The Democratic base is so roiled and enraged after only two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency that a take-no-prisoners posture toward the White House is emerging as the price of entry for the 2020 primary.

An election that could have focused on economic inequality and the excesses of Wall Street — the issues that animate the left’s leading tribunes, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — is already shaping up as a contest about the intensity of the resistance to Trump.


“In almost 20 years of doing this, I’ve never felt like we’re in a moment like we are now,” said Anne Caprara, a senior adviser for the Priorities USA Action super PAC and a veteran Democratic campaign operative. “This is the moment in history. People will look back and ask what you did, and there’s a real palpable recognition of that among elected officials.”

The urgency of the moment is not lost on the party’s leading 2020 hopefuls. Many of them — including Warren and fellow Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris — abandoned their schedules two weekends ago to appear at protests in their home states or in Washington, grasping the imperative to be both public and distinctive in their opposition to Trump’s executive order on refugee travel. Then Warren, Sanders, Gillibrand and Booker voted against approving Elaine Chao for secretary of transportation, one of Trump’s least controversial picks and an unmistakable thumb in the eye of Chao’s husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“People will say, ‘Where were you when he appointed Jeff Sessions? Where were you when he picked a Supreme Court justice?’ That will be a real question in primaries, and I wouldn’t want to be the candidate on the wrong side of that,” said longtime strategist Bob Shrum, warning of the importance of public resistance in a week when Democratic senators began boycotting votes on Trump picks altogether.

Leading Democratic strategists warn that the first signs will appear in midterm elections, in which the primary electorate will demand more than just marching outside the White House or grabbing a bullhorn at an arrivals lounge. They’ll be expecting something close to 100 percent rejection of Trump’s agenda — making the coming years complicated for members of Congress, who have to vote on it, rather than the governors and mayors who get to assume a more offensive posture.

Base voters are likely to want their politicians to press on specific issues against Trump, not just on his generally objectionable behavior, say operatives who are weighing how to counsel ambitious lawmakers. If each candidate is anti-Trump, the thinking goes, the best way to distinguish oneself is to distill an original anti-Trump message focused on a concrete policy point.

“I don’t really have any doubt that, setting party or ideology aside, all of us as Americans are going to be talking to our kids and grandkids about this time in American history and what we were doing,” said former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who narrowly lost that state’s U.S. Senate race in 2016. “And that means we all have to maximize the platform that we have.”

Democratic pols at every level have instinctively reacted to the idea that party voters are demanding a response commensurate with the scale of the perceived threat. After many of them caught grief for missing the women’s marches to appear at a donor conference the previous weekend, for example, three of the candidates for Democratic National Committee chair rushed to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston to protest publicly after their candidate forum on Jan. 28.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21. | AP Photo

It's not just traditional progressive leaders who are leading the charge to respond to the base. Among the most prominent faces of the anti-Trump airport protests were a pair of moderate governors who have previously clashed with liberals, but who nevertheless manned the front lines in the wake of Trump’s immigration order. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe rushed to Dulles International Airport, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered public transit to John F. Kennedy International Airport reopened so more of his constituents could demonstrate.

In Virginia, the site of one of the Trump era’s first primaries in 2017, the president’s presence is already inescapable in the governor’s race.

“I’ve always tried to respond and speak up for the values and principles that I believe in, and I’ll continue to do that,” said Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a candidate for the seat. “It’s just that he’s put them front and center in the first few days he’s been president, so he’s stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

“Sadly, I think Donald Trump’s actions leave us in a place where the question is no longer how to engage with the Trump administration, but how do we engage Republicans in Congress to oppose these actions that are a threat?” added former Rep. Tom Perriello, Northam’s primary opponent, who appeared at Dulles two weekends ago. “There’s an awareness that this is not some latest turnover of partisan power. This is a much deeper threat to our democratic institutions. I think the question is whether some of the Republican electeds who feel the tingle in their spine — if they can find their spines — can form a bipartisan resistance.”

Gone are the concerns about appearing overly obstructionist — an accusation frequently tossed at McConnell during Barack Obama’s presidency. Officeholders are now chasing a base that will not tolerate any sign of accommodation.

“Everyone is getting to the same point,” said Democratic pollster Margie Omero. “This is not like after George W. Bush won, where people had different kinds of strategies.”

Sen. Cory Booker, center, speaks with other members of Congress as demonstrators protest against President Donald Trump's travel ban during a rally outside the US Supreme Court on Jan. 30. | Getty

Protesters gathered outside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Brooklyn apartment last week to demand he take a harder line on Trump, in a demonstration marketed as, “What the f*ck, Chuck?!"

Warren, the progressive icon, was forced to defend her vote to approve Ben Carson’s nomination for Housing and Urban Development secretary, taking to Facebook to explain a move that had party members accusing her of "selling us out" at the DNC meeting in Houston last weekend. Still facing heat, Warren expanded on her apology in a speech to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in Baltimore on Saturday.

“Like a lot of you, I’m still finding my way, finding my footing, day by day, step by step,” she said. “We make mistakes. But with each passing day, we learn.”

Liberal Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse got an even rougher ride: He was shouted down by protesters yelling “Obstruct!” last week in Providence after he voted for Trump’s CIA director pick, former Rep. Mike Pompeo. The point was made: Asked on MSNBC several days later whether he would support secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, Whitehouse was unequivocal: “I checked with the parliamentarian, and they don’t allow ‘hell no,’ so I’ll be voting ‘no.’”

“Whether the leaders of the Democratic Party will catch up to their base remains to be seen,” said Mark Longabaugh, a longtime campaign operative and a senior strategist for Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid.

Some of the party’s larger outside groups are fueling the drive to push officials toward loud, hard-line resistance. MoveOn.org last week published an open letter instructing senators that “Showing up at protests must be just the beginning. … We’re doing our job. Senate Democrats must do theirs — by using every procedural tool available to stop Trump.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks to a crowd gathered at Logan Airport in Boston on Jan. 28. | AP Photo

Our Revolution, the group built out of the Sanders campaign, is pushing backers to demand that their senators use the full 30 hours of debate on each Trump nominee, effectively grinding the Senate to a procedural halt. Even Priorities, which supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and became the party’s largest super PAC ever, has stepped up the pressure on lawmakers now that Trump has nominated appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court: The group is mobilizing its supporters to urge their senators to force a 60-vote threshold for him.

To professional Democrats who’ve been working for candidates for decades, the current wave of activity is beginning to look more like a broad-based movement.

“This is a grass-roots reaction at a level of intensity that I haven’t seen in the Democratic Party since Vietnam,” said Shrum. “It even exceeds the reaction to Iraq, which was more a slow simmer than this kind of explosive reaction.”

Added Bill Richardson, a former New Mexico governor and onetime presidential hopeful: “Anyone who is hoping for a reconciliation or bipartisanship is smoking weed right now.”

