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Senate Democrats don’t sound like they’re gearing up for a repeat of the “hell no” approach to Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks that they adopted during his first term.
Trump nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard probably won’t get many Democratic votes, according to interviews with a half-dozen of the party’s senators, spanning the party’s ideological spectrum. But a repeat of the rage the party channeled in public eight years ago looks unlikely.
“If you vote against everyone, then you lose whatever value or whatever statement that you’re trying to make,” said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who has already backed several Trump nominees, including Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state and Rep. Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations. “Has anyone checked? If you win, you pick the people. And it’s like, if you’ve got the votes, [opposition is] not going to really change the outcome.”
“If you want to lose your mind about an obvious kind of supreme troll like [Matt] Gaetz, then I’m not that Democrat,” Fetterman told Semafor, even as he faces criticism from a former aide for his openness to supporting his own 2022 rival Mehmet Oz for a top health job.
“Grab a fucking grip and get over yourselves and realize that that’s what [Trump] does. I mean, he loves that shit.”
As Democrats lick their wounds following a disastrous 2024 election, their handling of Trump’s nominees is the first signal of their long-term strategy for countering him. During his first term, then-Sen. Kamala Harris joined Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats in vocally opposing nearly every early nominee Trump tapped. This time, it’s less clear how overt that Democratic pushback campaign will be.
For now, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his deputies seem perfectly happy with keeping the onus on Republicans to deal with potentially problematic Trump picks.
“We should make a good faith effort to exercise our constitutional responsibility. I am not for foot-dragging. The president ought to have this team in place,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois told Semafor.
Senate Democrats can’t stop Trump’s top nominees, but they can delay confirmations and aggressively circulate damaging details about the picks. While most presidents try to get as many of their nominees confirmed as possible on Inauguration Day, a single Democratic senator can object and force the majority party to burn time on procedural votes on nominees.
Republicans routinely forced that kind of delay on President Joe Biden’s nominees, and Durbin acknowledged some Democrats might be looking for payback once Trump takes office: “Whether they follow through or do that, I can’t tell.”
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Harris, Booker and Warren burnished their national political brands in the aftermath of Trump’s first election, using viral moments during confirmation hearings for his nominees to become rising Democratic powerhouses (and, later, presidential hopefuls). The newer Democratic senators, from Fetterman to Adam Schiff to Mark Kelly, are all telegraphing a more measured approach to Trump — even if they are likely to vote against many of his nominees.
Kelly, a centrist who’s won two races in battleground Arizona, isn’t particularly enamored with Hegseth’s qualifications for defense secretary. What in his time on Fox News “has he learned that equips him to run the biggest enterprise on the planet?” Kelly asked of Hegseth, an Army veteran.
But the Arizonan still isn’t convinced that Democrats should do all they can to disrupt Trump’s efforts to govern.
“They don’t have to agree with me on anything. There’s going to be disagreements. But I do want to see people who are qualified,” Kelly told Semafor. “I’m not in the category of, like, ‘try to slow him down.’ Because if he has the right people, I want them in those positions as early as possible. I think it’s the best thing for our country.”
Even some of the most progressive senators are declining to vent their fury at Trump’s picks. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said he’s “undecided on all nominees” when asked about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We’re ready to move forward on Day One,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., another progressive antagonist of Trump’s picks in the first term. “I’m willing to have a vote. That doesn’t mean I approve a vote to confirm.”
The View From The Intelligence Chair
One of the trickiest nominees for Democrats to handle is Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who is now nominated to be Trump’s top intelligence adviser.
Recent national intelligence directors have gotten confirmed with big bipartisan votes – Biden’s intelligence chief was confirmed immediately on Jan. 20 – but Gabbard’s past warmth toward Russia and Syria mean she’s on track for a frostier reception.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, set himself apart from more progressive colleagues, noting that “I voted for a lot of Trump nominees the first time.”
“But also there are serious, serious questions about this nominee that I need to get answers to,” Warner told Semafor of Gabbard. “There’s been lots of stories. I’ve met Tulsi a little bit, and my job is to sort through what’s true, what’s not, and go through an appropriate review process.”
Burgess’s view
We’re going to learn a lot about the Democratic Party in January. Most congressional Democrats reject the idea that Trump has any mandate after his wins in both the popular vote and electoral college, yet the party is also starting to internalize that simply being anti-Trump isn’t enough to sway voters.
It’s clear that Democrats don’t want to be seen as 100% antagonistic toward his nominees – which is why you hear Democrats like Schiff and Fetterman speak warmly of Rubio, for example.
Unless more clamor builds in the Democratic base to stand up to Trump, the party’s newer senators may veer away from the firebrand model that Harris, Booker and Warren used in 2017.
That doesn’t mean no fights over Cabinet picks, but it may mean that Democrats end up leaning back and letting Republicans struggle among themselves over riskier picks like Kennedy, Hegseth and Gabbard.