Some newly elected Democrats are already telling their own party to cut it out. Iowa Governor-elect Rob Sand and Texas Senator-elect James Talarico went on the record with Fox News Digital this week, saying Democrats need to work with President Trump rather than spend the next two years investigating him.
That’s a pretty bold message considering what the rest of the party was doing just days after the midterms. Democratic leaders were warning Trump and Republicans to “lawyer up,” and party members were busy sketching out investigations into immigration enforcement, the president’s business interests, and the Justice Department. Standard Tuesday stuff for the left.
At the “What’s Next” conference in Denver, hosted by Majority Democrats, newly elected Democrats on working with Trump Sand made clear he doesn’t want his party wasting everyone’s time with political theater. When asked what he didn’t want Democrats doing as they take office, he said he didn’t want to see them “throwing bombs” at Republicans.
There are people who are really struggling right now, whose lives have been ruined by high gas prices, by all kinds of policy choices, and they need results,” Sand said. “They need public servants who are actually trying to serve the public.” Asked if that meant working with the Trump administration, he didn’t flinch. “He’s there, he was put there two years ago. He’s gonna be there another two years. You don’t get to pick and choose who you work with. The people do.”
Talarico went further and said the quiet part out loud. “Some of these reforms may not pass until 2029, but the American people cannot wait two years for change,” he said. We must work with President Trump.” He urged fellow Democrats to make Trump’s final two years in office “the most productive of any presidency in American history” and warned against getting “bogged down in the same petty fights.” Talarico, by the way, is the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas in nearly four decades, so maybe the base back home is trying to tell them something.
Democratic strategist Lis Smith, a senior adviser for Majority Democrats, backed up that read on the results. “We should not read into these election results as a mandate for far left policies advocated only by a handful of candidates,” she said. The party should stick to costs and corruption, she added, and earn voters’ trust before sprinting toward the progressive wish list. Wild concept.
Voters are clearly ahead of the leadership on this one. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published this month found nearly three-quarters of Americans want Democratic leaders in Congress to make a concerted effort to work with the president. That’s not a nudge, that’s a sledgehammer. The question now is whether the investigation-happy wing of the party can hear anything over the sound of their own subpoenas being drafted. If Sand and Talarico have anything to say about it, the answer better be yes.
