The Democrats’ changed attitudes toward the new Trump administration

The early attitudes from Democrats toward the new Trump administration are difficult to judge in a vacuum — and that’s the context we’re currently in a dozen days before the second inaugural. Last time around, it was only after the combination hits of the Women’s March and the manufactured Russiagate freakout that we saw elected Democrats put in a position where anything less than loud resistance was unacceptable. So here, in the in-between time before Trump returns to the White House, the positioning may not accurately reflect where things will be a month from now.

That being said, there are signals — and they already reflect a different attitude from some Democrats.

Consider the application of the lesson as it related to the Laken Riley Act, which passed the House yesterday with the votes of all Republicans and forty-eight Democrats (including several freshmen). On the Senate side, it has the support of John Fetterman, new Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff (yep, in case you forgot he’s a senator), and, perhaps most notably, Democratic Senate Campaign Committee chair Gary Peters, who faces a potentially challenging re-election task in Michigan.

The point shouldn’t be lost that this is an early move on an area of policy where the progressive left used to be powerful enough to prevent any moves to the right, or even (as in this case) the center. It’s a sign that there’s an opening with newer Democrats after the 2024 defeat — and even if the likes of the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman insist Trump has no “historic mandate” for his agenda, the people who actually depend on the views of voters for their jobs believe otherwise — even among Democrats in New York.

More about the perspective of Capitol Hill Democrats from Punchbowl:

Several Democrats told us they’re open to teaming up with Trump but made clear they’re picking and choosing their spots. Some potential areas of common ground Democrats listed include the border and immigration, economic issues and the so-called “DoGE” effort, which will aim to root out wasteful government spending.

And their bipartisan appetite has already been put to the test in the new Congress. Forty-eight House Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act on Tuesday, eleven more than the number who voted for the measure last Congress. Still, the vast majority of House Democrats — 159 — opposed the legislation.

The bill, which gives ICE more authority to detain criminally accused undocumented immigrants, will begin the process of getting a Senate vote later this week.

Representative Jared Moskowitz said the uptick in support from his party reflects how Democrats are digesting the election results, noting immigration was “on the ballot” in November.

“I don’t think the American people want extremism, but they do want changes at the border,” he told us. “On some of these issues, we were to the left of the American people.”

This time around, it feels very different from eight years ago. There’s a smart quote in that piece from a young Democrat who seems pretty clear-eyed: “The reason why I think oftentimes Democrats occasionally lose elections is because we’re too reflexively anti-Republican, and that we don’t lean into an ambitious vision for working-class Americans strongly enough.”

That Democrat? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Maybe the left is learning, after all.