DEAR DEMOCRATS: YOU KNOW THAT WHAT YOU DID AFTER TRUMP'S FIRST VICTORY WORKED, RIGHT?

Jamelle Bouie is right:

The Democratic Party lacks the energy of a determined opposition — it is adrift, listless in the wake of defeat. Too many elected Democrats seem ready to concede that Trump is some kind of an avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people. They’ve accepted his proposed nominees as legitimate and entertained surrender under the guise of political reconciliation.

To which Democrats reply: Yup, that's right. ABC reports:

Democrats have a plan to take back power in Washington back from Republicans in two years: work with them now.

Democrats, who are already planning their comeback after being swept out of power in Washington last month, have said they'll oppose President-elect Donald Trump and his allies when their values collide but are open to cooperation on a range of issues, including immigration, federal spending and entitlements.

The strategy marks a turnaround from 2017, when "resistance" to Trump was Democrats' rallying cry.

Democrats have decided that the last thing they want to do is replicate their actions after the 2016 election. They're treating resistance as a spectacular failure, even though we all know that resistance worked.

Do Democrats remember the 2018 midterms? In the House, Democrats gained 41 seats and wrested control from the GOP. Democratic governors replaced Republicans in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, and Nevada.

In 2020, Democrats dealt Trump his only electoral defeat. In 2022, Democrats beat Trumpist election truthers all over the country and prevented a "red wave" by focusing on the abortion rights Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court justices took away.

Democrats lost this year, but the popular vote margin was less than 1.6, in the midst of economic malaise that hurt incumbent parties globally, and with a candidate who got a late start -- and who also pursued this "Republicans are awesome!" strategy, with no positive effect.

According to the ABC story, the Democrats' make-nice approach

marks a challenge to Republicans for bipartisanship at a time when narrow GOP congressional majorities will likely mandate some level of cooperation.

Why do Democrats believe narrow majorities "will likely mandate some level of cooperation"? Trump plans to do many things through executive orders and sheer brazenness. The Leonard Leo federal courts will almost certainly let him operate that way. And where laws need to be passed, narrow GOP majorities won't be a problem, because Republicans are very good at voting in lockstep.

Democrats think voters will understand if they say nice things about Republicans now and oppose them later. But saying nice things about Trump and the GOP reinforces the widespread belief that Trump is all bark and no bite. We know that some voters with undocumented immigrants in their families don't really believe Trump will come for those family members. We know that many voters believe Trump's authoritarian talk is just bluster -- note the "He is exaggerating" numbers here:

Bouie writes:

If Democrats ... want voters to blame Trump for any price hikes during his administration, they need to do everything they can now, in as dramatic a fashion as they can manage, to make Trump the culprit — to give voters a language with which they can express their anger at the status quo.

If Democrats want voters to blame Trump for any potential foreign policy failures, they must work now to highlight and emphasize the extent to which the president-elect wants a more or less inexperienced set of hacks and dilettantes to lead the nation’s national security establishment. Even something as obvious as the connection between Trump’s billionaire allies and his support for large, upper-income tax cuts has to be dramatized and made apparent to the voting electorate.

Right -- because when you're echoing the GOP's message that Republicans are awesome, and you're implicitly echoing the GOP's other message, which is that Democrats are terrible, you make it easy for Trump and the GOP to blame future tariff-driven price hikes or future foreign policy instability on President Biden.

Why are Democrats acting this way -- acting as if, in Bouie's words, "Trump is some kind of an avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people"? I'm sure it's because no one expected him to win the popular vote (even though he barely won it), and many assumed it was unthinkable that he could win at all. But now they've whipsawed from "Trump can't possibly win" to "The entire country is Republican and we need to convert or die."

That's nuts. Yes, according to Monmouth, 53% of the country is optimistic about the policies Trump will pursue -- but 50% were optimistic at this point in 2016, and Trump's favorability and job approval fell significantly after that. Only 3 in 10 Americans have confidence in Trump's Cabinet picks, according to an AP-NORC poll, while approximately half are "not at all confident"; just before Barack Obama took office in 2009, a Pew survey said that 66% of Americans approved of his Cabinet picks, and only 17% disapproved.

If any non-incumbent president in this century had a mandate upon entering office, it was Obama -- and yet Republicans and their Astroturf Tea Party movement attacked him mercilessly, starting from early in his term. I see no evidence that Democrats will attack Trump with that level of energy even after he's sworn in.

One last point: Many Democrats routinely say that it's pointless for them to do a vigorous job of messaging because the media environment is wired to amplify Republican messages and suppress Democratic messages. Funny thing, though: These same Democrats seem to believe their message will get through if they're saying nice things about Republicans. Maybe that means messages of vigorous opposition could also get through? How would Democrats know when they rarely test the premise?