Recently, I began to outline how Democrats should approach a second Trump administration that’s beginning to ever so painfully congeal upon the body politic like the self-inflicted wound that it is. Trump promised corrupt, cruel, and authoritarian rule, and he has shown that he plans to deliver, based on the evidence of his nominations of unfit freaks like RFK Jr. and Pete “pardon me while I help pardon some war criminals” Hegseth. We can already see the outlines of a presidency aiming to target its political enemies, destroy vital functions of government like public health, abandon American allies to the designs of dictators like Vladimir Putin, and sabotage the U.S.’s wobbly progress toward fighting climate change. In the face of the threat he poses, Democrats have every incentive to resist this administration’s malign designs, starting now.
To this end, I want to elaborate on one of my suggested strategies from last time, that Democrats tell the story of the Trump administration both in advance and as it’s happening. In the first place, this involves describing the reasons Trump and MAGA are a threat to the United States — but it also encompasses setting public expectations of what Trump will likely try to do, and describing particular developments in light of this narrative as they happen. Though the Trump administration has yet to take the reins of power, preparations to do so already offer ample examples and opportunities to begin implementing a “confrontation through narration” strategy.
One example: Trump has named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a commission whose ambit is purportedly to increase government efficiency. Without any context for understanding this commission, some voters might take Trump at his word that it’s going to root out government bloat and waste. However, the commission is clearly a cover for helping implement a Project 2025-style purge of the federal government, ridding it of those with experience and expertise so that Trump can replace them with sycophants and ideologues. The commission will also be used to justify massive cutbacks to government services, both as an end in itself and to help offset massive proposed tax cuts for the rich. But Democrats don’t need to wait until the commission returns with its “findings” to talk about its true purpose now, with an eye to telling the larger story that Trump is only interested in helping the rich and in subverting government to serve him and his extremist allies, not the larger public good.
Another, even more urgent example involves Trump’s clear plan to obliterate the rule of law. He has referred approvingly to the immunity that Supreme Court has granted him, and there’s no reason to think he won’t take advantage of this kingly power. Already, we see him taking steps to pursue vendettas against political enemies in his choice of attorney general — first, with the pliant and utterly corrupt Matt Gaetz, then with the pliant and utterly corrupt choice of Pam Bondi when Gaetz withdrew from consideration, and more recently with the nomination of extremist Kash Patel to head the FBI. Talking Points Memo’s David Kurtz gets right to the heart of what’s going on here:
Trump wants to use the Justice Department as a centerpiece of his retribution, corruption, and destruction jihad. It doesn’t much matter who is the figurehead for that effort. The fact that it will no longer be Gaetz doesn’t dramatically change the analysis. Trump is the problem. The president-elect is the source, instigator, and prime mover of the malfeasance.
In this instance, an effective Democratic strategy would view Trump’s attorney general nominee not just as a problem in him- or herself, but as a symptom of a more profound threat that needs to be publicly discussed — that of Trump’s aim to turn the law into an instrument of his will and desire for retribution. The emphasis should be kept on the bigger picture, even as the particulars can be used to make that case. And an understanding that Trump should be the ultimate target does not mean that Democrats need to get trapped in advocating for abstractions and first principles. Rather, in the case of the AG nomination, Bondi now offers specific routes of attack for Democrats to target what Trump’s quest for lawless rule means. As New Republic’s Greg Sargent outlines:
For instance, how will a devoted election denier–turned–attorney general handle remaining prosecutions of people who assaulted the Capitol? Does Bondi view a pardon of all the Jan. 6 criminals as in keeping with the rule of law? One House Democrat points to an interesting wrinkle: If Trump does pardon them, he’ll have to decide between individual pardons and a blanket one. As this Democrat notes, Bondi should be asked: “What does she think of a mass pardon?
Democrats can also press Bondi on how she’ll respond if Trump orders her to drop all remaining January 6 prosecutions. This is an opportunity for political theater: They can highlight specific cases of really heinous January 6 violence and ask Bondi if she’ll defend it when Trump pardons those good people.
In critiquing a specific nomination and the concrete, malicious possibilities it presents, Democrats should also be sure to pull back the camera and talk about future scenarios. For instance, if Trump has an attorney general who thinks the 1/6 attack on the Capitol wasn’t a crime, then what’s to stop Trump from inciting future violence to get his way? What happens when Congress doesn’t vote for a bill he wants? Will his attorney general look the other way after Trump tells the Proud Boys to show up in the Capitol Rotunda? As Sargent points out, it will be inherently difficult to get the public to care about things that happened in the past — this makes it even more important for Democrats to point to Trump’s past illegal actions as a guide to future ones, and to highlight that the common thread is a desire for personal power above all else, including his commitment to serve the American people.
Democrats can aim this preemptive strategy at distinct groups of the voting public. In the first place, it can rally those who already oppose Trump, who voted against him, and who are primed to expect the worst from a second term. Reminding them of why they oppose Trump and MAGA, and why they have continued reasons to do so, is essential to maintaining the morale of the Democratic base and creating a backlash to Trump that can help propel the party back to power in 2026 and 2028.
Democrats should also direct this narrative strategy at a second group of voters — those who supported Trump, but who are not hard-core MAGA voters. This includes those whose final decision to support Trump was rooted in concerns about inflation and the larger economy, as well as those whose votes for Trump were based on a belief that he would not pursue his more extreme campaign promises (such as mass deportation), who believed his lies on other issues (such as that he won’t pursue abortion restrictions at the federal level), or who had concerns about his character and policies but voted for him anyway for reasons that outweighed such concerns. These voters can be approached in a variety of ways. For instance, though they may be less upset about Trump’s assault on the rule of law, the Democrats can point to how Trump’s obsessions with personal power (such as by appointing a lackey as his attorney general so that he can persecute political enemies) means that Trump is more concerned with revenge than on improving the economy. For this group, laying out Trump’s predictably self-serving moves ahead of time can help the Democrats cultivate the idea of “buyer’s remorse” in connection with Trump — the idea that some voters may have voted for him for certain understandable reasons, but that Trump is not delivering on what they wanted and/or is pursuing policies they don’t agree with.
Finally, Democrats should keep in mind the possibility of peeling away some voters who are currently full-on MAGA or deeply sympathetic to the movement. While Trump appears to maintain a cult-like devotion from tens of millions of right-leaning Americans, this devotion is based in a belief that Trump’s interests are aligned with their own. Here, Democratic assertions that Trump will serve the interests of himself and the rich over everyone else may hold the best hope for starting to fracture that loyalty, particularly should Trump’s mass deportations and tariffs start to wreak havoc on the economy.
The Democrats’ interest in presenting a coherent story about the Trump administration is all the more crucial because of the GOP’s tremendous capacity to propagandize and dissemble about what’s really happening, via the megaphone provided by the vast conservative media apparatus. A Democratic narrative strategy is also necessary since the media has generally shown itself unable to focus adequately on the big picture of Trump’s threat to America. In the David Kurtz piece I quoted from above, Kurtz notes how “the old confirmation dance for cabinet nominees – and the news coverage it drives – has no real salience with Trump in office.” This is a classic not-seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees situation — reporting on who’s up and who’s down in the nomination process, most major media are not consistently contextualizing the larger implications of who Trump is nominating. These early days are important, as the media has an instinctual drive to treat the post-election interregnum as it has treated those in the past, following a timeworn template that focuses on the nitty-gritty on the flow of nominations and other typical activities of setting up a new administration. If Democrats make an effort to tell such a story, it may yet influence coverage of the Trump administration in a more illuminating direction.
Trump and his allies clearly understand the importance of displaying initiative and taking control of the overall media narrative about the incoming administration. Not only has Trump done this with a rapid-fire process of nominating unfit freaks to staff his White House, he and other Republicans have crowed about a non-existent “mandate” based on his razor-thin election victory. Democrats should certainly do everything possible to mock and undercut these fake mandate claims, and turn them into more of a liability whenever a Republican repeats such lies. Not surprisingly, undercutting and ideally destabilizing Trump’s claims of a mandate are key to telling the story of the Trump administration. This isn’t a president who has massive support to do whatever the hell he wants — this is a president who just squeaked into office, in large part by lying to voters about his solutions to their genuine concerns about the economy and their cost of living. In talking about his shaky victory, Democrats will be better positioned to describe the coming onslaught of outrageous and unlawful presidential actions as lacking the public support that Trump claims. For kicks, they can note that just as Trump lied to get people’s votes, he’s now rubbing people’s noses in believing his likes when he tries to use their votes as justification for actions that will hurt far more people than they help (such as tariffs, mass deportations, and massive tax cuts for the richest Americans that will justify sharp cutbacks to broad-based programs for the working and middle classes).
There’s less Democrats can do to disrupt Trump’s ability to take the initiative at this point, though, given the very real news value of his activities in rolling out a new administration — but here the “confrontation through narration” strategy can blunt that initiative, by making what Trump would prefer to appear disruptive and off-putting seem predictably awful. In a best-case scenario, Democrats could work to paint a clear line between Trump’s attempts to dominate the news and his strategy of pulling a fast one over the American people — turning his appearance of strength into a weakness.
Democrats shouldn’t expect Americans to unquestioningly accept their descriptions of all that the Trump administration is doing that is wrong, illegal, and destructive. They should bring the receipts in terms of statistics and facts, presented in compelling and meme-worthy ways. Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall gets to the heart of this in a recent using about “scorecards” to compare how things like the economy are doing under Trump II versus the Biden administration. He writes that, “What matters is consistent, easy to understand repetition, in line with a really constant recitation of what the opposition party offers. These things do matter. But it can’t come only at election time. It can’t be in policy-speak. It has to be in the language and idioms and visuals of social and alternative media where people are really getting most of their information.” In other words, providing hard evidence of the Trump administration’s lies, failures, and shortcomings presents both a challenge and a massive opportunity to a Democratic Party that needs to deal effectively with a media environment badly tilted against it. And ideally, the party would figure out some clever media approaches to communicating its overall “confrontation through narration” strategy — no point in having a great idea that the public never even hears about!
One final note — this “confrontation through narration” oppositional strategy doesn’t require the Dems to present (at least at this point) a fully-formed alternative agenda (though the sooner the better would be great). But they can at least defend broad principles that Trump is almost guaranteed to oppose — an economy that works for ordinary people, not just the rich; the rule of law; a government that serves the public, not the powerful.