Callum: Despite the war, Democrats can still unite around a common goal

The only thing the parties can agree on is that Donald Trump is the central issue of our time.

Let’s start with the latest headline: “It’s 2025, and Democrats Are Still Running Against Trump.”

“After a year of soul-searching and introspection by Democrats about what they should stand for in 2024 after losing the White House and Senate.” Shane Goldmacher of The New York Times writes, “The party is largely coalescing behind the same message that has united it for decades: stop Donald J. Trump.”

Now, I admit to missing a great deal of soul-searching and identification among Democrats, but I am reminded of a very different search that took place two decades ago: the search for “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.

While you might think I’m going for some weird metaphor to compare President Trump to WMD, that’s not my point.

For those not too young to remember, the George W. Bush administration focused heavily on Saddam Hussein’s WMD program — some would say it was the only justification for toppling the Iraqi dictator.

It became even more controversial after US forces failed to find WMDs that the Bush administration and others said were there. For opponents of the war, it became the refrain that Bush had “America lied in the war“

It was always unfair. Then Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, now forgotten but once highly controversial interview With Vanity Fair, explain why the agency is focusing on WMDs. “[W]And it settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,” Wolfowitz said, “because it was an argument everyone could agree on.”

That may seem like a stretch—perhaps because it is—but the parallel comes to mind because Trump is playing out a similar dynamic within the Democratic Party.

Some parts of the party, typified by Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City mayoral candidate Zahran Mamdani, favor socialism or social democracy. others Trying to make Bill Clinton style, Lynn more central. Some hate Israel. Others defend it. Some want to open up the government. Others want to continue the shutdown. Some support the so-called “abundance agenda,” which avoids head-butting government and activist-driven NIMBYism, while others oppose it as hard-won environmental and worker protections.

But one thing they can all agree on: they don’t like Trump.

There are other reasons for the president’s attention. “I’m worried that Donald Trump is like crack cocaine for our party,” Democratic pollster Selinda Lake told the Times. “Trump is very attractive because when you do an anti-Trump ad, you get a lot of small dollar donations, you get a lot of activists saying: Great job!”

Leake and other Democrats worry that too much focus on Trump is preventing the party from developing a positive agenda. They are right. Democrats are on it unpopular As they have always That’s partly because hard-liners are mad at their own party for not being tougher in their “resistance” to Trump (hence the shutdown). Other Democrats believe that the party is a powerless branch and simply leave.

for example, In the last five yearsnearly twice as many Pennsylvania Democrats shifted their nominations to the GOP as the other way around. It should come as no surprise that opposition to Trump is uniting Democrats who haven’t left for the Republican Party.

Democrats hope that in the short term, Trump’s opposition may be enough to win gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey next year and perhaps in the upcoming midterms.

However, Trump is also unpopular. According to the latter, his overall approval rating is only 37% AP-NORC Poll d Economist He has 40% approval for a second term, and 55% disapproval. Americans give him low marks on the economy and now on immigration.

Still, there is little reason to expect a “blue wave” in mid-term conditions next year. During the same period in his first term, Democrats had a 9-point advantage in the general congressional vote. Now, it’s 1.6 points. A lot is going on about where the economy will be a year from now.

However, Trump is not the only unifying issue for Democrats. He’s also a unifying issue for Republicans, which is a reason more people are familiar with than ever before independent. Increasingly, calling yourself a Republican means being a Trump supporter for the same reason that calling yourself a Democrat means being anti-Trump: It’s the only thing the GOP can agree on.

What that means for the future is unclear, save for one thing: Once Trump is no longer president, or even once he’s a dumb duck, both sides will have a big fight to figure out what they stand for.

X: @JonahDispatch