Analysis: The Democrats go ‘Trump lite' in latest plan to save democracy

CNN

16 hours ago

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Democrats have tried everything to beat Donald Trump.
But they're only 1 for 3 in presidential elections against him.
Twice, they impeached him — but that didn't destroy his political career.
Several top Democratic prosecutors brought the force of the law against him, but in trying to bring him down, they only made him stronger.
They've tried to 'go high' when he went low. But he went lower and won.
And painting Trump as the worst-ever threat to American democracy didn't thwart the greatest White House comeback story in history.
So, what do Democrats do now?
The latest plan, piloted by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose counteroffensive just won the support of former President Barack Obama, is to be a bit more like Trump — but only up to a point and for a limited time.
California state legislators are expected on Thursday to pass bills to set up a statewide referendum in November on redrawing the state's congressional maps in a way that could net Democrats five seats in the House of Representatives.
The counterattack went into force after deep-red Texas enacted its plan, ordered by the president, to launch a rare mid-cycle redistricting effort in search of five Republican House seats. Trump is blatantly attempting to save the GOP — and himself — from losing the chamber in the 2026 midterms and is prepared to do anything to prevent it.
Texas Democrats made a big noise, leaving the state to block votes on the plan — but like almost all other party schemes to slow Trump, it was doomed to fail. The Texas House passed the redistricting bill on Wednesday; it will now move to the state Senate.
Newsom — who has a long and testy history with the president — but who shares some of his instincts for stunt politics — is not just taking on Trump by leveraging the mechanics of government in the Democratic cause.
He's also personifying the maxim that one way to defang a bully is to laugh at him. The governor's turned his social media accounts into a parody of the president's own huffing and puffing in block capitals on Truth Social.
'THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN' Newsom wrote after a post on X earlier this month, trolling Trump by mimicking one of his online quirks.
This might all seem rather immature and below the dignity of the governor of one of the most powerful states in the union. But it's playing Trump at his own social media game and recognizes that the president has shattered the norms of political speech.
A more serious argument many Democrats are now making is that the Republican Party has transformed into such an anti-democratic force that they must do everything to fight back.
Sure, it would be more noble for Democrats to stand on principle and refuse to follow Republicans down an authoritarian path by just drawing up more House seats because they feel like it. But they'd be sure to lose.
Newsom's response might be cynical. But he's also seized on the Texas redistricting fight because he's one of the few Democrats who have power and know how to use it. He's also channeling palpable demands from the Democratic base for more of a fight.
'He doesn't play by a different set of rules,' Newsom said of Trump last week. 'He doesn't believe in the rules.' On Monday, Newsom seized on Trump's latest Truth Social rant about mail-in voting with his own post on X that aimed to get into the president's head.
'Trump knows he is going to LOSE in 2026,' Newsom wrote. 'His plan to rig new Congressional seats is going to backfire — thanks to California. Now, he's clamoring for other ways to cook the results. This man reeks of DESPERATION.'
Newsom is taking a political gamble. There is no guarantee that enough of California's voters will agree with his attempt to change the state Constitution. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission is a cherished plank of state democracy.
But as he eyes the White House, the California governor has created a platform to elevate himself over Democratic rivals in galvanizing demands for more urgency in the fight against Trump and his administration challenging election fairness on multiple fronts.
In effect, he's soft-launching a bid for the 2028 Democratic nomination without having to make it official. If he succeeds in creating more seats for his party and it captures the House next year, he will claim a lion's share of the credit.
Obama addressed the conundrum of whether to play by the rules on redistricting as a true democrat might in a speech on Tuesday night.
'I've had to wrestle with my preference, which would be that we don't have political gerrymandering,' he said at a fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The ex-president added: 'What I also know is that if we don't respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy.'
Obama said he had 'tremendous respect' for Newsom's approach in that Newsom made the California response conditional on what Texas did. He also praised Newsom's proposal to restore the state's independent redistricting committee after the 2030 census — following Trump's term.
The 44th president's pragmatism reflects bitter experience, since he rocketed to attention in a 2004 Democratic National Convention address in which he declared, 'There's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America.'
Obama might be best remembered for soaring speeches. But eight years since he left the White House, it's often forgotten he could play hardball: His 2012 reelection campaign ruthlessly savaged GOP nominee Mitt Romney's character.
Arguing that democracy was not 'self-executing,' Obama said that if Democrats really believe their own rhetoric, they should do something about it. He called for more support for the NDRC, litigation and organizing.
And Obama also made striking allusions to the fights against slavery and racial discrimination in the 20th century. 'It took organizing and activism, and people demonstrating and sometimes getting beat or thrown in jail. It took a civil war,' he said. 'It took extraordinary leadership and courage in order to amend the Constitution. And then to make sure that those victories were actually manifested required people to march and go to jail and in some cases, die.' This came against a backdrop of the supine response of law firms, universities and corporate chieftains to Trump's power grabs.
Obama's warning posed the immediate question of whether the ex-president will be taking a more prominent political role himself. Obama has been a caustic critic of Trump at key moments — for instance during the 2020 and 2024 Democratic National Conventions, when he warned about his successor's threat to democracy. But he has wide interests in a lucrative retirement, including in film production and advocacy for his post-presidential foundation. And ex-presidents (among many others) know there can be a price for standing up to a successor who has weaponized the Justice Department.
And would Obama be an effective force?
His efforts in 2024, including a barn-burner speech at the convention in Chicago that was one-upped by former first lady Michelle Obama, couldn't prevent Trump's return to the White House. Many Democrats are pining for a new generation of leaders. And the next Democratic president, whenever he or she arrives, will require fresh vision and energy after the GOP's attempt to eviscerate the government.
Meanwhile, Newsom isn't the only Democrat adopting some of Trump's methods to try to gain traction in the age of fragmented media and online anarchy. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, for instance, has been trolling the president, Trump-style on social media. 'The man in the White House wants to 'crack down' on crime in D.C.… cute,' she wrote on X this week. 'The audacity of sitting in the Oval Office with felony charges and thinking you can lecture anyone on 'law and order.''
Still, Democrats had better be careful. However brazen they get, they'll never match Trump's flame-throwing. A subtext of Trump's populism is that all politics are corrupt. And if voters believe that the Democrats are just as bad as the president, his own more venal behavior won't seem as bad.
Trump and MAGA Republicans are trying to create such equivalence. They've portrayed the criminal indictments against Trump during his campaign as the cold-blooded exploitation of government power — even though several of them arose from his attempt to steal the 2020 election. The GOP has better arguments that he was singled out in a successful civil fraud prosecution against him, his adult sons and the Trump Organization in New York.
And when Republicans argue that Democrats are guilty of flagrant partisan redistricting of House seats in states they control, like Illinois and Maryland, they have a point. Still, most such efforts fit into the conventional corruption of the age-old practice of gerrymandering. No modern political figure has attempted the assaults on democracy and elections carried out by Trump.
The run-up to the midterms may also show whether voters want another showdown over democracy when they are pained by still-high grocery prices and a struggle to afford housing. Neither party has compelling plans to offer relief. No wonder Trump's approval ratings are underwater and Democrats have been plumbing record lows in popularity this year.
Democrats are now vowing to 'fight fire with fire,' as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul put it recently.
But getting down in the muck and fighting dirty with Trump is risky.
He's miles better at it than they are.