Democrats couldn’t be less interested in the whole Jared Kushner vs. Steve Bannon drama, and they have given up on the idea that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law will push him to work across the aisle on tax reform or anything else.

The crisis of confidence they felt after Trump’s shocking win has faded and his record-low poll numbers have killed any incentive in their minds to suck it up and compromise with him.


“There is zero chance of any of this working out that way, and it doesn’t matter who you’re changing,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who notes that many of his colleagues who once decried his absolute opposition to Trump now agree with him. “At the end of the day,” he added, “this is Donald Trump, and we don’t want to work with him.”

As far as Democrats are concerned, the idea of a moderate, post-partisan staff rising to guide Trump into building bridges with them — even for the sake of building actual bridges as part of infrastructure investments Trump talks about and they agree are needed — has now entered the realm of complete fantasy.

“This notion of the battle between Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon and who prevails is irrelevant in many ways to the policies,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), one of the chairs of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, about the discord among Trump’s most senior advisers. “What Democrats are responding to is the substance of the policies: It doesn’t matter who wins the internal battles in the White House.”

Though many are still nervous — there remains deep anxiety about being pulled into a government shutdown fight over border security — party leaders are in a much different place than they were in December and their success in defeating the Obamacare repeal made them feel that political order had been restored after a year of feeling like they no longer understood anything.

In the Democratic debate about how to deal with Trump, total obstruction — similar to the Republican approach during Barack Obama’s presidency, with hopes it’ll produce the same results in elections — is winning, and selective, principled compromise is starting to seem like a fever dream, despite anxiety in some quarters that Democrats will be blamed for more gridlock in Washington that voters clearly don’t want.

Hill Democrats feel a hardened “no” is exactly what their constituents have come to demand.

“Initially, people didn’t have a full appreciation of how he would conduct himself,” said Cicilline. “They thought, ‘He won, he wasn’t our choice, but he is our president.’ What I’m hearing from my constituents, even some who’ve been more ambivalent, [is] it’s really important to stand up and resist and try to mitigate the damage that he’s likely to cause.”

Cicilline said that’s reverberated among the other Democrats on the Hill he’s in touch with.

“People are really conflicted, because they want government to work, and they know that’s when we can produce good results, but I think that they’re beginning to lose confidence that this administration and this president are interested in getting things done.”

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Evidence of how quickly Democrats are shifting into full "no" mode against Trump: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a freshman lawmaker who beat a Republican last year and is already a top 2018 target. Gottheimer’s the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and just a few weeks ago was speaking optimistically about working with the White House on a tax overhaul package. He got so far as meetings with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House legislative director Marc Short.

Now, Gottheimer says, there’s still an opportunity for the two parties to work together, but only if the White House radically changes its approach.

He’s not interested in just giving a bipartisan sheen to a tax deal that parallels what Trump and GOP leaders did in their attempt to repeal Obamacare, which was a Republican-crafted plan that they complained Democrats wouldn’t support.

“There’s a very big difference between jamming you at the last minute with a piece of legislation and saying, ‘Let’s be bipartisan now,’ versus bringing you into the process so the solution is not an ideologically extreme or rigid document,” Gottheimer said.

And the Republicans’ melee of renegade members on the health care vote has only hardened Democrats' resolve, fostering the sense that Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will not be able to control the party, so they might as well step out of the way.

“There is no dog wagging the tail and there is no tail wagging the dog. What would we be working with?” Gallego said. “He doesn’t control votes. He doesn’t control the Freedom Caucus.

"He doesn’t control the Republicans. Their operation isn’t strong enough, we can’t deal with them. Ryan himself is not strong enough.”

Underlying everything is a worry among Democrats that even if a suddenly more moderate-oriented White House did entice them into a deal on infrastructure, tax reform or a broader priority, like tackling the opioid crisis, Trump could just as easily turn around and attack them on something else the next day.

“Chameleons reflect the color that they’re on,” said Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. “He can reflect what is the hot flavor of the moment, but the reality is that this administration has got to go a long way to indicate that it’s really willing to work with people.”