BURSTA month ago, James Carville, the highly influential Democratic strategist, advised his party to “play dead” and allow President Trump and his Republican allies who control Congress to self-destruct under the weight of unpopular policies.
House Democrats are rejecting the strategy outright.
Heading into the high-stakes battle over Trump’s sweeping domestic agenda, Democratic leaders are instead launching a forceful, in-your-face battle over the GOP’s plans for tax cuts, tougher immigration laws and steep reductions in federal spending, vowing to take the fight directly to the public in hopes that a voter backlash will sink the Republican wishlist before it can reach the president’s desk.
"We are going to fight every day, tooth-and-nail, to make sure that the American people get the benefits they have paid for, like Social Security, and that they deserve, like good public schools,” said Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip, who also singled out proposed cuts to veterans programs and health care benefits as particularly egregious.
“We are ready to match the fire we are hearing at home from people — the outrage and the fear — here in Congress."
From the minority, Democrats have virtually no power to block Trump’s domestic agenda on Capitol Hill, where Republicans control both chambers and GOP leaders are planning to move the legislation on an obscure procedure track, known as reconciliation, that makes Democratic opposition irrelevant if Republicans stay united.
But with Republicans clinging to slim majorities in both chambers, Democrats are ramping up a series of highly public campaigns designed to aggravate voter anxiety surrounding Trump’s domestic agenda — particularly cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs providing basic services to low- and working-class people — and maximize the political risk for vulnerable Republicans who choose to support it.
The campaign features a series of hard-ball tactics aimed not only to persuade a handful of centrist Republicans to oppose the package, but also to demonstrate to the Democrats’ restless base that they’re fighting the good fight against Trump’s efforts to dismantle the federal government and the services it provides. Health care is at the center of the battle.
As part of the effort, Democrats have staged a national “day of action” to highlight the GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts. They’re ramping up in-person town halls in their own districts. And they’ve taken the unusual step of venturing into Republican-held districts to meet with voters behind enemy lines — a concept that gained steam after Republican leaders advised GOP lawmakers to avoid such public events.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has called it an “all hands on deck” moment, and other Democratic leaders have adopted the message.
“It is critical that we convey to the country the seriousness of the moment with respect to the health care that is at risk for hundreds of thousands of Coloradans, and millions of Americans, across the country,” said Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), the fifth-ranking House Democrat.
“I don't think that's a fight that we can take lightly. I think we have to lean in, which is precisely what we're doing,” he continued. “And you're going to see that over the course of the next several weeks become even more pronounced."
The “lean-in” approach is precisely what Carville and like-minded Democrats have counseled against. In a much-discussed New York Times op-ed last month, the former Bill Clinton advisor urged Democrats to lay low heading into the debate over Trump’s domestic priorities — a “tactical pause,” he explained, designed to highlight the internal divisions that have dogged Republicans in the Trump era.
“With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead,” Carville wrote.
“Instead of gearing up to fight them — as we love to do — the most radical thing we can do is nothing at all. Let the Republicans disagree with themselves publicly.”
Both strategies — active and passive — carry their unique set of risks.
Without an obvious national party leader, Democrats have struggled to gain their footing in the early months of Trump’s second term, which has been defined by a blitz of controversial executive orders, federal firings and broader efforts to gut the federal government. Those dynamics have frustrated liberal base voters, who have pressed Democrats to fight harder against the Trump agenda, even as their specific requests have been vaguely defined.
Capitol Hill Democrats are scrambling to answer the call, but they’ve faced some high-profile setbacks along the way.
There was a centrist backlash, for instance, when a pair of House liberals stormed into Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) office, uninvited, to protest Elon Musk’s efforts to gut federal agencies. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) faced similar criticisms for heckling Trump during the president’s speech before Congress earlier this month. And Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) stirred a storm of controversy for referring to Texas Gov. Greg Abbot (R), who has been in a wheelchair for decades, as “governor hot wheels.”
The more passive approach, though, has also been panned — but by the left.
The most explosive case came during the fight earlier this month over the Republicans’ bill to fund the government and prevent a shutdown. In that debate, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his troops in the lower chamber had held the line in opposition to the partisan proposal, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) chose to support the GOP plan, which he deemed a better alternative than a government shutdown.
Even weeks later, some Democrats are boiling over Schumer’s decision, which left the party badly divided, pitting House leaders against those in the Senate over how aggressively to resist the GOP agenda under an unpredictable president.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the youngest member of Congress at age 28, said the divide is neither generational nor ideological. It is tactical.
"It's more, kind-of, the style of fight,” he said. He noted that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who’s been touring the country in fierce opposition to Trump’s agenda, remains an icon in the eyes of much of the party’s liberal base.
“It's less about age, and more about: what are you doing in this moment," Frost said.
Democrats insist the fight over Trump’s domestic agenda will be different than that over spending.
Jeffries has endorsed Schumer’s leadership position following the spending debacle. And Democrats in both chambers appear to be united, to the person, against the GOP’s reconciliation bill. The party leaders have been encouraged by a series of victories in state elections this year, including some in Trump strongholds. And there’s no indication they’re going to let up on the gas heading into the next phases of the reconciliation fight.
“The most important thing is that the substantive fight has been underway from the very beginning,” Jeffries said Thursday. “And it will continue with the relentless energy and righteous indignation that the moment deserves.”