Better in their words…

Talk about religious fervor.
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By DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN
WSK Feb. 5, 2017 6:11 p.m. ET

Chuck Schumer practically lives in the Senate, but these days there’s a lot going on at the house. Leftist throngs have been gathering outside Mr. Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn, N.Y., demanding that the Senate minority leader “get a spine” and oppose President Trump on everything.

That probably isn’t his natural inclination. Mr. Schumer once said that a “pause” in Syrian immigration “may be necessary,” and after the election he declared himself ready to “work with” Mr. Trump. But now he has yielded to the noisy crowd.

Mr. Schumer vows to fight the president “tooth and nail” and to “vote against nominees who will be the very worst of this anti-immigrant, anti-middle-class, billionaires’ club cabinet.” That includes Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, herself an immigrant and the wife of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Mr. Schumer was in the Senate in 2001 when Ms. Chao was confirmed, without opposition, as President Bush’s labor secretary.

Mr. Schumer isn’t alone in feeling pressure from the left. His party is deeply divided between pragmatic politicians and an activist base that styles itself “the resistance.” The minority leader may feel his survival depends on adopting the activist approach. But outside the heavily blue coasts, it could consign Democrats to permanent minority status, continuing a trend that has cost the party the White House, both houses of Congress, 13 governorships and nearly 1,000 state legislative seats in the past eight years.

There may be more losses to come, especially in the Senate, where 10 Democrats are up for re-election next year in states Mr. Trump carried. They’re unlikely to win through unyielding resistance.

Total noncooperation with Mr. Trump’s agenda isn’t viable in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, all of which Mr. Trump carried with more than 55% of the vote. Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were closer, but Democratic senators in those states surely realize anti-Trump intransigence will not persuade the thousands of Trump voters they need.

Mr. Trump’s executive order on immigration draws furious opposition in blue-state cities, but its reception in Trump country is likely to be different. Quinnipiac polling after the election found 48% nationwide support for Mr. Trump’s policy of “suspending immigration from ‘terror prone’ regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions”; only 42% were opposed. Polls taken after the executive order showed levels of support ranging from 42% to 52%, depending on how the question was framed.

Whereas Mr. Schumer has cast his lot with “the resistance,” Democratic senators from Trump states have made clear that they seek areas of cooperation with the president. Even the fiercely left-wing Sherrod Brown has said he is “ready to support Ohio workers by working with the Trump Administration to renegotiate NAFTA, put American workers ahead of corporate profits, and create jobs.”

North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp has said that it is “absolutely critical” to work with the Trump administration on “common interests in doing things in energy, doing things in agriculture.” West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, a staunch advocate of the coal industry, has said that he looks forward “to working with [Mr. Trump], his administration and my colleagues in order to keep America’s promise to our miners and make sure they receive the healthcare they have earned and deserve.” Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow told NPR in November that “the responsible approach is to work with the president when he is proposing something that’s good for working people and for the economy.”

For these vulnerable incumbent senators—among the few moderate Democratic officeholders left—the way to win in 2018 and beyond will be to carve out an alternative agenda based on working with Mr. Trump in areas where compromise is possible, and also offering ideas to guarantee health care for all, promote affordable prescription drugs, invest in infrastructure and lift federal spending limits. Cooperating on trade, job creation, infrastructure and tax reform would enable senators to push Mr. Trump for compromise on traditional Democratic priorities such as green energy and access to health care.

But the more Mr. Trump proposes policies anathema to the Democratic base, the more strident the activism will become, and the greater the pressure on Democratic lawmakers to take the road of intransigence and “total resistance”—to become the party of Bernie Sanders, who calls Mr. Trump a “delusional president.”

If the Democratic Party’s activists cannot accept that victory requires selective cooperation with Mr. Trump as well as protection of their core values, the party itself could be condemned to further weakness, irrelevance and even obsolescence—beginning with the 2018 election.

Mr. Schoen served as a political adviser and pollster for President Clinton, 1994-2000.