Bipartisanship is a Failing Strategy, and Democrats Need to Stop Pulling Their Punches

Photo of the Senate Building in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Kai Hendry.

This February, as Americans marked their calendars for Valentine’s Day, House Democrats were facing biting relationship woes—with their own base. According to Axios, representatives held a closed-door “gripe fest” against left-leaning groups MoveOn and Indivisible, criticizing them for instructing their members to call Democrats en masse with procedural demands to obstruct the Republican agenda. In an unwitting admission of his own incompetence, Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) cheekily implored them to “Please call the Republicans” instead. 

This moment encapsulates voters’ growing frustrations with the party’s unwillingness to challenge sweeping right-wing reforms. Trump’s cabinet nominations sailed smoothly through their committee hearings due to full Democratic cooperation, and the controversial Laken Riley Act, a bill that removes due process rights for undocumented immigrants and allows for their prolonged detention, similarly passed with bipartisan support. The results of such pandering are unsurprising: the party’s approval rating has fallen to just 29% as of March 16, a decennial low implying that even “Vote Blue No Matter Who” demographics are disillusioned with its performance. If Democrats want to win future elections, they must abandon institutional bipartisanship for a more action-based, confrontational strategy. Otherwise, if Americans’ only option for protecting their constitutional freedoms is to “call the Republicans,” as Rep. Torres suggests, they might as well vote for them, too. 

While bipartisanship and respectability politics—never stooping as low as your adversary—are staples of Democratic leadership, this prioritization of politeness, precedent, and procedure is a failing strategy. An increasing number of blue voters interpret this mentality as an unwillingness to fight for their best interests. In 2021, for example, voters were promised a laundry list of expansionary policies via Biden’s Build Back Better Plan. Despite relatively high public support for provisions like increased Medicare coverage, lowered prescription drug prices, and paid family leave, the nation was forced to watch as Senator Joe Manchin (D-VA) stalled and gutted the bill. Manchin’s refusal to allow Medicaid to negotiate drug prices revealed a clear conflict of interest, as his daughter has served as the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Mylan Inc. since 2012. An adept party whip would have pressured Manchin by threatening investigations into his family’s financial ties and antitrust violations, but Democratic leaders failed to act. Instead, they displayed to voters an inability to deliver on key campaign promises despite holding majorities in both the House and Senate. And while the Biden administration was later able to secure Medicaid’s ability to negotiate drug prices, this failure to secure the provision via legislative means dulled its capacity to message on the issue. 

Republicans, to their credit, saw the writing on the wall decades ago. Having lost their appeal as the institutional alternative to Obama’s progressive wave, they recognized that to wrest back the public consciousness, they would have to go scorched earth on their opponents. In a desperate bid to outlive a dying window of relevance, while also taking advantage of a sudden surge in mobilizing potential from the disgruntled body of white America in the wake of the 2008 election, Republicans consciously decided to drop the conventional minority approach of drifting to the center and reaching out to the other side—which, bafflingly, today’s Democrats do even when they have the majority. Instead, they adopted a strategy of resolutely obstructing the Obama administration’s agenda, intending, in then-Senator John Boehner’s words, to “do everything–and I mean everything we can do—to kill it, stop it, slow it down.” And slow it down they did: during Obama’s first four years in office, Republicans filibustered 500 bills, violated precedent by rejecting every one of Obama’s cabinet nominees, and opposed all legislation the majority party brought to a vote—even policies that aided their platform. Though Democrats predicted this shameless rejectionism would draw ire from Republican voters, the GOP’s resulting political wins indicated this method was much more formidable than expected. Framing their opposition as an unequivocal threat brought Republicans enough reactionary turnout to win the House in 2012, effectively dooming Obama’s federal agenda and bringing the Republican Party back from the edge of oblivion. Because, truthfully, voters do not care about bipartisanship, and they do not want to see their representatives conceding to the other side.

To mirror this victory by the Republicans, Democrats need to realize two things: there is a greater return on unapologetic political aggression than hopeful capitulation, and it is easier to counteract policy than enact it. The Trump administration’s drastic cuts to welfare and federal jobs programs have alienated voters in key battleground states, and Democrats have the potential to win back a degree of support by putting a wrench in the gears of further chaos. To achieve this, Democrats can stall Senate operations by demanding quorum checks and objecting to unanimous consent requests, forcing votes on every minor agenda item. Blanket opposition to any Republican-proposed bill would also galvanize left-adjacent bases, letting voters know they are playing ball for them. 

The Democratic Party’s embracing of legislative passivity is perhaps the greatest driving factor of political apathy in America today. Voters will not turn out in droves solely because they dislike a candidate. To preserve our Democracy, sitting Democratic representatives will need to initiate an aggressive, left-leaning counterforce to the chaos of the Trump administration. If Democratic incumbents refuse to alter their approach, blue voters must replace them with lawmakers who will.

Tazia Mohammad (CC ’27) is a staff writer at CPR majoring in economics and political science.