Facing the Fundamental Choice: A Stronger or Weaker Federal Administration?

David Super

      Barely a day passes when I do not see some new plan for an anticipated “restoration” after President Trump leaves office.  As 2029 approaches, I am sure we will see many more.  Alas, I have yet to see a plan that thoughtfully engages with what should be the most foundational question in this process:  do we seek a strong federal administration or a weak one?  Or, put another way, is the goal to strengthen majoritarianism or to protect minorities that the majority may wish to trample? 

     The right answer to this question depends on how anti-MAGA thinkers envision the future.  If they seek to empower future majorities and the party that controls the presidency and Congress, presumably they believe that they will hold majority power for the foreseeable future once Donald Trump passes – or at least that a stronger executive will allow them to build more than MAGA can destroy when holding the reins.  The goal of this strategy presumably would be to make it impossible for the Republican Party to dominate power until it moderates and rededicates itself to democratic values, much as voters made Democrats wander in the wilderness for twenty of the twenty-four years between 1968 to 1992 because they perceived the party as being too far left. 

     Alternatively, if anti-MAGA thinkers believe that control of the federal government is likely to alternate frequently, they should limit the powers of any majority and support devices that allow minorities to block actions harmful to them.  This would be particularly true if they believe that MAGA is more efficient at destroying than they are at building. 

     Of course, Democrats want to be a persistent majority and believe they should have the majority of the electorate’s support.  But neither of those is the question.  The question is one of prediction:  do MAGA’s opponents believe they actually will be the majority?  And, related, will they make maintaining majority electoral support their top priority?  If so, then plans like dismantling the filibuster and remaking the Supreme Court might make practical sense.  If not, those moves would be disastrous. 

     I see no reason to believe that Democrats will persistently hold a majority in years to come:  I am convinced that Donald J. Trump will not be the last president to seriously threaten this country’s democracy in the near future.  Further, I believe the liberal-progressive movement, as it currently stands, is structurally incapable of doing what is necessary to have a plausible chance of preventing another ruthless MAGA president from taking office.  I therefore regard progressive proposals to raise the stakes for elections as not just misguided but profoundly reckless. 

     To start, alternating control of the White House would continue an entrenched recent pattern.  Democrats have won half of the last two, four, six, eight, and ten presidential elections.  The last Democrat to secure 53% of the popular vote was Lyndon Johnson over sixty years ago; in the intervening years, Republicans have surpassed 53% three times.  Although some progressives like to point to President Trump’s relatively low popular vote totals, in both 2016 and 2024 extremely conservative candidates won about 51% of the vote while candidates on the left took 49%; the two elections differed primarily as to which coalition was more fractured.  Even with the economy staggering and hundreds of thousands dying as the Trump Administration fumbled its response to the pandemic – failures that would have obliterated a Democratic candidate – President Trump still received almost 47% of the vote in 2020.

     To be sure, President Trump is quite unpopular now, but he will not be on the ballot again.  And his deep unpopularity has not translated into corresponding support for Democrats:  at this writing, only 38% of voters think well of Democrats compared with 55% hostile to them.  That is all but indistinguishable from Republicans’ 39% to 56% unfavorability rating.  This is not the stuff of which dynasties are made. 

     But current unpopularity is far from the biggest reason to think that Democrats will not be able to keep MAGA Republicans out of power.  The Establishment and Progressive Wings of the Democratic Party would do well to adopt the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat as their mascots.  Each seems to view the marginalization of the other as a necessary predicate step to battling Donald Trump.  Neither shows much willingness to accept that, with the country almost evenly divided between Left and Right, defeating MAGA Republicanism is only possible if both moderates and progressives enthusiastically engage.  If either faction is vanquished, both will be vanquished. 

     To keep MAGA from regaining the reins of power, Establishment Democrats need to stop freaking out when progressive constituencies elect progressives.  And to keep MAGA from regaining the reins of power, Progressive Democrats need to stop endangering seats in purple or red constituencies by applying purity tests to candidates there.  Both need to stop supporting awful people just because they mouth their faction’s affirmations.  

     Although we may disagree about which positions so alienate moderates that they will cost the Party votes, it defies reality (and a vast political science literature) to insist that no such positions exist.  Similarly, although we may disagree about which positions are so denigrating to the value of human life that they will alienate progressives and cost the Party votes, it defies reality (and the everyday experience with people who have been insulted) to insist that no such positions exist. 

     Yet Democrats lack any workable mechanism to discuss together which positions are too electorally toxic and to discourage those in the relevant faction from weighing the Party down with those positions.  Instead, any reticence by Establishment Democrats is attacked as betrayal – likely causing some progressives to withhold their votes – while any complaints about denigrating statements are denounced as attempts at “political correctness” – likely alienating some moderates. 

     If they regain power, Democrats naturally will want to implement their program.  Parts of that program are broadly popular, but parts definitely are not.  They likely can afford to pursue some unpopular initiatives, but if they launch too many they will lose too many voters.  Conversely, if they slavishly follow the polls rather than ever leading, they will disappoint progressives and lose voter turnout in the next election.  Rather than being reflexively bold or reflexively timid, they must prioritize carefully.

     Alas, Democrats also lack a workable mechanism for prioritizing their coalition’s initiatives to avoid alienating too many voters at once.  Indeed, a great many progressives refuse to acknowledge that such trade-offs exist They fail to see that the middle- and long-term consequences of enacting multiple deeply unpopular measures at once can be devastating for vulnerable people, such as the immigrants and low-income people targeted when voters sweep MAGA back into power.  Conversely, many Establish­ment Democrats seem to reject any initiatives that lead voters out of their comfort zones, condemning the Party to always playing from behind and losing the enthusiasm of the many low-engagement progressive voters. 

     Compromises are the life blood of coalition politics.  Alas, compromise is largely infeasible with loud voices condemning any concessions “betrayal.”  Many progressives’ fierce objection to the Build Back Better Act, which would have been the most transformative social legislation in at least a decade and perhaps half a century, shows the near-impossibility of crafting compromises that do not split the Party.  And the constant denunciation of deals for what they do not include persuades low-information voters that Democratic officeholders are hopeless and not worth voting for. 

     All these problems might be remediable if the leaders of the various factions could negotiate definitive deals.  Unfortunately, neither major faction has leaders who can and do command broad deference.  Establishment Democrats have Minority Leaders Schumer and Jeffries, but neither has demonstrated, or even sought, the authority to commit their faction to compromises.  Progressives have even less deference to leaders:  Sen. Sanders did negotiate a common program with nominee-apparent Biden in 2020, but neither he nor Representative Ocasio-Cortez have made any regular practice of seeking deals with Party leaders.  In practice, because many progressive social media influencers’ click-rates, and incomes, depend on raising hyperbolic criticisms, any progressive leaders attempting such negotiations would likely pay a high reputational price. 

     This is not to say that the Democratic factions can never come together to defeat the MAGA threat to our country.  They did in 2020 when, led by African-American primary voters in South Carolina, they nominated a career politician with a thoroughly uninspiring record.  But the infrequency and brevity of these truces demonstrate that far too many Democrats see intra-party warfare, and advancing their policy programs even at great electoral risk, as more pressing than definitively defeating MAGA’s threats to our country’s core principles and the well-being of vulnerable people at home and abroad.  We are, for example, a far cry from the Hungarian progressives who cleared the field for non-Orban conservatives to end their country’s sixteen years of creeping authoritarianism or the Chileans who united behind a moderate conservative to end Pinochet’s rule. 

     As long as defeating MAGA remains only a conditional or intermittent priority – and in particular as long as the two main factions remain determined to subjugate one another in the pursuit of wholly unrealistic general election strategies – we will keep getting MAGA presidents and MAGA Congresses.  And because the second Trump Administration has clearly demonstrated that destroying programs and institutions is far easier and faster than building them, any accomplishments Democrats may achieve during their brief interludes in power will be extremely fleeting.  Democrats will not get far with any plans that depend on selling the trustworthiness of our federal government to other nations, to potential grant recipients here or abroad, or to prospective federal employees that do not want to suffer what hundreds of thousands did over the past year and a half.  This country elected Donald Trump twice; unless we can show a fundamental change in the structure of our politics, nobody is going to believe this was merely a fluke.

     We seem well on our way to an eight-year cycle in which Democrats have broad control for two years, a Democratic president is hobbled by one or both chambers of Congress for another two years, a MAGA president has broad control for two years, and the MAGA president remains in power but lacks a solid congressional majority for the final two years. 

     Programs Democrats pass in their two years of dominance will barely be getting organized when a Republican Congress begins to starve them of resources and MAGA legal groups sue to block their implementation.  The programs will have accomplished little by the time the next MAGA president eliminates them.  Democrats can enact civil rights, environmental, and consumer protection laws during their ascendancy; by the time those laws take effect and violations can be investigated and prosecuted, the Democratic president’s term will be about half-over.  Many violators’ appeals likely will not be exhausted before the next MAGA president pardons them.  Little will have been accomplished.  By contrast, the lives ruined or ended during MAGA administrations will not somehow be restored when that president leaves office. 

     Even if one is certain that Democrats can dominate national politics if (fill in the blank) “progressives stop taking extreme positions” or “the Establishment fights more vigorously”, it is obvious that neither group is going to change its stripes anytime soon.  Until we are collectively willing to choose a moderate but stable regime that negotiates progress among pro-democratic factions, the current boom-and-bust cycle will continue.  And while it does, all plans should focus on protecting political minorities and limiting the power of transitory majorities – even though Democrats will sometimes be in that majority. 

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