Senate Dem: Resistance Is Futile?

Say, what’s gotten into Democrats on Capitol Hill these days? Eight years ago, as Donald Trump approached his inauguration, Democrats started ginning up La Resistance and looked for ways to kneecap his administration. In many ways they succeeded, and La Resistance extended until … well, until about ten weeks ago.

Now, however, Democrats want to play well in the sandbox, and not just John Fetterman, who had tried to teach his own party how to behave for months before the election. 

John Fetterman on his upcoming, scheduled meeting with Donald Trump: “President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted. I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania.”

What a refreshing thought.

— Colin Dunlap (@colin_dunlap) January 9, 2025

Fetterman hasn’t abandoned his legislative priorities, but he has consistently approached his duties with a sense of representing the entire Pennsylvania electorate. Suddenly, that approach seems to spreading as the reverberations of a stinging presidential defeat continue. While some still plan to oppose Trump’s agenda and nominees strenuously, the appetite among Democrats for La Resistance obstruction has waned considerably. 

Semafor’s Burgess Everett asked Senate Democrats to explain their strategy, and they put it simply — they need to start listening to voters rather than shriek at them about Trump:

With the progressive “resistance” quiet ahead of Donald Trump’s second term, congressional Democrats are making their own shift: They’re turning away from past portrayals of Trump as a human wrecking ball and toward more potential collaboration.

After ignoring a Republican crackdown on undocumented immigration for months last year, Senate Democrats holstered their filibuster power on Thursday and prepared to work on the bill — which Trump could end up signing into law thanks to their support. Democrats are currently debating whether to also advance a GOP plan to debate sanctions on the International Criminal Court for targeting Israeli leaders with arrest warrants.

On top of that, several Democrats met this week with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose nomination as Trump’s health secretary could eventually become a partisan battle given Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism and other unconventional views. Senate Democrats are unlikely to bear hug most of Trump’s nominees beyond their colleague Marco Rubio and a handful of others, but they’re making clear they’ll at least meet with the president-elect’s most polarizing picks.

Does this sound too good to be true? Undoubtedly. Democrats will still attempt to defeat Trump’s agenda, or at least a good part of it. However, in their first major test yesterday, all but nine Senate Democrats voted to allow debate on a key part of his platform — immigration enforcement and deportation:

84-9 to move forward on Laken Riley Act. https://t.co/ioUtHLlcBV

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 9, 2025

Not only will they debate the Laken Riley Act, they’re highly likely to allow it to come to a floor vote too, which means it will pass at least on a party-line vote. I’d bet it gets somewhere around 65 votes for passage in the end, too.  

As I wrote on Wednesday, the sudden Democrat embrace of the Laken Riley Act — or at least tolerance for debate on it — is a clear signal that the election results have seriously rattled the party. It would have been easy to block debate on this bill, had Democrats retained their appetite for La Resistance. The election shocked them into realizing that the country had grown enraged over the rampant crises at the border and in their communities over the failure of Joe Biden and Democrats to prioritize their security over the wokeness that drove their policies over the last four years. 

That means listening to voters, especially after the election made it clear that the electorate wants Trump to take charge again. Senate Democrat Peter Welch told Everett that Democrats have to accept reality:

“It’s just accepting the reality that Trump won. And us just saying he’s a chaotic guy goes nowhere. That’s just baked into people’s consciousness,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told Semafor of the party’s strategy. “The fact is, people want change. So that means we have to be willing to change as well.” …

It’s too early to say that Trump’s presidency will end up with the same number of bipartisan policymaking victories — he squandered several opportunities during his first term to address immigration, background checks for gun buyers and roads and bridges. Yet it’s clear that Democrats are not looking to play the role of early obstructionists the way they did when Trump first took office; instead, they’re looking to disarm GOP attacks that they are soft on Israel and the border.

Those aren’t just “GOP attacks”; Democrats have been soft on the border and Israel, and ‘soft’ understates the problem. Biden and senior Democrats spent the last 15 months pandering to Hamas apologists after the October 7 massacre, and the last four years pandering to the ‘Latinx’ radicals on border policies. They’re lucky that  the 2024 election didn’t turn into a rout, and if they don’t dump the radicals, then 2026 won’t look much better for them. 

Addendum: Not everyone has gotten the memo. Yesterday, the California legislature gaveled itself into a special session to deal with the catastrophic wildfires — oh wait, that’s not what they’re doing. Democrats in the state legislature are wasting time on La Resistance 2.0, almost literally fiddling while Los Angeles burns. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas got reduced to sputtering when a reporter challenged him on Democrats’ priorities:

As wildfires rage in Los Angeles, Speaker of California’s Assembly Robert Rivas would not answer my questions, if now is the right time to have a special session to legally fight Donald Trump.

Both the CA Senate & Assembly gaveled into the Trump-related special session today. pic.twitter.com/GfgXkGnrDj

— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) January 9, 2025

“Is now the right time to have a special legislative session on allocating money to fight Trump in a way that you could already do without a special legislative session?” Zavala wondered.

“Um, so I’m, ya know, I’m here t-to address this, this, uh, you know, these, these, these, these… wildfires. This is a historic wildfire,” a flummoxed Rivas replied. “This is a historic event, these wildfires, as I mention, are gonna be quite possibly some of the worst wildfires and disasters in the state and national history.”

Oof. Zavala was undeterred by Rivas’ response. She kept pressing.

“But minutes ago, your House, while this wildfire is happening and while people are trying to understand what’s going on, and are worried about disaster relief, worried about the ability to get homeowners insurance,” she continued, “your chamber gaveled in a special legislative session to prepare for Donald Trump.”

Sheer idiocy. But will California voters finally hold Democrats accountable for it?