Democrats must work with President Trump — strategically

Since election night two months ago, Democrats on Capitol Hill have been quietly wrestling with a question that will define the next four years of their political world. With anti-Trump resistance politics in ruins and large portions of the Democratic coalition shifting right, to what extent should Democrats work with a MAGA movement they’ve spent years denouncing as dangerous?

The question of how and whether to align with Donald Trump on policy has divided the party and even split the progressive movement. Lefty Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) call for bipartisan engagement with Elon Musk’s government efficiency group led to an outpouring of venom from progressives, for whom Musk is a special kind of poison. Others, including strategist David Axelrod, reject out of hand the idea that Trump would even consider working with Democrats.

If Democrats want to win back the voters who abandoned them in November, they’ll need to learn to take wins where they can in a government dominated by an ideology they find repulsive. That might turn some stomachs, but politics is the art of making the best of a bad situation. Even in the darkness of Trumpism, Democrats have a real opportunity to deliver real positive change for their constituents. They should.

Though Khanna is too idealistic about Musk’s actual intentions for DOGE, he’s right about how important it is that Democrats avoid becoming another “Party of No.” Democrats may find President-elect Trump’s tall tale populism disgraceful, but most voters support his tough talk around immigration, high prices and American global competitiveness. Ignoring that reality landed Democrats in the ditch in 2024, and they can hardly afford a repeat of that showing in two years.

There are also clear areas of weakness that Democrats can exploit. Voters remain skeptical of Trump’s price-hiking tariff threats, and they disagree with his sympathetic views toward the world’s autocrats. Those disagreements are especially visible among young voters who shifted to Trump in November. But first Democrats will need to get voters listening again — and the way to do that is by undermining Republicans’ message that the Democratic Party is solely out to obstruct Trump’s second-term agenda.

The roadmap is there. Trump’s broad-strokes approach means he’ll need Congress to flesh out the details of how they achieve his lofty (and often conflicting) goals. That’s a wider playing field than Democrats think, and engaging the process to make bad bills better doesn’t weaken the party’s legitimate criticisms of Trump’s squishy platform. But unlike when Republicans enjoyed the leverage of divided government, Democrats find themselves with few levers to pull in order to meaningfully delay the legislative process.

So where can Democrats find those wins? Of all places, immigration reform.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already opened negotiations with Republicans on pairing increased funding for border enforcement with a deal to provide legal status to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, popularly known as DREAMers. Trump’s own position is hazy. Though the incoming president said as recently as last month that he supports DREAMers, he’s yet to outline any clear policy mechanisms for his expected immigration package. Democrats may balk at helping Trump enact immigration policies they’ve long opposed, but cutting a deal will help mend Democrats’ tattered public image on immigration while also securing a long-sought resolution for migrants brought to this country as children.

Acknowledging their unpopularity on immigration will also help Democrats reopen conversations with the immigrant communities that supported Trump in November. That voter bloc was a long-time Democratic stalwart before its big shift in 2024, but divisions over immigration policy have been sapping immigrant support for Democrats for years. Those voters tell pollsters they don’t feel fully represented by either political party. They support the DREAMers but align with the GOP on policing the border. These are voters Democrats can win back, but it will require a willingness to bend.

Democrats also share an unlikely commonality with MAGA’s populist base: Both groups believe in taxing the ultra-rich. “We have to increase taxes on the wealthy,” Trump ally Steve Bannon reiterated last month on his show “War Room.” Many working-class MAGA voters feel the same, and for all its faults, Trump's movement has been built in large part on actually listening to his own base. It may seem strange that a president-elect who is permanently shadowed by mega-billionaire Elon Musk would be open to raising taxes on his wealthy donors, but we live in interesting times.

Trump’s transactional approach to politics means that there are no such things as permanent alliances — even between Republicans and the ultra-rich. If Trump sees raising taxes on the wealthy as the way to win other victories he cares more immediately about, Democrats must be willing to seriously engage the president-elect’s fickleness. If they don’t, the left will find itself left behind by events as Republicans spend the next two to four years legislating their vision for America.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.

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