Opinion | James Carville: The Best Thing Democrats Can Do in This Moment

The Republican Party is all too often effective at campaigning and winning elections, but there’s another fact about it that a lot of Americans forget: The Republican Party flat out sucks at governing. Even Tucker Carlson agrees with this. For all the huffing and puffing on the campaign trail in 2016, the first Trump administration largely amounted to tax cuts for the wealthy, 500 miles of a border wall and a destructive pandemic gone viral. George W. Bush got us into a harebrained war in Iraq and then tried to privatize Social Security while letting our financial system drive smack into the Great Recession. And George H.W. Bush governed his way into a one-term presidency because of the economy.

For round two in office, instead of prioritizing the problems he campaigned on — public safety, immigration and the border, and most of all the economy — President Trump is hellbent on dismantling the federal government. To accomplish this, he has put his faith in the most incompetent cabinet in modern history: a health and human services secretary who is already targeting federal vaccination efforts and dumped a bear carcass in Central Park as a fun prank at age 60; a director of national intelligence who was devoted to an allegedly abusive yoga-centered cult; a former WWE tycoon turned head of Department of Education; and a former cable news talking head as defense secretary. Which will result in one clear thing: disorder. There will probably be more enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and Medicaid cuts hitting a lot of other people, but there is nothing the American public despises more than disorder and a broken economy.

And there’s nothing Democrats can legitimately do to stop it — even if we wanted to.

With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight, and make the American people miss us. Only until the Trump administration has spiraled into the low 40s or high 30s in public approval polling percentages should we make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular. Until then, I’m calling for a strategic political retreat.

The Army has a term for this: “tactical pause.” It’s a vision move — get out of the hour-to-hour, day-to-day combat where one side (ours) is largely playing defense and struggling to defend politically charged positions (like explaining D.E.I. or persuading voters to care about foreign aid), and take time to regroup, look forward and make decisions about where we want to get to over the next two years. I don’t think a lot of Americans are waiting around for us to use the same old arguments and same old language to pile on Donald Trump — they’re tired of it, and our Democratic voters are tired of watching us moan and groan to cover up our impotency out of power. They want us to be smarter than that.

Our first major test in the art of strategic retreat comes in a few weeks, as the Trump administration must get a budget passed that raises the debt ceiling. There are deep internal Republican divides over the budget: Republicans don’t know what they want to include, they don’t agree on an agenda, and they do not have a clear path forward. Mr. Trump has asked for an abolishment of the debt ceiling — the Speaker of the House, his close ally, has yet to definitively support him on it.

Already, many Democrats across the party are itching at their seams for a showdown. Instead of gearing up to fight ‘em’ — as we love to do — the most radical thing we can do is nothing at all. Let the Republicans disagree with themselves publicly. Do not offer a single vote. Do not insert yourself into the discourse, do not throw a monkey wrench into the equation. Simply step away and let ‘em flirt with a default. Just when they’ve pushed themselves to the brink, and it appears they could collapse the global economy — come in and save the day. Be the competent party and not the chaos party. House Democrats know this; it’s time for everyone in our party — including the darlings who want to run in 2028 — to understand this as well. You won’t win or achieve anything meaningful going toe to toe with the Trump Administration right now.

This equation must be applied for the remainder of this year. Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing, and at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.

It’s a wiser approach than we pursued in the first Trump Administration, when Democrats tried and failed at the art of resistance politics. We voiced outrage on social issue after social issue. We spun ourselves up in a tizzy over an investigation into Russia. We fought Mr. Trump at every corner, on every issue imaginable and muddied up our message in an unwinnable war. We were saved only by his lousy governing and a lot of effort on our side finding good candidates to run for the House and Senate in 2018. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is retreat on the immediate battlefield — and advance in another direction.

It won’t take long: public support for this administration will fall through the floorboard. It’s already happening: Just over a month in, the president’s approval has already sunk underwater in two new polls. The people did not vote for the Department of Education to be obliterated — they voted for lower prices for eggs and milk. Democrats, let the Republicans’ own undertow drag them away.

At this rate, the Trump honeymoon will be over best case by Memorial Day but more likely in the next 30 days. And in November 2025, we start turning the tide with what will be remembered as one of the most important elections in recent years: The Virginia governor’s race. From tax enforcers, to rocket scientists, bank regulators or essential workers — the Trump Administration is hellbent on drastically firing the federal work force despite the fact that federal civilian employees represent just 3 percent of the federal budget. These workers are highly concentrated in the state of Virginia, home to around 144,000 civilian federal employees. It looks set to be a resounding Republican defeat. This will be the first moment where we can take the offensive back and begin our crusade again.

Half a century ago, Muhammad Ali cemented himself as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, not by punching his way to glory — but mastering the art of the strategic retreat. Facing George Foreman who was rolling off 37 knockouts and 40 wins, Ali deployed the famous “rope-a-dope” strategy, retreating to the ropes of the ring, evading punches right and left, absorbing small jabs, until Foreman’s battery was depleted — and in the eighth round deployed a decisive knockout below.

It’s Round 1. Let’s rope-a-dope, Dems.

James Carville is a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s in 1992, and a consultant to American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC.

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