Nothing has happened like this since Andrew Jackson and his Tennessee ruffians took the White House in 1829; the new administration is introducing dramatic changes very quickly everywhere across the government. It's surprising when politicians do anything. But when they do much more, much more quickly than they promised, it takes people's heads some time to catch up. And as they do, Trump proceeds.
It took just a couple of weeks, for example, to launch an unprecedented trade war and gift the system by which the federal government processes payments, $6 trillion or so annually, to Elon Musk. Instantly after the inauguration, every agency and company in America started editing their website, scrubbing any indication of DEI or LGBTQ+, changing up their professed identities and missions overnight. We Americans turn out to be more politically flexible than one might have thought.
However, the Democratic Party is flummoxed about how to respond. Indeed, they seem flummoxed about who they are. Observations in this vein get ever-more intense and disturbing. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) told The New York Times that “We have no coherent message." But she suggests one, going back to the paroxysms of 2017: “This guy is psychotic, and there’s so much, but everything that underlines it is white supremacy and hate." A number of sources suggested to the Times that the Dems need to "stand up and fight" on every matter of disagreement.
But Chuck Schumer and incoming Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin take a more traditional approach. After winning the job in an election widely described as “tepid,” Martin said “the policies that we support and the message that we have is not wrong. It is a messaging problem and a brand problem."
"Messaging problem" is a standard way to avoid self-reflection. But I don't think better ads or the right slogan are going to do the job this time. Oppositional forces with less passionate commitment than Crockett have gone beyond tepidity to actual despair. Mustering his troops for the next four years of resistance, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer gave the following pep talk: "We’re not going to go after every single issue. We are picking the most important fights and lying down on the train tracks on those fights."
It doesn't sound like he's focused and ready to fight. It sounds like he knows he's going to get run over by the Trump train. Schumer suggests that the Dems need rescuing, like lovely Nell Fenwick, strapped to the tracks by Snidely Whiplash. But who's going to come to their rescue? The British Labour Party? The Royal Canadian Mounted Police? I'm sure they would if they could, but unfortunately they won't be able to get into the country, which will soon be entirely surrounded by steel walls and trade barriers.
As the Times makes clear in several stories, the editorial board is counting on Amy Klobuchar to save the day. But I think they tried Klobuchar before. “There are people in the middle—and trust me, there’s a lot of them—that wanted costs to go down," remarked Klobuchar, trying not to say too much. "Instead, what they see is chaos going up, corruption going up with the firing of the inspector generals, and guess what else is going up? Egg prices.” But Kamala Harris already lost with the strategy of attacking the inflation of the Biden years.
I see why Democrats feel lost. Trump, as many have pointed out, represents a realignment not only of the government, but of the spectrum of political identities and ideologies. All the Democrats and the mainstream media outlets talk about the "far-right agenda" that Trump is "implementing with head-spinning speed." But the Trump phenomenon has altered the meaning of "left" and "right." That's one reason that the "left" doesn't know how to respond.
Tariffs and protectionist trade policies, for example: are they leftist or rightist? The Democrats and Republicans basically agreed over decades on free trade policies. The North American Free Trade Agreement was a product of the Clinton administration swinging right on trade, and was implemented over the objections of many previously-Democratic unions. Parties and factions have switched back and forth on tariffs since James Madison was president. But at any rate, the goal of re-industrializing the US and saving or creating American manufacturing jobs isn’t the sort of thing pushed by the Bush administrations. It's neither clearly left nor clearly right.
Occasionally, you still hear Democrats revivifying their old refrain that Republicans are "anti-government extremists" who favor dismantling bureaucracies and reducing the size of the state. Trump does intend to dismantle some bureaucracies, even as he produces others (DOGE is not going to be a one-man show, I predict, even if Musk has already managed to jettison Vivek Ramaswamy). But he has an extremely expansive and expensive view of government power, and gloats that the new tariffs will bring a windfall of revenue. There's not a hint of libertarianism in his whole schtick. We should let that show us that we need to reconstrue the political spectrum and any given politicians' place on it.
And as Trump pursues or at least expresses support for isolationist or peacenik foreign policy initiatives and his DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard rejects "regime-change wars," we should let that also register as a reconfiguration of left and right. Meanwhile, Musk's efficiency initiatives recall nothing so much as Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR). Wait, NPR? And the left, since the Dobbs abortion decision, often finds itself defending individual rights and attacking "government interference" as though they've become libertarians themselves.
All of this suggests that the ideological alignments and practical platforms of the two political parties have been transformed, and on certain matters, the parties have switched. The Republicans, now unanimous in the fealty to Trump, have adjusted their belief systems and electoral strategies to suit the new situation. The opposition party, thus far, has not.
Democrats need to ponder not only their "messaging problem" but their very identities. But they shouldn't take too long about it. We need pointed opposition to Trump almost immediately, as Crockett maintains. They shouldn't lay down on the tracks with Chuck.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell
