“Well,” a senior Democratic strategist tells me, “my wife and I are having a fight about me going back to the field in the midterms.”
“I would be lying if I said these aren’t conversations I’ve been having with my family every day,” shared a Democratic candidate in a high-profile battleground state midterms race.
In a matter of days, the truly unthinkable occurred: On Thursday last week, Senator Alex Padilla of California was forcibly removed from a news conference and handcuffed by officials wearing FBI-identifying clothing when he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on immigration raids in Los Angeles. On Saturday, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state representative, and her husband, Mark Hortman, were shot and killed. State senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman were also shot. On Tuesday, New York City Comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander was violently arrested after accompanying an immigrant from a court appointment.
Not to mention the fact that an estimated 4 to 6 million people attended “No Kings” protests this past weekend against President Donald Trump’s administration.
How should Democrats be approaching this chaotic and, at times, violent moment? From lawmakers and candidates all the way down to the staff who fuel their operations, a series of events over the past week have made national Democrats reconsider their strategy. Following the shootings of the state lawmakers in Minnesota, a weekend of nationwide protests, and Democratic lawmakers in handcuffs, Democrats are trying to figure out what meeting the Trump moment really means for an out-of-power coalition that’s already under fire from constituents for ostensibly rolling over. And for a number of lawmakers and strategists, that answer isn’t so simple.
“I think that the hard reality is, a lot of Democrats and a lot of people say, like, why aren't we doing something?” David Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s chief strategist from his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, tells WIRED. “Well, there are a limited number of ways in a democracy to do something, short of revolution—which I'm not advocating. You win elections, you go to court.”
He says Padilla was in the right but that Democrats should exercise caution and not play into the White House’s hands by rushing to get arrested or associating themselves too closely with protests that are unpredictable and prone to producing images of disorder. (Padilla’s office did not return a request for comment.)
Some laws of political gravity, Axelrod argues, still apply: “As a general rule, don’t do what your opponent wants.”
The issue isn’t just optics though, but expectation. “I think the last thing Dems want to do is look unhinged or out of control,” a GOP strategist tells me. Right-wing media, certainly, has had a field day: a Fox News prime time segment from Jesse Watters on Tuesday night painted Democratic protesters as hysterical and ineffective.
But Democratic voters might just want a strong, “unhinged” response. “Democrats are crying out for [a] fight,” the senior Democratic strategist tells me. “They are crying out for someone who seems like they’re fighting.”