The Army has a term for this: tactical pause. It’s a vision move — get out of the hour-to-hour, day-to-day combat where one side (ours) is largely playing defense and struggling to defend politically charged positions (like explaining D.E.I. or persuading voters to care about foreign aid) and take time to regroup, look forward and make decisions about where we want to get to over the next two years. I don’t think a lot of Americans are waiting around for us to use the same old arguments and same old language to pile on Donald Trump. They’re tired of it, and our Democratic voters are tired of watching us moan and groan to cover up our impotency out of power. They want us to be smarter than that.
Our first major test in the art of strategic retreat comes in a few weeks, as the Trump administration must get a budget passed that raises the debt ceiling. There are deep internal Republican divides over the budget: Republicans don’t know what they want to include, they don’t agree on an agenda, and they do not have a clear path forward. Mr. Trump has asked for an abolishment of the debt ceiling. The speaker of the House, his close ally, has yet to definitively support him on it.
Already, many Democrats across the party are itching at their seams for a showdown. Instead of gearing up to fight them — as we love to do — the most radical thing we can do is nothing at all. Let the Republicans disagree with themselves publicly. Do not offer a single vote. Do not insert yourself into the discourse. Do not throw a monkey wrench into the equation. Simply step away and let ’em flirt with a default. Just when they’ve pushed themselves to the brink and it appears they could collapse the global economy, come in and save the day. Be the competent party and not the chaos party. House Democrats know this. It’s time for everyone in our party, including the darlings who want to run in 2028, to understand this as well. You won’t win or achieve anything meaningful going toe to toe with the Trump administration right now.
This equation must be applied for the remainder of this year. Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.
It’s a wiser approach than we pursued in the first Trump administration, when Democrats tried and failed at the art of resistance politics. We voiced outrage on social issue after social issue. We spun ourselves up in a tizzy over an investigation into Russia. We fought Mr. Trump at every corner, on every issue imaginable and muddied up our message in an unwinnable war. We were saved only by his lousy governing and a lot of effort on our side finding good candidates to run for the House and Senate in 2018. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is retreat on the immediate battlefield — and advance in another direction.
It won’t take long. Public support for this administration will fall through the floorboard. It’s already happening. Just over a month in, the president’s approval has already sunk underwater in two new polls. The people did not vote for the Department of Education to be obliterated; they voted for lower prices for eggs and milk. Democrats, let the Republicans’ own undertow drag them away.
At this rate, the Trump honeymoon will be over, best case, by Memorial Day but more likely in the next 30 days. And in November 2025, we start turning the tide with what will be remembered as one of the most important elections in recent years: the Virginia governor’s race. From tax enforcers to rocket scientists, bank regulators and essential workers — the Trump administration is hellbent on drastically firing the federal work force, despite the fact that federal civilian employees account for just 3 percent of the federal budget. These workers are highly concentrated in Virginia, home to around 144,000 civilian federal employees. It looks set to be a resounding Republican defeat. This will be the first moment when we can take the offensive back and begin our crusade again.
Half a century ago, Muhammad Ali cemented himself as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time not by punching his way to glory but by mastering the art of the strategic retreat. Facing George Foreman, who was rolling off 37 knockouts and 40 wins, Ali deployed the famous rope-a-dope strategy, retreating to the ropes of the ring, evading punches right and left, absorbing small jabs, until Foreman’s battery was depleted — and in Round 8 deployed a decisive knockout blow.
It’s Round 1. Let’s rope-a-dope, Dems.