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Democrats in United States struggle to get their anti-Trump mojo back
By Danny Westneat
Published: July 29, 2024, 6:01am
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When Donald Trump first brawled onto the political scene, it was a shock to the system. He infamously split his own party and, less talked about, served as a powerful unifying force for the fraying Democrats.
Two of the many people who were jolted into action seven years ago were Kim Schrier, an Issaquah doctor appalled that Trump wanted to gut government health care; and Imraan Siddiqi, an activist who became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Trump’s anti-Muslim travel restrictions.
It had seemed, prior to Trump’s election, that the Democratic Party, with its warring socialists and moderates, might crack apart. Instead, Trump crystallized and focused it around himself, a common enemy.
“He was the Death Star around which they could organize their feisty resistance,” I wrote a few years back.
Well, he’s back for a sequel, as you know. Twice impeached, felony-convicted and still charged with trying to overturn the last election, Trump’s pulled off one of the biggest political comebacks in U.S. history.
“His GOP critics have retired, lost, died, capitulated or fallen silent as the former president has all but made the Party of Lincoln a wholly owned subsidiary of his MAGA movement,” was how Politico summed up the Republican convention.
This concept of GOP “unity” is overstated, as I’ll get to in a minute. But it’s the Democrats who are leaderless by comparison now, as well as riven by differences.
I mentioned Schrier and Siddiqi as two of the countless, disparate Democrats who were activated in reaction to Trumpism. A political neophyte, Schrier got elected in the big blue anti-Trump wave of 2018, representing the 8th Congressional District. And Siddiqi helped overturn the travel ban and heads the Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Now he’s running against her — Democrat versus Democrat — and savaging her on a daily basis for her support of Israel.
“The costs of housing, health care, and child care are skyrocketing for Washingtonians, while Kim Schrier sends our tax dollars to fund a genocide in Gaza that has claimed the lives of over 15,000 children,” Siddiqi says.
Siddiqi entered the campaign on May 7. Yet through the end of June, he’d already raised $335,000 from donors across the country. He pulled in the second-most financial support in the April-June quarter of any of the dozens of nonincumbents vying for Congress in this state, behind Republican Tiffany Smiley in Central Washington.
Schrier’s 8th District is as moderate as it gets, so it’s doubtful she faces much election risk from a hard challenge to her left. But the fault line inside the party is real.
As for the Republicans, their unity was more stage-managed than reality. The base is super-energized about the second coming of Trump. But as Seattle Times reporting out of Milwaukee noted, the traditional parts of the party simply weren’t there. Of 62 elected state- or federal-level Republicans in Washington state, one attended.
Others, such as the state’s two GOP members of Congress, “are pre-Trump dinosaurs” who are “despised” by the Trumpian base, former state party chairman Chris Vance said.
There’s a reason Trump introduced a shiny new running mate for his third campaign. A Republican mob had threatened to hang his previous one, Mike Pence. So he’s been disowned and didn’t show.
These same MAGA grievances about the last election have Republicans tearing at each other in Eastern Washington. Two candidates, Smiley and Trump-endorsed race car driver Jerrod Sessler, are trying to take down incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside. They’re upset he voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot.
The internal stress on the two parties has been the big political story of our times. Both have seemed at times as if they’re cracking up. But Trump has now eaten the GOP, and “pre-Trump dinosaurs” feel more like last hurrahs.
The Democrats are the ones in extreme flux now. In the past, Trump’s dark presence has papered over countless Democratic rifts. Can they summon that unifying spirit of resistance one more time? Or, with their nominal leader infirm, will they splinter into warring rebel camps on their way to oblivion, as they were threatening before Darth Vader came along?
The Democrats’ gathering next month does promise something new for a modern political convention: It shouldn’t be boring.
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