an authoritarian strongman. In particular, they are proceeding as if Trump neither drove the economy off a cliff through his mishandling of the covid pandemic, nor tried to end American democracy by engaging in insurrection following the 2020 election. These are not minor details, but blaring warnings as to what to expect from a second Trump term.

In Democrats’ cautious approach and apparent openness to cooperation with a second Trump administration, they are under the spell of a few fundamental (and frankly, incomprehensible) misperceptions about Donald Trump and the MAGA-fied GOP. First, they are giving credence to a non-existent economic populism on Trump’s part, leading to the futile strategy of trying to work with Trump and the GOP on economic matters. Second, wishes to de-prioritize Trump’s clear authoritarian and anti-government ends (such as calling them “distractions”) over trying to make economic progress for ordinary Americans is utterly wrong-headed. It is based not only on believing Trump’s lies about his concerns for working-class Americans, but on ignoring the fact that his authoritarian goals are both totally out in the open (such as declaring his wish to psychotically seek illegal “retribution” against a class of enemies so broadly defined as to encompass everyone who has ever voted against him) and are largely aimed at destroying the Democrats’ power (and thus their ability to have a meaningful say in national governance, including on economic matters).

On the economic front, the Democrats are already conceding far too much in advance to Trump by assenting to the lie that the GOP has transformed itself into an economically populist, working-class party. In particular, the Democrats are behaving as if Donald Trump is somehow suddenly trustworthy, and that he has truthfully communicated his wish to help middle- and working-class Americans, so that there is a basis for common ground with Democrats. Lending such credence to Trump would have been delusional before his election, based on his first term record of tax cuts for billionaires, hostility to unions, and opposition to an increased minimum wage. Such credence is even more absurd as Trump brazenly moves to stack his new government with a rogue’s gallery of billionaires with no credible interest in helping working Americans; as congressional Republicans salivate over gutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act that provide health care to huge numbers of Americans; and as Trump’s own stated economic priorities like tariffs and deportations will raise the cost of living for ordinary citizens. (For those who are interested, Paul Waldman has written a comprehensive summary of the GOP’s current anti-working class agenda).

The sad and terrible truth is that Donald Trump won the presidency by lying about the economic benefits he would bring to working- and middle-class Americans. He did so by promoting policies that will in actuality hurt such voters (such as tariffs that will raise inflation and mass deportations of immigrants who are helping drive the economy by performing grueling jobs that American citizens don’t actually want to do). Crucially, he was also able to win over Americans concerned with the state of the economy by leaning into what we have to call magical thinking and magical solutions based on the idea that he is an amazing businessman and deal-maker; much of his appeal was rooted in assertions without an ounce of reality to back them up, and yet a sufficient number of voters were swayed by this tantalizing aura of bullshit.

In other words, in the best possible construction of things, Democrats are engaging in an elaborate charade in which they credit the GOP with all sorts of unmerited commitment to economic egalitarianism and justice, when it makes far more sense to simply skip the charade and start fighting Trump’s obvious plutocratic agenda now.

Trump’s self-owning fight in mid-December around a bill to extend government funding through early next year provides yet more powerful, real-world evidence that the agenda of the rich will be the Trump’s administration’s lodestar. After all, the Republican scramble to pass the necessary legislation was kicked off by literally the richest man in the world tweeting that he didn’t like the existing bill. Needless to say, Elon Musk’s objections were not due to the budget’s lack of funding to provide health care to all Americans or to its failure to raise the minimum wage, but based on the timeless right-wing premise that democratic government is no good because it wastes money on things that don’t benefit the wealthy.

Very soon, Donald Trump scrambled to endorse Musk’s obstructionist impulse; in this rapid narrowing of the gap between the words of the world’s richest man and the president-elect, Trump managed to rip open a massive space to question the idea that he’s the avatar for working Americans, and to wonder if he’s actually the puppet of the 1%. As TPM’s Josh Marshall mordantly puts it, “you have probably never had a time in American history where you have all the billionaires lining up and saying pretty much openly and loudly that we’re here as Team Billionaire and here to support the billionaire President and excited to usher in a new era of government of the billionaires, quite literally by the billionaires and really obviously for the billionaires.” In fact, the Musk-driven debacle of the last week is glaring evidence that Democrats should have spent the preceding month communicating to the public that Trump is out for himself and the rich, so that they could have pointed to the multi-billionaire’s political intervention as evidence confirming their framework for describing Trump’s true nature.

The fact that some Democrats attacked Musk’s plutocratic incursion into congressional business is a hopeful sign that though the party has been slow off the mark, it is starting to understand that Trump himself is yielding space for Democrats to assert their role as America’s working people’s party. For instance, representatives Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut accused Musk of undercutting a bipartisan bill due to wanting to protect his business interests in China. DeLauro also referred to the Tesla CEO as “President” Musk; other politicians indicated that they’re not sure if they’re supposed to negotiate with the GOP or Musk. These are worthy attack lines, suggesting both that Trump is not as strong as he’d like to appear and that he’s selling out ordinary Americans’ interests to the highest bidder. Yet such Democratic attacks must be sustained and tied to a broader, accurate portrait of Trump and GOP adherence to an economic vision that privileges the most privileged among us. Musk is a key figure in the GOP’s oligarchic vision for America, but he’s hardly the only American CEO cheering Trump on or providing the Republican Party with financial support.

Just as the Democrats have been taking a far too conciliatory approach to the GOP’s economic agenda, so they have backed off from the necessary, full confrontation with Trump’s autocratic ambitions. Not only has Trump nominated a head of the FBI who sees it as his job to illegally prosecute Trump’s political opponents and who has signaled his desire to jail such “enemies,” he has also been busy intimidating various news outlets in the clear hope of neutering their coverage of his administration. In both cases, Trump and his allies are openly trying to erode the rule of law and the basic foundations of American democracy. For the Democrats to treat this as a sideshow or distraction from the “real” issues of economic security for Americans would be an enormous, even fatal blunder.

Many Democrats are too diligently trying to apply what they believe to be a central lesson of the last election — that their party was perceived by many voters as being insufficiently concerned with their economic suffering, and that this perception was due at least in part to an over-emphasis on the risks to democracy posed by Donald Trump. But even assuming that this critique has some validity, it would be a huge error to apply a supposed lesson about how to appeal to voters during an election campaign to the Democrats’ obligation to defend American democracy against the incoming president following his election. The reality is that there’s a direct connection between the health of American democracy and the U.S. government’s responsiveness to voters’ desire for economic security and opportunity. More specifically, there’s a direct line between Trump and the GOP’s authoritarian aims, and the relative likelihood that the federal government will pass laws and advance policies that help ordinary Americans economically. Given that Donald Trump is already showing a basic contempt for the interests of working Americans even before he’s taken office, is it really plausible that a Trump administration that cows the media and insulates itself from public accountability is doing so as the necessary precursor to making life better for ordinary people? Or is it far likelier that Trump’s authoritarianism is exactly what it looks like, a way to empower and enrich wealthy people like him relative to the mass of ordinary Americans?

But it’s when we look at the precise nature of Donald Trump’s authoritarian tactics that we can see how misguided Democrats would be to believe that defending democracy should be secondary to fighting for Americans’ economic well-being. They seem to think that if they have a place at the table by appearing open to working with the GOP, they can advance policies that provide at least some benefits to millions of Americans. However, a belief that such bipartisanship is possible requires ignoring how Trump and the GOP are simultaneously aiming to enhance their power within American government — not simply by abstractly launching illegal actions against “political enemies,” but specifically by targeting Democratic politicians and small-d democratic guardrails that allow the opposition party to challenge GOP dominance.

When Democrats say that they want to prioritize working on economic issues with the GOP, what they are in fact saying is that they are open to working with a party that is actively working to neutralize them as a political force. While the Democrats might tell themselves they’re strengthening their hand by showing voters they’re wiling to compromise, it’s far likelier that they would be helping normalize a GOP that’s busy hacking away at the final bounds of democratic accountability, and where it’s not just some abstract “American democracy” but literally the Democratic Party in the GOP’s crosshairs.

Democrats are encouraging cognitive dissonance in themselves and in voters when they behave as if the GOP that seeks their destruction is not the same GOP towards which they hold out hope of bipartisan solutions to the nation’s challenges. So long as Donald Trump remains head of the GOP and the party remains supportive of establishing permanent one-party rule in the U.S. to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, the Democrats need to emphasize their fundamental differences from the GOP — pro-worker, pro-health care, pro-environment, pro-democracy — and concentrate on exposing the GOP as the threat and fraud it is.