Roll over and play dead was the advice from legendary Democratic strategist James Carville at the start of Trump 2.0, as he urged his party to adopt the corpse position while Donald Trump destroyed his own presidency. Yet even Carville, the “Ragin’-Cajun” who helped Bill Clinton reach the White House, might have been surprised at how readily so many Democrats have performed their roles as political zombies, the partisan living dead.
For the past 10 years, ever since Trump came down that golden escalator, Democrats have struggled to compete for airtime against an anti-politician who understands the art of the attention economy far more so than the art of the deal. Even now, when so many Trumpian plot lines, from the conflict with Iran to the trade war with Canada, feel so tired, the party struggles to come up with compelling counter-narratives.
Unlike in Britain, the party has no titular leader. Presently, none of the four most significant elected posts in Washington – those of president, vice president, House speaker and Senate majority leader – are occupied by a Democrat. Elders such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama occasionally enter the political fray. But the party lacks a talismanic figure or pre-eminent standard-bearer. Up against a colossal and omnipresent figure like Trump, high-ranking Democrats have often looked like lightweights. Or bit players lacking central character energy.
Can you recall a moment, for instance, when the party’s Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, landed a glove on the President?
Does the name Hakeem Jeffries even ring a bell? If the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives in next month’s midterm elections, the 56-year-old Congressman will become the first African-American House speaker in US history. Yet he could hardly be described as a leader of the opposition. After Jeffries suggested that his fellow Democrats sit in “silent defiance” during Trump’s State of the Union address in February, late-night host Stephen Colbert pilloried him for coming up with what he called “a bold brand of doing jack squat.” Then, mercilessly, Colbert compared him with Black leaders from the past. “As Martin Luther King once said,” the comedian deadpanned, “‘Sh-h-h’”.
Ahead of the midterms, Jeffries has become more vocal. “Operation Epic Failure” is how he, like so many others, describes “Operation Epic Fury”, the war with Iran which has driven up fuel and grocery prices. Still, Jeffries has been unable to shrug off the criticism voiced most strongly by local activists in his home district of Brooklyn, who heckled him with the chant: “Grow a spine.”
Not all Democrats have been flat-lining. California Governor Gavin Newsom, ahead of his probable bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, frequently shirtfronts the President. Last week, after Trump blithely spoke of Iran wiping out Los Angeles and San Diego, he denounced the President as “deranged and dangerous” and called for the cabinet and Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of a president unable to discharge his duties (spoiler alert, this will never happen because the cabinet is packed with sycophants and because it requires two-thirds votes in both chambers of Congress).
Left-wing firebrand Bernie Sanders can still pack out a stadium rally, which he has been doing since the start of Trump 2.0, alongside protégé, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in their nationwide Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It says a lot about the sorry state of the Democratic Party, though, that one of its most effective pugilists is a snowy-haired 85-year-old, who was first elected to Congress 36 years ago, when AOC had just celebrated her first birthday.
As Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez reminds us, the party is not completely devoid of talented up-and-comers. Georgia Senator John Ossoff, who is fighting a tough battle for re-election in one of the country’s key battleground states, instantly made a name for himself when, during a rally in August, he accused Trump of being preoccupied with home improvements at the White House, and his presidential aide Natalie Harp. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a gifted political communicator, especially fluent on TikTok. But Mamdani made his name attacking a fellow Democrat, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, in last year’s mayoral primary, rather than Trump.
That “Big Apple” contest pitted a left-wing populist, Mamdani, against an establishment centrist, Cuomo, and was billed as a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. This ideological fight has consumed the party ever since it lost to a felonious former president who many expected to end up in a federal penitentiary with iron bars rather than a federal mansion with gold trappings. The midterms, which will probably result in victories for moderates and left-wingers alike, are unlikely to resolve this argument.
Rather than philosophising about the future direction of the party, the Democrats should be focused on the political here and now. Why have they not made more, for instance, of the Trump family gaining so much financially since its billionaire patriarch was restored to the White House, especially at a time when cost of living pressures bear down on average Americans?
Few things speak more of the failure of other senior Democrats to achieve cut-through than the fact Kamala Harris, the former vice president who lost the 2024 election, is currently front-runner in the race for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination. But that could soon change, especially if Ossoff wins in Georgia. So far this 39-year-old, who has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, has been the standout performer of the 2026 electoral cycle.
Whether through accident or design, the Carville “play dead” strategy looks like reaping a rich harvest. The Democrats are poised to win back control of the House of Representatives, where they need a net gain of just three seats (midway through Trump’s first term, the party made a net gain of 40 seats). The party could also wrest back control of the Senate, which seemed unthinkable at the start of the year because so many races are in states such as Ohio, Texas, Iowa and Kansas, where Trump won comfortably in 2024.
If they do win back both houses of Congress, Democrats will be able to investigate more rigorously the Trump administration with subpoena powers that come with a majority. They could impeach the President for a third time, although they will not have the votes to win a conviction in the ensuing Senate trial. Victory in November would surely signal an end to their zombification. On Capitol Hill, we might witness the return of the living dead.