About a month ago, it was fashionable for savvy liberal pundits to suggest that, for all the damage being done, Donald Trump is losing in the courts, losing on Wall Street and, most of all, losing in the polls. 

It seemed like Chuck Schumer was right. The Senate minority leader had said that the best thing the Democrats could do is wait. He suggested that policies like tariffs are going to be so harmful that the consequences of them would eat into the president’s approval rating.

That was true. They did. 

But then they stopped. 

April 2 was “liberation day,” when Trump implemented sweeping and “reciprocal” tariffs that nearly melted down the bond market. On that day, he was at 49.9 percent disapproval, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. Disapproval peaked at 52.4 percent on April 27. 

But from there, in the wake of backtracking and court orders to halt the tariffs, disapproval fell virtually every day for most of May. By May 17, it had landed at 50 percent. It’s been around that level since. 

So Trump has recovered, at least for now.

What does that say about Schumer’s strategy? Mostly that the opposition party needs to lead public opinion, by defining the people’s understanding of the president. Following it is clearly not working.

But that would require a level of creativity and courage that Schumer and the other Democrats leaders may not have in them. As novelist Joseph O’Neill pointed out to me in the interview below, Schumer has twin concerns: about the prospect of permanent Republican rule and the prospect of the Democratic Party becoming truly democratic.

O’Neill is the author of the novels Netherland and, recently, Godwin.

“When Trump comes along with a brazenly dictatorial agenda, [Democratic leaders] are simply ill-suited to the business at hand, which requires them to imaginatively and determinedly oppose the Republicans and – this bit is crucial – to align themselves with the concerns of the party base, as distinct from the party donor class,” he said. “That kind of realignment is very threatening to them.”

Chuck Schumer assured us that all the Democrats needed to do was watch Trump’s policies eat into his job approval rating. Yet according to the polling average by Real Clear Politics, Trump has entirely recovered from the hit he took on “liberation day.” What is going on?

It’s hard to know where to begin. The premise of the question is that Schumer and the other senior figures in the Democrats’ congressional leadership share the political vision of rank-and-file Democrats (in which I would include myself), namely that the Republican Party and its leader pose an enormous threat to the well-being of the United States and indeed Earth, and that the job of the Democrats, as the nominal party of opposition, is to maximally check the GOP as it goes about its malign business. That isn’t how Schumer – or for that matter House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries – approach politics.

These are successful careerists. They have risen to power not by devoting their energies to defeating the GOP but to intraparty machinations and fundraising. (It’s not a coincidence that these guys are from New York/Wall Street.) So when Trump comes along with a brazenly dictatorial agenda, they are simply ill-suited to the business at hand, which requires them to imaginatively and determinedly oppose the Republicans and – this bit is crucial – to align themselves with the concerns of the party base, as distinct from the party donor class. That kind of realignment is very threatening to them.

Remember, these are guys who are just as concerned, if not more concerned, about the prospect of a party that is a partisan political movement as they are the prospect of Republican rule. They’re frozen. 

They don’t have the skills or the willpower to act in a way that the party base – and Americans across the ideological spectrum – would like them to act. The challenge for the rest of us is this: how to motivate and push our leaders into leading.

How do we do that?

Honestly, it’s a tough job. I’ve spent years arguing that the party needs an overhaul of philosophy and personnel. But there’s an opening. 

Certain politicians (US Senators Gary Peters, Jeanne Shaheen spring to mind) announced their retirement effective 2026. It seems important to ensure that the right candidates replace them – principled partisans who (unlike so many of our Democratic elders) did not have their worldview shaped in the post-Reagan years, when Democrats imbibed the notion that the GOP is the natural party of government and that Democrats could not act without Republican approval.

In the shorter term, we have to impress on Schumer & Co. that doing nothing is a dangerous tactic. It isn’t simply that Democrats will fail to attach political costs to Republican misdeeds. It’s that the party base will grow disenchanted and switch off – which could have disastrous electoral consequences next year. Tending to the morale of the base is a huge part of Democratic leadership responsibility.

The debate over impeachment would seem to be a good test of character. The president is literally taking bribes, but many Democrats seem squeamish about saying they will hold him to account if voters give them the power to. There is this reluctance to speak in clear moral and constitutional terms. It’s maddening.

I agree. It’s folly to bet the house on Trump blowing up the US economy. Not only is the US economy, especially after four years of Bidenomics, extraordinarily resilient, but there is a lot of evidence that suggests that “the economy” isn’t necessarily what motivates apolitical voters. “Corruption” is a big issue for a lot of people, especially those who tend not to be partisans, and impeachment would be an excellent way to publicize the issue.

You have suggested that the challenges ahead are not limited to Trump’s evil. If the Democrats do not find a way to hold him accountable, rather than appeasing him, they risk their own base staying home in the next election. I’m not hopeful. The party takes its base for granted, choosing to pursue “indie” voters instead.

I’ve always been of the view that “indie” voters are best reached horizontally – ie, by energized Democrats speaking to their neighbors, amplifying partisan hubbub, using the information channels that (typically low-info) swing voters themselves use. So it’s a virtuous dynamic: you energize the base, the base energize indies, the Democratic brand perks up. That was how blue waves were won.

The contrary view – that low-info moderates will respond to highly technical, high-info tweaks to policy platforms – strikes me as obviously absurd. Why the Democratic Party persists in this absurdity takes us back to the initial question: staffers, consultants and electeds don’t want to change course strategically because any change of course will result in the elevation of a new crew.

If you could talk to Schumer or Jeffries, and if they took your criticism seriously, what would you tell them?

Now there’s an unlikely scenario! I would tell Schumer to stand down from the Senate leadership – now, before it’s too late – in favor of someone who relishes normal adversarial politics and who understands the imperative for creative resistance and iconic politics. 

All of the political creativity, right now, is on the Republican side. Day after day, they come up with stuff that sends everyone into shock. We have to start scoring some PR wins, even if it’s only to bolster party morale. A Schumer resignation would indicate that the Democratic Party means business.

As for Jeffries, I would advise to leave behind him the parochial political calculations that have defined his career and to think bigger. There are so many ways, unconnected to the legislative or oversight processes, for Democrats to seize public attention and build a more powerful and authentic party brand. In practice, this would require bringing in someone from the outside, almost certainly from the world of media, to devise and enforce a new, more adversarial party strategy. 

I’m thinking, here, about how Alastair Campbell, a journalist currently famous for The Rest Is Politics podcast, was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s right-hand man, and how he implemented a political operation that anyone from inside the world of Westminster, constrained by years of deals and promises and backscratching, could not have pulled off. Say what you like about Blair, but he never lost.

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