Democrats’ decision to identify with the #Resist movement is looking more and more like a midterm messaging gift to Republicans.
Early on Thursday, President Trump tweeted:
March 5th is rapidly approaching and the Democrats are doing nothing about DACA. They Resist, Blame, Complain and Obstruct – and do nothing. Start pushing Nancy Pelosi and the Dems to work out a DACA fix, NOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 1, 2018
His invocation of the “Resistance” is not one Democrats can evade, even vulnerable centrists in Trump-friendly states such as Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind. That’s for a very simple reason: The party made a clear decision to identify itself as an organ of the Resist movement. Who can forget the DNC’s “Resistance Summer” of 2017?
“This Resistance Summer is very important,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at the time.
As the onset of last summer, Democrats’ were emboldened to embrace the Resistance because most Americans seemed to want lawmakers to resist legislation that repealed Obamacare. Now, however, they’re stuck with the label. And at a bad time.
When asked in a CBS News poll conducted in January whether they would like to see more or less cooperation between Democrats and Republicans in Washington than there was last year, an overwhelming 92 percent of adults favored more cooperation.
When the mood of the country favors cooperation, it’s not a good time to be the party of resistance. This is the narrative Trump and Republicans are trying to set. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s voters may want a resister, but McCaskill’s sure don’t.
These tensions are why the party ended its ill-advised government shutdown without really securing the desired outcome. Gradually, leadership is recognizing voters crave cooperation more than obstruction, no matter how unpopular the president is.
With topics such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and infrastructure now under consideration, the Democratic Party’s calculated decision to align with the Resistance only makes it easier for Republicans to cast them as obstructionists in competitive midterm races.
