Democrats Should “Do Something.” And They Are.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 100-minute propaganda barrage before the joint session of Congress, congressional Democrats have assumed the familiar circular firing formation.  

Party leadership wanted their primary response to be a scripted retort, delivered by the moderate Senator Elissa Slotkin of the battleground state of Michigan that largely skirted culture war battle lines and focused on the cost of living and national security. And House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, according to Axios, urged his colleagues to remain calm on the floor during the speech, avoiding disruptions and props.  

Many backbenchers, dismissive of the idea that resistance to Trump should be calibrated, ignored the counsel and held protest signs. Representative Rashida Tlaib used a whiteboard to fire back in real-time. Representative Al Green heckled Trump early and was removed from the chamber. According to The New York Times, some House Democrats “said privately that performative actions like Mr. Green’s simply provided Republicans with a rich target.” Ten House Democrats on Thursday joined Republicans and censured Green. 

Progressives outside the Beltway may also want Democrats to reject the advice of political consultants and fight back to the hilt. But they found the floor protests as feckless as anything party leadership. The host of CBS’s The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, tweaked the Democrats as “ready to fight back with their little paddles,” which he said looked like “bidding on an antique tea set.” He then held up his own sign: “Try Doing Something.” 

Lost in all this handwringing is that Democrats have been doing something and that something is having an impact. 

Congressional Democrats have hammered Trump for failing to lower the price of eggs and siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They have blistered the House Republican budget resolution as devastating to Medicaid and savaged Elon Musk as an unelected billionaire gutting the federal government and threatening Social Security. State Democratic attorneys general, backed up by governors, are fiercely litigating to stall the Musk wrecking ball, as are progressive legal organizations. 

Not even two months into Trump’s second presidency, his political honeymoon is over. Trump’s net job approval-disapproval number sank from 8.5 points to just one in the Real Clear Politics average. (He went underwater in the FiveThirtyEight average just before the Nate Silver-created site’s parent company, ABC News, laid off its staff and stopped updating the average.) Musk’s numbers are worse. As I wrote last week, “according to the Washington Post-Ipsos poll, the public opposes mass civil service firings, shutdowns of federal agencies, including the foreign aid conduit USAID, banning transgender people from military service, and scrapping diversity programs.” More and more media reports note how Trump’s tariffs have undermined consumer confidence and risk recession. 

This week, Emerson College Polling gave Democrats a 3-point lead in the generic congressional ballot test (which asks respondents which party candidate they plan to support in the upcoming midterm election.) In 2024, Republicans went into Election Day with a 0.3 generic ballot polling lead from Real Clear Politics and emerged with a 2.7-point margin of victory in the House popular vote, translating into a narrow 220-215 House majority.  

Moreover, it won’t take much for Democrats to flip the House. Democrats need only a net of three seats to regain the majority in 2026. The only time in the last 75 years that the opposition party failed to net at least four seats in a midterm was in 2002 when President George W. Bush was buoyed in the polls from 9/11 but had not begun the Iraq War. A 3-point generic lead would likely be enough to clear that bar.  

The 2026 Senate map is much tougher terrain for Democrats. They need to net four seats to retake the chamber, and the only blue or purple state Republican incumbents expected to be on the ballot are Maine’s Susan Collins and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. Still, a new North Carolina poll from Public Policy Polling finds Tillis with job approval deeply underwater, losing a hypothetical contest against former Governor Roy Cooper by 4 points.  

Trump—who won the Tar Heel state by 3 points—has a disapproval rating 1 point higher than his approval rating. And 52 percent of North Carolinians don’t want Musk to have a significant role in the Trump administration. This suggests that Trump is getting scuffed up in the swing states, not just Blue America. 

And the litigation strategy has slowed Trump’s roll. Judges have temporarily blocked executive orders to end birthright citizenship, fire en masse probationary civil servants, kill government diversity programs, stop federal support for gender-affirming care, move transgender prisoners, and suspend asylum and refugee resettlement.  

In a particularly heartening development, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling with John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the three liberal justices, prevented the White House from implementing a freeze on $2 billion in foreign aid payments for contractual work already fulfilled. The independent judiciary may be severely bent out of shape, but it’s not broken. 

Granted, these are all temporary victories in cases that have not been fully adjudicated. With its expansive view of unitary executive power, this conservative Supreme Court may still give Trump more wins than losses. But Democrats don’t need to win every case to have “done something” that thwarts Trump’s attempt to amass unchecked power. 

Nor must the Democratic congressional minority defeat every bill to prove their worth. After all, they don’t have the votes to beat everything, especially anything Republicans can stuff into a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill. Instigating a government shutdown or debt default with extraneous demands would inflict pain not on Republicans but on voters, who would then blame Democrats. (As I wrote last month, a reasonable and defensible demand from Democrats is to insist any bill to keep the government open requires Trump to spend what’s in the bill. Otherwise, it’s meaningless.)  

The “Do Something” crowd needs realistic expectations of what Democrats can and should achieve with their power. Democrats can raise awareness of the harm Republicans are inflicting on the nation, but can’t stop all of that harm. Democrats probably could shut down the government and refuse to raise the debt ceiling, but they should leave the inflicting of harm on people to Republicans. Democrats fight uphill when they bring cases to this Supreme Court, but whatever wins they can get not only limit harm to people but also to our Constitution’s checks and balances.  

Moving public opinion is what Democrats must prioritize because that will lead to electoral victories, and electoral victories are what will bury MAGA—Make Authoritarianism Great Again—for good.