Seven years ago, Joe Biden stood in New Hampshire and made a prediction that would echo through Democratic politics for years: Republicans would have an "epiphany" once Trump lost the 2020 election. They would break free from his grip, work with Democrats, and return to normal bipartisan governance. Many in his party wanted to believe it.
That vision is dead. Trump won decisively in 2024, and Democrats have abandoned Biden's faith in Republican conscience in favor of a starkly different approach: confrontation over compromise.
The shift is measurable and dramatic. In March 2025, 65% of self-identified Democrats told NBC News they wanted their representatives to "stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done," while just 32% favored making compromises with Trump. Compare that to April 2017, early in Trump's first term, when 59% of Democrats preferred compromise and only 33% wanted gridlock. The inversion is near total.
Biden made his "epiphany" pitch twice during the 2019 campaign cycle, including at a fundraiser in Washington. He framed Trump and the MAGA movement as an aberration, insisting that Republicans were intimidated into loyalty but possessed a fundamental decency that would resurface once Trump lost. Older Democrats, nostalgic for a gentler era of politics, found the message compelling. It helped carry him to the nomination and, in 2020, to victory.
But Trump never lost control of the party. He came back stronger in 2024, and now the Democratic base is done waiting for a Republican conscience that may never arrive.
"Every elected official who believed that has either retired, lost or is about to lose," said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist who named her firm Fight Agency after the GOP sweep in 2024.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg offered a blunt assessment: the "epiphany" "did not happen." She suggested that Trump's 2020 loss was driven more by his COVID-19 mishandling than by a fundamental rejection of Trumpism itself. The voters who stuck with him then, she implied, never stopped being Trumpist voters. In 2024, they showed up again.
The shift in Democratic strategy is already visible in primary races. In New Jersey, progressive agitator Analilia Mejia defeated the party establishment's preferred candidate in a House special election. In Maine, outsider Graham Platner built such a commanding lead in the Senate primary that two-term Governor Janet Mills, favored by Democratic leadership, withdrew from the race. In 2018, by contrast, Democrats had nominated center-left moderates in most competitive races.
Adam Jentleson, a former Senate Democratic aide and longtime Biden critic, drew a line from the failed "epiphany" rhetoric to President Obama's equally mistaken prediction that the GOP "fever" would break after his 2012 re-election. "There was a sense that Trump was an aberration," Jentleson said. "Seeing him lose an election and fall out of favor and then reassert his control over the GOP and get re-elected, that completely shattered any illusion that Republicans of sound conscience were going to rise up and take back their party."
Biden's first term did produce legislative wins. He secured votes from Senate Republicans on infrastructure, the CHIPS Act, postal reform, and same-sex marriage codification. But those victories depended on a unique window: retiring GOP senators concerned with their legacies. That window has closed.
Amanda Litman, co-founder of the group Run for Something, sees the Obama-Biden bipartisanship doctrine as fundamentally misguided. "It's Trump's party all the way down," she said. "Even when he's gone, it's still his ideology driving things forward." She is actively encouraging younger, more combative candidates to primary older Democratic incumbents.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut argues that Democrats must "fight fire with fire" but without losing sight of an affirmative agenda. "It's not just about punching MAGA in the mouth," he said. "It's about understanding there's a lot of his base that actually does believe in things like a higher minimum wage and industrial policy." Murphy warns that temporary electoral victories without a sustained vision for winning over Trump voters would be hollow. "That would be a disaster," he said.
The contrast with Michelle Obama's famous "When they go low, we go high" is now stark. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries quotes himself on his website saying, "When they go low, we strike back."
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Biden's epiphany gamble was always wishful thinking dressed up as strategy, and Democrats learned the hard way that you cannot negotiate with an opponent who isn't interested in the deal."
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