Who’s divided now? Democrats struggle to get their anti-Trump mojo back

When Donald Trump first brawled onto the political scene, it was a shock to the system. He infamously split his own party and, less talked about, served as a powerful unifying force for the fraying Democrats.

Two of the many people who were jolted into action seven years ago were Kim Schrier, an Issaquah doctor appalled that Trump wanted to gut government health care; and Imraan Siddiqi, an activist who became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Trump’s anti-Muslim travel restrictions.

Remember those pussy-hat-wearing days? It had seemed, prior to Trump’s election, that the Democratic party, with its warring socialists and moderates, might crack apart. Instead, Trump crystallized it and focused it, around himself, a common enemy.

“He was the Death Star around which they could organize their feisty resistance,” I wrote a few years back.

Well, he’s back for a sequel, as you know. Twice impeached, felony-convicted and still charged with trying to overturn the last election, Trump’s pulled off one of the biggest political comebacks in U.S. history.

“His GOP critics have retired, lost, died, capitulated or fallen silent as the former president has all but made the Party of Lincoln a wholly owned subsidiary of his MAGA movement,” was how Politico summed up the Republican convention this past week.

This concept of GOP “unity” is overstated, as I’ll get to in a minute. But it’s true it’s the Democrats who are leaderless by comparison now, as well as riven by differences.

I mentioned Schrier and Siddiqi above as two of the countless, disparate Democrats who were activated in reaction to Trumpism. A political neophyte, Schrier got elected in the big blue anti-Trump wave of 2018, representing the 8th Congressional District. And Siddiqi helped overturn the travel ban and heads the Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Now he’s running against her — Democrat versus Democrat — and savaging her on an almost daily basis for her support for Israel.

“The costs of housing, health care, and child care are skyrocketing for Washingtonians, while Kim Schrier sends our tax dollars to fund a genocide in Gaza that has claimed the lives of over 15,000 children,” Siddiqi says.

Siddiqi entered the campaign only on May 7. Yet through the end of June, he’d already raised $335,000 from donors across the country. He pulled in the second-most financial support in the April-June quarter of any of the dozens of non-incumbents vying for Congress in this state, behind only Republican Tiffany Smiley in Central Washington.

“We’re watching our leaders like Kim Schrier set the world on fire,” Siddiqi charged this past week.

Schrier has backed Israel but also has straddled the issue, calling for a temporary ceasefire and more humanitarian aid for Gaza back in February. The 8th District, which runs from the Eastside suburbs over the mountains, is as moderate as it gets. So it’s doubtful she faces much election risk from a hard challenge to her left.

But the fault line inside the party is real. An insurgent campaign that raises more than $300,000 in a few weeks is a shot across the party’s bow — from within. It suggests that when national Democrats meet next month in Chicago, it’s probably not going to have the sheen of a unified love fest, as the GOP convention just did.

That’s if Democrats have even settled on a presidential nominee by then.

As for the Republicans, their unity was more stage-managed than reality. The base is super-energized about the second coming of Trump. But as Seattle Times reporting out of Milwaukee noted, the more traditional parts of the party simply weren’t there. Of 62 elected state- or federal-level Republicans in Washington state, only one attended.

Others, such as Washington’s two GOP members of Congress, “are pre-Trump dinosaurs” who are “despised” by the Trumpian base, former state party chairman Chris Vance said.

There’s a reason Trump introduced a shiny new running mate for his third campaign. A Republican mob had threatened to hang his previous one, Mike Pence. So he’s been disowned and didn’t show.

These same MAGA grievances about the last election have Republicans tearing at each other out in Eastern Washington. Two candidates, Smiley and Trump-endorsed race car driver Jerrod Sessler, are trying to take down incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside. They’re upset he voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot.

Smiley calls Newhouse a “never Trumper” and a “do-nothing politician.”  Trump labeled him a “a weak and pathetic RINO.” Sessler accused Newhouse of full-on “betrayal.”

“Even with all the evidence that J6 was a set up, Dan has not rescinded his impeachment vote or lifted a finger to assist the J6 political prisoners,” Sessler wrote conspiratorially about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

That’s some unity. You can see why Newhouse maybe wasn’t excited to go to his own party’s convention.

The internal stress on the two parties has been the big political story of our times. Both have seemed at times as if they’re cracking up.

But Trump has now eaten the GOP. Division is still there, as the quotes above show. But inside the party, “pre-Trump dinosaurs” like Newhouse for the moment feel more like last hurrahs.

The Democrats are the ones in extreme flux now. In the past, Trump’s dark presence has papered over countless Democratic rifts. Can they summon that unifying spirit of resistance one more time? Or, with their nominal leader infirm, will they splinter into warring rebel camps on their way to oblivion, as they were threatening before Darth Vader came along?

The Democrats’ gathering next month does promise something new for a modern political convention: It shouldn’t be boring.