Democrats' rulebook resistance to Trump fails to capture the imagination

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

70% : That could be because public support for the DOGE mission remains high.
59% : "You campaign, you put your ideas forward, and in this case, Donald Trump won.
54% : THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, ACTIONS, AND PROCLAMATIONS TRUMP HAS MADE AS PRESIDENT While Democrats have notched temporary victories in court, Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, have continued barreling through federal agencies with dramatic cost-cutting and staff-reduction demands.
53% : Featured Local Savings The resistance gives way to rifts Trump started his first term facing a much more organized and energetic Democratic opposition.
51% : For example, Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) made headlines last month for sparring with Trump at the White House over Trump's executive order banning biological men from women's sports.
50% : " Money flowed to a constellation of progressive groups founded or expanded after Trump took office in 2017.
46% : But the fierce opposition to Trump, which acted as a unifying force for Democrats before his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, papered over divisions within the party that helped contribute to Trump's return to the presidency and are now hampering the party's ability to find its footing in the second Trump era.
37% : Some Democratic strategists have warned that the party must do more than scold Trump in order to rebuild.
34% : " Instead, Democrats have frequently focused on the ways in which they say Trump's cuts violate the rules regarding what presidents can do on their own. "Donald Trump campaigned on cutting back the government -- that's true -- but he is not allowed to break the law to achieve those goals," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a speech last month.
32% : Trump has also complicated Democrats' ability to respond effectively by dragging them into some fights in which public sentiment is tilted heavily toward his side, such as his effort to ban biological men from participating in women's sports.
32% : "Frankly, if Democrats believe that voters will reward them simply for opposing Trump, rather than presenting their own alternative arguments, they will remain out of power for years, much like the period between 1980 and 1992, which was dominated by the Republican Party," Democratic consultant Doug Schoen wrote in a recent op-ed. DEMOCRATS RECRUIT FIRED FEDERAL WORKERS TO FIGHT TRUMP AGENDA DURING PARTY REBRAND Democrats have forcefully condemned some of the more controversial Trump moves by categorizing them all as evidence of a looming constitutional crisis without acknowledging the underlying public anxieties Trump was trying to address.
32% : For instance, Democrats slammed Trump for an executive order ending birthright citizenship and celebrated when courts halted his attempt to reinterpret constitutional language long thought to offer automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil.
31% : The so-called resistance movement broke through beyond the political arena to popular culture, engaging celebrities and activists alike in fighting Trump at every turn.
31% : She retorted to Trump that she would "see [him] in court" over the ban, but like other Democrats, did not make a case for why transgender athletes should be allowed to play in the league of their choice.
29% : Meanwhile, Democrats' messaging has changed little from their unsuccessful campaign rhetoric about the dictatorship they claim Trump wants to create.
28% : And while Democrats spend their time on litigation against Trump, the task of litigating their own ideological divisions has moved to the back burner.
26% : Their arguments against what Trump is doing are often not based in substantive defenses of the federal agencies and programs on the chopping block.
25% : Four months after Trump led Republicans to win unified control of government, Democrats are still sifting through the wreckage for clues as to why they lost and how they might start to rebuild.
25% : The pace of his orders, too, has contributed to the Democratic Party's struggles by introducing fresh fodder for outrage before Democrats can get tempers boiling about the previous thing Trump did. Democrats fall into the 'institutions trap' Trump's DOGE project has generated headlines that have caused headaches for the White House, particularly when the office has had to reverse cuts that its staff made too quickly.
25% : " A bright spot for Democrats is that many of the lawsuits against Trump are playing out in the liberal-leaning federal court system in the District of Columbia or other legal venues more favorable to Trump's opponents.
12% : The claim that fueled Democratic opposition to Trump during his first term, that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, served two purposes: It absolved Democrats from blame for having narrowly lost the race, sparing them from the task of confronting why Trump won, and it offered a clear, one-sentence allegation that Democrats used successfully to discredit much of his early agenda.
11% : A federal judge appointed by Biden in Seattle, for example, blocked Trump from shuttering a refugee resettlement agency.
6% : By contrast, the variety of Democratic allegations against Trump at the start of his second term include that Trump improperly used the Office of Personnel Management to urge the firings of probationary employees rather than going through the correct agency channels, that Trump violated a statute known as the Impoundment Act that lets him freeze some funding but not others, and that Trump failed to provide Congress with a required 30-day notice before dismissing agency inspectors general.

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