Democrats need to be an opposition party, not a minority party.
Updated by Ezra Klein@ezraklein Nov 22, 2016, 9:50am EST
More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. More Americans voted for Democratic Senate candidates than for Republican Senate candidates.
So why aren’t Democrats acting like it? Why aren’t they trying to force Republicans, the media, and the emergent Trump White House to act like it?
This is not an argument that the election was rigged, or that Trump’s win is somehow illegitimate. The president is chosen by the Electoral College. The Senate is built to favor small states. Gerrymandering is legal. America does not decide national elections by simply tallying up votes.
But the will of the voters still matters, or at least it should. Thus far, Democrats have slipped comfortably into the position of minority party. They aren’t demanding that Trump put forward compromise candidates for key posts. They aren’t laying out a proactive agenda that would serve as their basis for negotiations with Trump and the Republicans. And they aren’t, in their public messaging, emphasizing that most voters opposed Trump’s agenda, and that both Democrats and Republicans need to take that seriously.
Democrats have confused the reality of being out of power with the idea of being in the minority. This lets the Trump administration and the Republican Party confuse the reality of being in power with the idea of having a mandate for their agenda.
As grim as the situation is for Democrats — and it is grim — it’s not going to take long for Republicans to recognize their peril. They’ve lost the popular vote in six of the past seven elections. Their president-elect is less popular than any incoming president in the history of polling. It’s the out-of-power party that tends to gain in midterm elections.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/22/13708648/democrats-won-popular-vote
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