Democrats must play Republican-style hardball in 2018 Oppose, oppose, oppose, just like the GOP. Unless they can notch big, clear wins, Democrats should shelve compromise until 2019 or 2021.

Jill Lawrence | USA TODAY

There’s no need for Democrats to overthink 2018. It’s very simple: At every decision point, they should ask themselves WWRD — What Would Republicans Do? — and then do it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is sounding like a born-again believer in compromise, but only out of necessity. His challenges include a tiny 51-49 majority and ominous signs for the upcoming midterm elections. No wonder he said in welcoming two new Democratic senators last week, “I look forward to working with them in the months ahead to make bipartisan progress and to find common ground on behalf of the American people.”

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Where was that man during the Obama administration?

Republicans voted en masse against a Great Recession recovery plan that had more tax cuts than many Democrats preferred, and a health care law that relied more on the private sector than many Democrats wanted. They blocked an older, relatively moderate Supreme Court nominee for nearly a year and McConnell now gloats about a court he says will be "right of center" for a generation. In 2017, the first year of the Trump administration, they hastily passed a punitive, deficit-busting tax law without a single vote from Democrats.

There’s no reason to reward McConnell for his two-term blockade of President Obama, especially when it could help him limit damage to congressional Republicans running this fall. So how would this legislative hardball look in practice? Here are a few scenarios:

Immigration: Democrats want President Trump to renew Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that issues temporary residency permits to some 800,000 young people brought here as children. Trump's price is $18 billion for a physical border wall and "his entire wish-list of hard-line anti-immigrant bills," as Sen. Dick Durbin put it. He calls those demands unreasonable and says Trump may get a government shutdown this month instead. The party should follow through on that unless Trump backs off.

Spending: Democrats should also hold the line against cuts in safety-net spending. House Speaker Paul Ryan wants to make good on his decades-old ambitions to pare back Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. There are reasonable compromises available — on Social Security, for instance, Obama was amenable at one point to changing the cost-of-living adjustment formula to save money, and many Democrats would support imposing Social Security taxes on all income, instead of exempting income over a certain amount (roughly $128,000 this year). But this is not the time for deals like that. Democrats should oppose, oppose, oppose. They can revisit these issues in 2019 if they control Congress, or in 2021 if they win the presidency.

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Infrastructure: The Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, Democrats and many Republicans all have pushed for major infrastructure investment for years. Trump and McConnell now portray infrastructure as the great bipartisan hope. But when the country was recovering from the recession and badly needed this type of investment, the GOP blocked multiple bipartisan attempts to jump-start it. The Trump administration is now pulling back from a rail tunnel vital to New York and New Jersey commuters. And Trump’s upcoming proposal may look a lot like his campaign platform — giving tax breaks to private companies in hopes they’ll use the money for new, needed and cost-efficient projects. A money-making private sector opportunity is not the same as a national infrastructure program. Democrats should resist anything less than the latter.

Supreme Court: Say there’s a vacancy. Democrats should oppose Trump’s next nominee no matter what. Protesters should take to the streets and senators should consider shutting down the government at the next opportunity. After all, if a vacancy happens in 2018, there may be a new Senate in 2019. Those voters should have a voice, as McConnell said in robbing Obama and his voters of the opportunity elevate the well-liked Judge Merrick Garland to a seat that opened in February 2016, nearly a year before Obama’s term ended. This court has been shaped by two Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, while the Democrat who won it twice was denied one of his choices. This is not the consent of the governed.

Compromise is almost impossible in a court nominee, but it also has been off the table for Republicans for many years in areas that cry out for bipartisan solutions. Democrats have been open to working together — just check the roll call votes on George W. Bush’s debt-busting 2001 tax cuts and world-shattering Iraq war — but those days should be gone for now. These are not normal times and have not been since the night Obama was inaugurated and Republicans vowed to try to make sure he achieved nothing.

The only deals Democrats should accept this year are deals that are big, unmistakable wins for them and their values. If there aren’t any to be had, so be it. Until at least 2019.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock. Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence.