Democrats are still trying to figure out how to work with - and counter - Donald Trump
Democrats are waking up to the fact they will need to work with Donald Trump the next four years. But they could also have enormous leverage
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Your support makes all the difference.Democrats are still trying to come to grips with the numerous reasons why Kamala Harris lost and now they have a new problem - how do they work with a Donald Trump administration and both houses under his party’s control.
Trump’s election win quickly changed to his transition, where he has made a number of controversial appointments and threatened to use the recess process to get them into power.
In the Senate, Republicans have enough seats for a majority, but many bills need at least 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. That means Democrats are going to have to think fast about how they work with Republicans or counter them given their minority.
Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona won election to a full term just two years before Trump won his state. For his part, Kelly told The Independent he’s worried about whether Trump will compromise legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act, which the president-elect has opposed.
“So I am, more than you know, willing to try to collaborate, work with him, to get them to the point where they realize that this is a big win for our country,” Kelly said, specifically pointing to the number of jobs that it created not just in Arizona but also in states like Ohio and Texas that voted for Trump by wider margins.
“But basically, on any issue which moves our country in the right direction and is, and where I can represent my constituents in ways and I think are appropriate, I'll work with them on anything,” he said.
Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia also represents a state that voted for Trump last week. For his part, he said he hoped he could find common ground.
“As a pastor, I'm accustomed to working with everybody,” he told The Independent. When Warnock ran for Senate in 2022, he did so heavily on the fact he helped pass a cap on insulin to $35 for Medicare patients in the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate and health care law.
“I know that the President-Elect has been engaged, for example, on the issue of prescription drugs,” he said. “So who knows,? Maybe there'll be some common ground, but I will continue to hold fast to my values, protect the people of Georgia, but in the places where I can work together with my Republican colleagues and the incoming administration, I stand ready to do that.”
That does not mean that Democrats will always roll over to Republicans, though. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who lost both of her legs when serving in Iraq, had blunt words about Trump’s nominees such as Pete Hegseth for Pentagon chief.
“He's got a record now, doesn't he of nominating people who are absolutely unqualified for the jobs of which he’s nominating them,” she told The Independent.
And don’t expect Democrats to lift a finger when it comes to helping Senate Republicans confirm Gaetz.
If anything, they win regardless of the outcome: If enough Republicans oppose his nomination to sink him, then Gaetz will not be able to lead the Justice Department. If somehow Republicans muster enough votes to confirm Gaetz despite the fact he faced a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations about sex trafficking, then they would be more than happy to pin that on the GOP in the midterms as they seek to take back the House and Senate.
In the House, the dynamic is a bit different. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered his weekly press conference and he admitted that Democrats will not take back the lower chamber, which they had hoped to do even when it looked like Democrats would lose their Senate majority.
“House Democrats in the new Congress will work to find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible with the incoming administration in a manner consistent with our values,” he told reporters.
If the outgoing Congress is any indication, Trump might actually have to lean on House Democrats more than he wants to admit if the same handful of obstructionists in his own party oppose must-pass spending bills or other types of government legislation.
This gave Jeffries enormous leverage in the 118th Congress, and he used it in the past to make sure that Republicans did not exact steep spending cuts and to ensure that House Speaker Mike Johnson did not face a successful motion to vacate in exchange for providing aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Trump may chafe at the idea that he will still have to work with the Democrats when he has a much bigger mandate this cycle than he did the last time he occupied the White House. But the guy who made a name off billing himself as a master businessman will likely have to re-learn the Art of the Deal if he wants his agenda to survive.
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