Washington
CNN
—
President Donald Trump is already testing the limits of Hill Democrats, who have pledged to be less hostile the second time around.
Privately, Democrats largely agreed that it was time to end capital resistance to the newly sworn-in president. Then, in his first 24 hours in office, Trump released those who violently attacked the police protecting the Capitol four years ago.
Suddenly, the party’s attempt to usher in a new era of responsiveness to the White House is proving more complicated in practice. Just days into his second term, Trump is once again attacking his political opponents and muddling their strategy in real time.
“The natural inclination is to fight, fight, fight, fight,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a centrist Democrat who represents a Trump-won district on Long Island. Suozzi stressed that Democrats need to be more disciplined in their policies to avoid their more reactionary tactics: “That’s what got us to this point. »
Even so, he and others recognize that they cannot ignore the moment when Trump is allowing the Jan. 6 rioters to go free at the same time he is pushing to deport other violent criminals. “I mean, come on,” Suozzi said exasperatedly.
“He makes it pretty difficult to want to work with him,” added Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, who issued a scathing statement on the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom used Tasers, bear spray and other weapons to physically attack several police officers. officers who live in his district.
Prominent Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have urged their members to stick to substantive policy differences, rather than personality clashes and social media clapbacks with a man who won the popular vote. But internal tensions remain within the party over where to draw the line on Trump. Democrats in Trump-won territory head to Mar-a-Lago and vote for GOP bills on immigration and trans athletes, while others protest his inauguration and grill his Cabinet picks in made-for-TV moments.
Regarding pardons specifically, Jeffries privately told Democrats on Wednesday that they should hammer home Trump’s decision to release the Jan. 6 rioters in a way that makes clear how it endangers the safety of the American people, according to two people present in the room. And the focus was less on Trump and more on the complicity of House Republicans – those who will be on the ballot in two years.
Democrats have also tried to demonstrate that what Trump is doing isn’t actually helping the Americans who voted for him.
“I think he’s trying to flood the area” with executive orders, said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. “Trump was hired because he thought he would help lower food prices. What does pardoning literally hundreds of criminals who attacked police officers have to do with drop in food prices?
With their party still trailing, some Democrats are eager to discuss a unified message for Trump’s second term — preferably one that doesn’t revolve around him. The plan is to promote an economy-centered view, attacking the Republican Party almost exclusively on cost issues, while ignoring all but the most egregious of Trump’s actions. Jeffries himself said on the first day of the new Congress that he would work with Republicans where possible, but would “push back against far-right extremism whenever necessary.”
“We should not have a knee-jerk reaction to oppose everything. We should really focus on what they’re trying to pass,” said Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada, who is one of several centrist Democrats encouraging the party to be more strategic in its response to Trump this time around. .
And there’s a key reason for that: “I think the main difference is that Trump won the popular vote. He certainly won my district.
But this shift in tone is complicated, with an emboldened Trump making bigger promises than expected in his first days in office. Then there are Democrats’ own difficulties, including the lack of a clear message or a messenger to deliver it, according to interviews with dozens of lawmakers, campaign workers and top aides.
“It’s not like everyone has surrendered,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, describing his party as being in a holding pattern as it engages in “cerebral” issues on the lessons learned from Trump’s victory.
“People go around in circles and quietly discuss what the strategy should be,” he said. “Are there any changes we need to make?” Do we hold Trump responsible for everything we don’t like and what he does? Or should we be selective?
How Democrats attempt to handle the second Trump administration is playing out in real time during the confirmation hearings.
While a hearing for Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth was marked by burning questions about Hegseth’s personal life, including a particularly difficult exchange with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia about Hegseth’s marriages and an unexpected pregnancy, other hearings—including those for Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent and Department of Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem—were relatively civil by partisan standards and focused much more on policy disagreements than on personal animosity.
Several Democrats say they are trying to find candidates they can vote for even if they don’t completely agree with them on policy.
“This guy is clearly not qualified,” Warner said of Hegseth. “I support a number of Trump’s nominees. I voted for Ratcliffe (Trump’s nominee to head the CIA), I voted for Bessent, but some of them are way over the line.”
But some Democrats are privately cringing as they watch the most explosive moments of those hearings, particularly Hegseth’s, where they said the tone sounded much more like 2017.
“We’ve gone back to our strategy of ‘attacking it,’ instead of really dealing with the fact that the party doesn’t have a message, doesn’t really have a spokesperson,” said a senior Democrat of the House of Representatives about the party. strategy. “We’re just going back to the strident attacks.”
As this debate over messaging continues, Democrats are also grappling with how to play in a social media landscape in which they feel like they’re lagging behind.
At a private Senate Democratic luncheon last week, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey guided his colleagues through the changing dynamics of a media echo chamber in which conservatives thrive. Ohio, spread quickly in the conservative media sphere and showed that Democrats should try to leverage their own tools to better get their messages across.
One of the positives highlighted by Democrats, according to a close source, was a viral pandemic video of Warner melting tuna in his kitchen, which led to the lawmaker being cheered and jeered by people questioning question his culinary tendencies.
“The communications ecosystem has changed profoundly in ways that most people in their 60s and 70s don’t understand,” one Democratic senator said of the presentation’s message.
The senators talked about the need to repost each other’s social media posts to try to get their message across organically. But they also said they couldn’t completely abandon traditional media.
At one point, a Democrat at the meeting asked if his party had its version of conservative influencers, according to a person present. Booker responded that the party did not have one.
“They have a permanent information ecosystem. We don’t,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said after lunch. “They define us and we cannot define them. No matter how good our message is, it is not reflected, echoed and amplified like theirs.