gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
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Donald Trump has not yet taken office, but prominent Democrats have already started weighing in on one of the party’s most pressing strategic questions: is there room to work with the new administration?
It depends on who you ask.
In the days leading up to Trump’s second inauguration, some Democrats in Congress have expressed openness to some of the incoming president’s Cabinet picks. Governors of blue states – including New Jersey and Maryland, where Trump gained ground in the November election -– have said they wouldn’t put resistance over advancing their state’s priorities. And a handful of prominent members of the party, including Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, have trekked to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump.
The willingness to find common ground with the incoming president highlights a difficult reality for Democrats. After years of warning that Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, they must now confront the reality that he narrowly won the popular vote, chipped away at their coalition and is backed by loyal Republican majorities in Congress.
But while elected officials have signaled their receptivity, those charged with helping Democrats win and selecting their party’s new leadership have stopped short of proactively seeking common ground. Democratic party insiders expressed skepticism that the incoming president’s agenda would offer room for compromise.
“When I hear elected officials say that they are willing to find a way to work with Trump, I think we have different jobs,” said Shasti Conrad, the chair of the Washington Democratic Party. “My job as a leader of this Democratic Party is to make sure that we have more Democrats winning – it’s not to make it easier for the Republicans to do whatever they’re going to do.”
For Democrats, trying to calibrate the right amount of resistance isn’t a new debate. After Trump’s 2016 election, dozens of House Democrats boycotted Trump’s inauguration even as their congressional leaders argued Democrats had a responsibility to find common ground with the incoming president. Eight years later, Trump is taking office once again, with a Republican trifecta to push forward various promises he made on the campaign trail, from mass deportations of migrants to rolling back much of President Joe Biden’s agenda.
In the final days of his presidential transition, 55% of Americans approved how Trump handled it and 56% said they expect him to do a good job as president, according to a recent CNN poll.
Democrats are betting that voters will sour on the incoming president once he takes office and begins enacting his plans.
“He’s going to start doing all the things he did before, but now he feels even more emboldened to be able to do those things in the future,” said Bryan Kennedy, a Democratic National Committee member and mayor of Glendale, Wisconsin. “Democrats have to stand up to him.”
Not looking for fights
One early area of common ground has been immigration. This month, 48 House Democrats voted with Republicans to advance the Laken Riley Act, which would require law enforcement to detain undocumented migrants charged with theft or burglary. Two Democrats have also co-sponsored the bill in the Senate: Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Ruben Gallego of Arizona.
A handful of Democratic senators also have expressed openness to confirming Trump’s Cabinet picks or working with Republicans on key issues. Chief among them has been Fetterman, who Trump called a “commonsense person” after the Pennsylvania Democrat visited him in Mar-a-Lago this month.
But that attitude has gone beyond Capitol Hill. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who once called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn” and is in charge of a blue city where Trump made gains, also traveled to Florida to meet with the president-elect Friday.
Across the country, governors have made clear that their priorities are their states, not combatting the incoming White House.
In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy vowed to “never back down” from partnering with the administration “where our priorities align” during his State of the State address earlier this month.
“But just as importantly, I will never back down from defending our New Jersey values – if and when they are tested,” he added.
In Michigan, one of the seven battleground states Trump won, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she wouldn’t avoid fights with the administration, but she wouldn’t look for them, either.
“I don’t want to pretend we’re always going to agree, but I will always seek collaboration first,” Whitmer, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said during remarks at the Detroit Auto Show.
And in Maryland, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who is also viewed as a possible future presidential candidate, shared a similar sentiment.
“I am not the leader of the resistance, I am a governor of Maryland,” Moore told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Not every Democratic governor has shied away from being part of the opposition. Some party leaders have embraced taking on an adversarial role against the Trump White House.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a special session of the state legislature in November “to safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration.” This month, Democrats in the state agreed to invest $50 million to help fund legal efforts to sue the Trump administration and protect migrants from deportation.
Not our job to cooperate
In Detroit, where the national party held its first official in-person forum for those seeking to lead the party during the second Trump administration, leading candidates argued Democrats need to choose their battles.
“It’s about picking the fights that show that we’re on the side of the vast majority of people in this country who don’t live off of massive wealth,” said Ben Wikler, a candidate for Democratic National Committee chair and the head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “I would be delighted if Trump somehow transformed into a totally different person, but he’s shown us exactly what he’s about, so we have to be ready.”
Ken Martin, the chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and another candidate to chair the national party, said Democrats should consider Republican policies that would improve people’s lives “on a case-by-case basis” if there are serious proposals on the table.
“What I’m suggesting right now is there’s nothing that the president-elect or his administration have said that gives me any reason to believe that they’re serious about actually governing in the best interests of all Americans,” Martin said.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, also a candidate for chair, said it’s “not the job of the party to cooperate” with the incoming president. Instead, the party must focus on rebuilding its brand.
“I do think that there’s a lot of been a lot of reflection about tactics and strategies in the party since the election, and we cannot allow ourselves to be constantly juked, taken off message, taken away from our brand and our purpose as a party,” O’Malley said.
Jason Paul, an attorney and political strategist who’s also seeking the chair role, argued the incoming president should be left on his own.
“As an opposition party, we don’t owe you any votes,” Paul said. “It’s your job to fix the country.”
