Photo: Daniel Cole/Reuters
Much has been made recently of the Democratic Party’s systemic problems. Donald Trump won the popular vote, Republicans netted a healthy Senate majority, and almost every demographic group, absent the white and wealthy, gravitated to the GOP. As Trump has laid waste to the government and cowed civil society, few Democrats could settle on a compelling oppositional message. It was obvious to many Democrats that the tactics of eight years ago — perpetual outrage, constant street protest — failed to curb Trump, but what to do instead? Many activists and members of Congress wanted Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, to shut the government down in protest. Schumer refused; the base of the party collectively howled.
But while it’s true that Democrats still need to address many of their long-term challenges, like winning back the working-class and getting competitive again in rural states, Trump has already catalyzed their comeback. The global economic meltdown triggered by his 1890s-style tariffs is lousy news for anyone with stock market exposure, but it’s great for the many House Democrats campaigning in marginal seats next year. So is Elon Musk’s DOGE, which has proved so alienating that it fueled the Democratic blowout in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race last week and may have flipped Elise Stefanik’s North Country district, had Trump not decided to yank her nomination for Ambassador to the United Nations. As wrong as James Carville often is these days, about American politics — the man was certain, at the end of October Kamala Harris was going to win the election — he might have had a point when he advised, at the end of February, Democrats “roll over and play dead.”
His argument was unsatisfying, if straightforward and probably correct: Trump was in the process of damaging himself and the party, and Democrats should just get out of the way and let him do it.
It’s not as if Democrats have much of a choice. They’re locked out of power and Trump is happy to buck their lawsuits by ignoring what federal judges say. Protests don’t move him, either. And it’s not like Trump or Musk would have cared if Schumer failed to support a continuing resolution to keep the government open. A shutdown would have been a nice excuse to purge more federal employees.
But the good news for the opposition party is that Trump is still Trump. He’s not a diabolical genius or a political mastermind triangulating them into submission. He’s not even George W. Bush, who once enjoyed stratospheric approval ratings. He is reckless, and he can’t check his party’s worst impulses — or his own. Right now, in addition to tanking the stock market, Trump is actively encouraging Republicans in Congress to deliver him a budget reconciliation package that would both slash taxes on the wealthy and gut Medicaid. In 2017, Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act were enough to trigger a backlash that powered a Democratic takeover of Congress. This time around, the ACA is largely safe, but Republicans seem deadly serious about harming the healthcare program that covers 70 million working class and poor Americans, many of them in GOP-run states.
Once Republicans take aim at Medicaid, the Democratic countermessage becomes simple: We will save you from chaos. We are the party of protecting healthcare and your 401(k). We are the party of making sure the VA and the SSA and the EPA still function. We can get you back to normal. On its own, this isn’t enough to guarantee Democrats a durable majority, but it is enough to claw back some of what they’ve lost. If the problem for Democrats, in the early 2020s, was that they had become too culturally left for the country—too insular, too faculty lounge—Trump has made voters forget much of that. He fully owns the sliding stocks; he is the face of American frailty.
There is a reasonable argument for tariffs and protectionism broadly. America should be a nation that builds. Industrial capacity must be restored. But Trump doesn’t have the patience for that. Endless trade wars won’t convince manufacturers to set up shop in the U.S. and there’s little Trump is doing to create the economic conditions that would spur a true domestic manufacturing renaissance. He is not harnessing the power of the federal government to back certain industries, as the Biden administration did; he has no vision for what comes after tariffs. Democrats can easily exploit this lack of vision It’s not hard to imagine the 2026 backlash wave to Trump being larger than 2018’s. Democrats may not only win a House majority but approach margins on the scale of the Republican Tea Party wave of 2010. All of this, then, may lead to a reverse Tea Party year, a battle for government that enlivens ordinary people.
If Trump were wiser, he’d dial down his tariffs to the level of those implemented in the 2010s. He’d fire Musk tomorrow, unwind DOGE, and start to rehire the government workers he fired. He’d toughen the border without attempting to deport nonviolent green card holders for holding political beliefs on Israel he doesn’t like. He would try to formulate an actual industrial policy to help the millions of people in the Midwest who voted for him and he’d follow Republicans like Josh Hawley and try to implement a child tax credit. He’d adopt some of Steve Bannon’s Big Tech skepticism. But Trump isn’t wiser, and he doesn’t know how to course correct. This is what his administration looks like and, on the merits, it’s a failure. Voters know this.. It’s why Democrats are stumbling out of the wilderness.
