Democrats are licking their chops.
The midterm elections are approaching and with them the prospect that Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate. Even with a majority only in the lower chamber, the Democrats would have the power to torment President Trump.
“November is going to be a disaster,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn told the New York Times. Trump is “going to have the most miserable two years of his life in the last two years of his term.”
Now a lame duck, partly thanks to the president endorsing his rival in the Texas GOP primary, the senator signaled he will not defer to the president during the remainder of his term. With Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy also primaried by a Trump-endorsed candidate, the next seven months, never mind the next two years, could be difficult for the president.
As happy a thought as it may be for Democrats, devoting most of their energies to magnifying the president’s miseries would be a highway to nowhere – for themselves and more importantly for the country.
Donald Trump is certainly a most polarizing figure. For a large portion of the American electorate, disliking him has become a way of life, along with the endless search for childcare and affordable staycations. Vocal grassroots Democratic activists are egging on their representatives to take out the long knives. Campaign ads sharpen them.
Former Obama administration fixture Susan Rice has called for “an accountability agenda” when her party returns to power. Like the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, who said freedom would come “by cutting off five or six hundred heads,” Rice does not want to stop with investigations of the president and his senior officials. Corporations, law firms, and other institutions that complied with his demands should also be penalized – again. (It may be worth remembering that Marat was killed by a knife-wielding assassin while he was taking a medicinal bath.)
Americans live in a bifurcated world. They are mesmerized by the endless press coverage of mud-wrestling politicians. The fascination boils down to what musician and satirist Frank Zappa called “cheap entertainment.” But all that this entertainment achieves – and I use the word “achieve” advisedly – is more polarization. In the other world voters cope with the harsh realities of everyday life in a time of stubbornly chronic inflation. They are painfully aware how much money they are digging out of their wallets to pay for eggs, gasoline, health care, and a mortgage or rent. Here, with action and not reaction, legislators can make a tangible difference in the quality of American lives and ratchet up the public’s optimism about the future. This is essential to keeping the American Experiment alive.
Polling data is clear not only about Democratic prospects in November, but also about the wallet worries of the great mass of Americans. A Fox News poll released this week found that only 12% of voters report that they are getting ahead financially. An affordability agenda takes precedence over a performative accountability agenda. Or it should.
Americans want prices to stabilize, housing to be within reach, health care to be available and affordable, and borders to be secure. They worry AI will take their jobs. These sentiments are significant among groups that have supported Trump as well as among Democrats. This does not mean Trump voters are ready to leap into the arms of the Democrats, but their desires cry out for help from those who offer solutions.
We also know what the public does not want: a vengeance crusade. A recent poll by Third Way, a moderate Democrat think tank, asked respondents what they hoped the Democrats would prioritize if they took control of Congress in the November midterms. By a margin of 40 percentage points voters thought the Democrats should “bring down costs for the American people, not investigations and impeachment.”
The Third Way is pushing the point with Democrats. It won’t be possible to keep them from launching investigations, acknowledges Matt Bennett, the organization’s co-founder and a senior vice president. He thinks some issues, such as FBI seizure of ballots in state elections, would call for action. Democrats, as well as Republicans, should hold the executive branch accountable. But affordability needs to be the party mantra.
Other organizations besides Third Way are making the same point. The centrist Forward Party is seeking independent candidates interested in “big innovative policy solutions,” as its CEO Lindsey Drath puts it. Impeachment is not a priority.
There are obvious reasons House impeachment of the president or his Cabinet is unwise. In addition to taking time away from addressing voters’ authentic problems, it leads nowhere. Even if Democrats win a majority of the seats in the Senate, they would never get the necessary supermajority of 67 votes to remove the president from office, and the same likely goes for his Cabinet.
Many House committee investigations will go nowhere either. The Trump administration can scoff at subpoenas and drag its feet in other ways. The net result is more cheap entertainment and more wasted time.
In addition to its futility, a revenge agenda is bad politics. Independents are less keen on impeachment and investigations than Democrats. It would be a mistake for the party to play to its hardcore Democratic base only to lose support from independents who are essential for winning elections. The party would, in effect, fall into its own trap.
Helping the Trump administration focus on bread-and-butter issues is not only high-minded. It can encourage cooperation on many fronts. It is also useful for building Democratic credibility with the moderate middle, which is key to making progress in the next presidential election.
Although Democrats may not like to admit it, Trump’s promises during the 2024 election are the ones to build on: bringing down inflation and staying out of foreign wars. The latter, as well as curtailment of many of the new tariffs, would help achieve the inflation goal as well as direct attention to domestic issues. Trump deserves credit for fulfilling his promise to reduce illegal immigration, something the Biden administration never really even attempted.
A long list of adjustments to these policies are warranted. Majorities of Americans favor (as polls show) a more humanitarian thrust to the treatment of immigrants. We can be more open to immigrants needed in service industries and, at the same time, welcome the intellectual capital that highly trained immigrants bring to our shores.
Donald Trump has led a Republican shift away from their traditional hands-off attitude toward government involvement with the private sector. This may shift again when he is out of office, and Democrats need to help free up the private sector.
As argued by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein in their book “Abundance,” published at the start of the current Trump term, the United States needs to remove many of the regulatory barriers that hinder innovative ideas from coming to the market or jack up the cost of building houses. “Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do,” Thompson and Klein wrote. As I observed at the time, this was good advice. It’s even better advice now.
For the Democrats, the next two years can be performative in a productive way by building a platform that resonates with struggling elements of the electorate. This is not a simple matter, of course. There are choices to be made. Now is the time to field test policy options.
Democrats must show they have a plan for governing. Recrimination and retribution are not solutions, except perhaps in the minds of the most economically secure elements of the Democratic Party.
Elites can enjoy sticking it to Trump and fill up the gas tanks of their cars without looking at the price at the pump. But they should remember a warning from 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche about the dangers of going after perceived monsters tooth and nail: “Whoever battles monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
