Milbank: Chuck Schumer, Democrats prepare to fight Trump

Conventional wisdom says Schumer will be pulled in a moderate and conciliatory posture by the 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won. He’ll be pulled the other way by Warren and Sanders, who represent the party’s energy.

But Schumer correctly views this as a false choice: The best way to protect endangered incumbents is to let the Warren wing lead.

If Democrats are to have any hope in 2018, they’ll need to reclaim the populism Trump stole in 2016. Schumer embraces this. “If you want to appeal to the manufacturing worker in Scranton, the college student in Los Angeles and the single mom making minimum wage in Harlem, one economic message will work,” he said. “We just didn’t have it” this year.

Schumer pledges to keep his focus almost entirely on the economy. When Republicans hold votes on energy and social issues that divide Democrats, he figures he’ll have enough votes to filibuster even if endangered incumbents split off. “We’re going to have five, six sharp-edged (policies) that can be described in five words,” Schumer said. “That economic message” — college affordability, infrastructure spending, taxing the rich — “unites our caucus.”

Those in the Warren wing said Clinton’s economic agenda was a muddled, build-on-success theme when people wanted change. They said Trump got to Democrats’ left with working people, and the answer now is to unite behind specific legislation such as expanding Social Security, protecting Medicare from privatization and raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for infrastructure spending.

Populist pushback

If the new president comes Democrats’ way, things will get done. If he takes a traditional Republican approach to the economy, Democrats will fight, and Trump’s working-class backers will know they were had.

This doesn’t mean a Mitch McConnell-style effort to oppose Trump reflexively — something Schumer told Trump when the president-elect called him recently to discuss infrastructure. “I said to him it’s got to be robust, it can’t be just tax credits because nothing much will get built … and it can’t cut traditional programs” such as education and Medicare. “He didn’t argue with me,” Schumer recounted.

Conversely, when Trump contradicts his campaign themes — a Wall Street banker as treasury secretary, a billionaire private-school devotee as education secretary and a health and human services secretary who wants to privatize Medicare — he can expect a populist pushback from Democrats.

This, and not incumbent protection, is what will work for Democrats in 2018 and beyond.

Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group. Email: dana.milbank@washpost.com.