It’s a cynical strategy that helps explain why so many American voters continue to hold our political institutions in such low esteem.

President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Nevada’s congressional Democrats were wholly unimpressed by President Donald Trump’s long-winded State of the Union address Tuesday night. Their hackneyed responses seemed to have been written by the same social media bot.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who voted to shut down the government to protect illegal immigrants, groused that the president has “actively tried to harm Nevadans” and has launched “heartless attacks on young American Dreamers.”

Rep. Jacky Rosen, who decided to run for the Senate before she knew the location of the House restrooms, railed against the president’s “empty promises” and the “harmful efforts to sabotage our health care system.” She complained that Mr. Trump didn’t “talk about why it’s so important for Congress … to protect Dreamers.”

Rep. Dina Titus, safely ensconced in a gerrymandered district that she could represent for life, should she so choose, decried Mr. Trump’s “bluster, hypocrisy and hyperbole.” She credited positive economic news to Barack Obama.

None of this surprises. Elected Democrats must increasingly kowtow to the radical, collectivist, progressive agitators who comprise the extreme left. But these responses also reveal that Democrats have become so invested in everything anti-Trump that they won’t take yes for an answer.

Did they even hear half the speech? It was hardly the work of a conservative firebrand. In fact, if you removed the passages about tax cuts and deregulation, the president’s remarks could have been delivered by Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump vowed to “make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one of our top priorities,” something Democrats have long favored. He repeated his theme about emphasizing “fair” trade over free trade, a concept that Democrats have embraced for decades. His anti-globalization rhetoric mirrored what many Democrats have argued for years.

In addition, the president called on Congress to approve $1.5 trillion in new infrastructure spending, sounding a lot like Mr. Obama advocating his “shovel-ready” spending binge. Mr. Trump urged more taxpayer contributions to fund “workforce development and job training” and even announced support for mandating “paid family leave.”

He went on to back prison reform “to help former inmates who have served their time get a second chance” before segueing into his immigration proposal, which “offers a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants,” including the Dreamers.

For a party that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the past election, Democrats should have been high-fiving in the aisles. Mr. Trump offered plenty of opportunity for bipartisanship and preached unity and country. Instead, they reflexively excoriated the president to curry favor with the Trump “resistance,” a tactic they believe offers the most promising path to regaining political power. The word “compromise” is calculatedly excised from their playbook.

It’s a cynical strategy that helps explain why many Americans hold our political institutions in such low esteem.