(DCNF)—Some Democrats are openly questioning whether their party has learned anything from their political losses last November as lawmakers mobilize to defend foreign aid and federal bureaucrats from DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts.
As President Donald Trump and DOGE chair Elon Musk take a wrecking ball to the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), most Democratic lawmakers have excoriated the president for seeking to hold an agency — whose funding is rife with waste and abuse — accountable. But some Democratic strategists urge caution and have told their colleagues to think twice about whether defending foreign aid and USAID employees is the right hill to die on for a party that is struggling with working class voters and those in middle America.
“My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” longtime Democratic strategist David Axelrod, who ran former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, told POLITICO’s Rachael Bade in an interview published Tuesday. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.”
?BREAKING: Pro-USAID Protest Erupts Outside of US Capitol pic.twitter.com/IKcoIsxJgR
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 5, 2025
The Trump White House and Republican lawmakers appear to welcome the idea of Democrats mobilizing to defend a government agency rife with questionable spending decisions. USAID has funded gain of function research and been doled out to spur left-wing activism. USAID funding has even ended up in the hands of terrorist groups, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s extensive reporting on the agency’s spending history.
Why is Cory Booker so angry at the idea of making sure American tax dollars are spent to further the national interest of the United States and not on things like "LGBT activism" in Guatemala? pic.twitter.com/e3DPgs3a30
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 5, 2025
Axelrod and other Democratic strategists’ also appear to recognize that foreign aid and government bureaucracy are two issues that do not poll well with most voters.
“The other half of my brain that reads a bunch of polling … and knows that Americans don’t want to send money overseas for foreign aid programs or any little incident of waste or fraud or abuse is going to be lifted up and amplified [by Republicans] … figuring out how to fight this politically is hard,” a host from the popular Democratic Party-aligned podcast Pod Save America said Tuesday.
Nearly three-fourths of respondents to a January New York Times poll surveying more than 2,000 Americans said the statement “the government is mostly working to benefit itself and the elites” aligned closer to their views than a statement approving of federal bureaucrats’ work. Similarly, 60% of respondents told the Times that a statement suggesting the United States “should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home” was more reflective of their beliefs than a viewpoint advocating for the United States to have a more active role in the world.
Just three percent of participants told the pollster that “foreign policy” was an important issue to them out of more than 20 possible options listed.
Voters appear to be more closely aligned with the Trump administration when it comes to ensuring taxpayer dollars align with American interests and reducing the size of the federal government. Some Democratic lawmakers, nevertheless, are threatening to block all legislative business and potentially shut down the government to defend the federal bureaucracy.
“We need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis,” Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said on MSNBC Wednesday. “That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the United States Senate. Democrats should not be giving votes to nominees or legislation in the United States Senate until Republicans get serious about this crisis.”
“Democrats should be leading public gatherings all weekend all across the country to bring Americans out to show Republicans that they will pay a price.”
Some Democratic strategists are seeing the potential pitfalls in Murphy’s approach, which advocates for lawmakers to resist every action the Trump administration pursues.
“You don’t fight every fight. You don’t swing at every pitch,” former Chicago mayor and former U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel told Bade. “And my view is — while I care about the USAID as a former ambassador — that’s not the hill I’m going to die on.”
Other Democratic lawmakers, such as Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, are consistently voting for Trump’s cabinet nominees and have supported Trump-backed legislation.
While Democratic lawmakers waver on how to respond to DOGE’s cost-cutting mission, Republican lawmakers appear to be enjoying their colleagues’ state of disarray.
“The Democratic Party truly is seemingly lost,” Speaker Mike Johnson said during a House GOP leadership press conference Wednesday. “They have no rudder. They have no vision. They have no clear leader. The only message they have is anti-President Trump. And we’ve also seen that that’s a failed strategy time after time.”
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