How Trump will keep the left on defense — in transition and beyond

“Once they’re on the run, keep ’em running” is an old cavalry motto — and a strategy Donald Trump seems to have taken to heart.

Democrats are scared and fighting among themselves. 

The publishers of newspapers like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times that used to be hard-left propaganda outlets are now talking about the importance of hearing from both sides. 

MSNBC and CNN viewership is in freefall; one or the other may wind up being purchased for small change by Elon Musk. 

Universities are adopting political neutrality.

This is nice, but will it last?

The answer is: Only so long as the pressure is on. 

So how do Republicans keep the left on the run?

By taking relentless action. 

Trump has hit the ground running with his appointments, unlike in 2016. 

Every day brings news of a new nominee, ranging from those designed to horrify Democrats, like Matt Gaetz for attorney general, to those designed to appeal to suburban “health moms,” like RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, to more mainstream candidates like Marco Rubio for secretary of state.  

If they were dribbled out gradually, one at a time, Democrats could organize their patented smear attacks. 

But the flood of nomination announcements has saturated their media apparatus — with so many targets, it can’t seem to focus on one.

The next step, I suspect, will be a lot of executive orders on Inauguration Day, covering everything from immigration to federal employee layoffs and relocations. 

For example, might I suggest a new federal headquarters in Plattsburgh, NY?

Shipping tens of thousands of federal workers to a spot 15 miles shy of the Canadian border won’t tip the political balance, since New York is already blue, and the local economy would benefit from the influx of high-paid newcomers. 

The employees, of course, might not enjoy the Plattsburgh winters. 

Trump may trigger tariffs already possible under existing law, launch mass deportations of illegal immigrants (also authorized under existing law), suspend onerous environmental regulations, block federal spending on certain projects, and more.

Again, enough of these coming close together will saturate the media and overload the Democrats’ opposition, making a coherent response difficult.  

Then comes legislation. 

Back in 2017, one of my Democratic friends expressed surprise and relief that the Trump administration wasn’t ready with a congressional wish list right off the bat. 

He had expected Republicans to have bills lined up like airplanes on a runway, but in fact they had nothing beyond their tax cuts.  

I expect this time — with both House and Senate more Trump-aligned than before — will be different. 

Expect to see quick votes on a national voter-ID and election-integrity bill, increased presidential authority over immigration, national handgun permit reciprocity, laws regulating or possibly criminalizing race and sex discrimination as part of DEI programs, and much more. 

Plus tax cuts, which should be easy, since the old-line GOP establishment always supports those. Again, fast and furious. 

It won’t all pass, of course, but much of it probably will — and the legislative fights will keep Democrats too busy to attack elsewhere.

Given Trump’s deal-making style, some of these bills may even carve off key Democratic constituencies, encouraging division among his foes.

If Republicans really want to turn up the temperature, they might even reintroduce Democratic bills filed this session to increase the size of the Supreme Court to 15 — something Democrats surely would have done had they won and controlled both houses. 

Sure, Chuck Schumer is talking bipartisanship and moderation now, but he wouldn’t be doing that if his side had won decisively.

Meanwhile, of course, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy can busy themselves slicing off chunks of the federal bureaucracy, much as Argentina’s Javier Milei has done, in a quest to save money and dig the federal government out of its deep financial hole. 

Properly managed, this effort will keep federal bureaucrats too busy trying to protect their own jobs to wage the kind of underground war they conducted against Trump throughout his first term.

Some of these initiatives will succeed and some won’t, but the sheer number of them will likely keep Trump’s opposition from crystallizing the way it did before.

If all this sounds familiar, it should: It’s a bit like what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did upon assuming the presidency in 1933. 

“Bold, persistent experimentation,” he called it.  

Not all FDR’s ideas were good ones — in fact many were downright terrible. 

But his assault on all fronts kept his opposition off balance and let him remake the nation. 

I suspect Donald Trump may have something similar in mind. 

Stay tuned.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.