Where to now for divided US Democrats as they struggle to oppose Trump

Plenty of Democrats think that picking battles is the wrong approach when dealing with a president who is willing to disregard constitutional norms and legal guidelines.

On a private call with Schumer last week, a half-dozen Democratic governors pressed him to be more aggressive in opposing the entire Trump agenda – not just those issues on which the party thinks it can score strategic victories.

“He is not somebody that you can appease,” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said in an interview. “We’ve got to stand up and fight. And by the way, at the state level, I think many of us are. But I think that we’ve got to make sure that in the Senate and the House, that the people who have a platform are standing up.”

Democrats broadly agree that they need to do more to address the issues that powered Trump’s campaign, such as grocery costs, inflation and immigration. But there is little consensus on how – or even whether – to prioritise the party’s traditional concerns, including abortion rights, LGBTQ equality and climate change. Some Democrats fear that even as those issues continued to animate the party’s base, they failed to resonate among a broader swath of voters in the last presidential election.

“We have no coherent message,” Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett said. “This guy is psychotic, and there’s so much, but everything that underlines it is white supremacy and hate. There needs to be a message that is clear on at least the underlying thing that comes with all of this.”

Still, a healthy segment of the party believes that a narrow focus on the economy is the best way to win back voters who supported Trump because they hoped he would lower prices and make their lives easier.

“There are people in the middle – and trust me, there’s a lot of them – that wanted costs to go down,” Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota said. “Instead, what they see is chaos going up, corruption going up with the firing of the inspector generals, and guess what else is going up? Egg prices.“

Calls for tactical tweaks and patience

The tepid race for DNC chair illustrated the lack of a broad party message that goes beyond attacking Trump to offer a new vision.

As party members gathered in Washington on the weekend, they heard from candidates for chair who offered largely tactical solutions and fiery attacks on Trump that echoed the party’s message eight years ago. The eventual winner, Martin, offered a diagnosis that was all about how the party communicated, rather than what it was saying.

“The policies that we support and the message that we have is not wrong,” Martin said in an interview after his victory. “It is a messaging problem and a brand problem. Those voters are not connecting our policies with their lives.”

Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat who is running for governor of New Jersey, said the party must reset its message to focus more intensely on affordability – lowering costs of housing, groceries and child care.

“Within the party, we need to make sure we have a very clear direction to go,” he said. “We need to have our own ideas. We’ll never win again if we are just playing defence.”

Many Democrats believe any evolution will come not from leaders in Washington but from what many see as a strong bench of governors, attorneys-general and state legislators. Martin acknowledged that the party’s 2028 presidential primary race – probably two years away from fully beginning – would go a long way toward determining an affirmative Democratic message. Martin sees his job largely as reshaping the party’s infrastructure – including Democratic ad spending, data collection and state party resources – for a future in which the Sun Belt becomes more politically dominant than the Rust Belt.

In private discussions, former president Barack Obama has compared this moment to early 2005, after Democrats had lost the White House and control of Congress, according to a person briefed on the conversations. Two years later, Democrats gained control of Congress. And two years after that, Obama became the country’s first African-American president and re-energised the party.

“We’re going to have midterm elections quicker than you may know,” former Washington governor Jay Inslee said. “And the last time we picked up all kinds of seats, and I’m looking forward to that again.”

Yet there is little question that for now, at least, Democrats are at a low point.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted the week after Trump took office found that 57 per cent of voters viewed the Democratic Party unfavourably – the highest level since 2008.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.