During the tense leadership vote on Jan. 3 over who would lead the 119th Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson pulled aside two members of the Freedom Caucus who were refusing to back him — Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas — and ushered them into the anteroom off the floor of the House, where Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina turned on her speakerphone: The president-elect was on the line. Having interrupted his golf game for this conversation, Donald Trump told both legislators in no uncertain terms that Mr. Johnson was the best man for the job. Minutes later, they returned to the chamber and switched their votes.
The phone call was a revealing window into how Mr. Trump wields political power. For all the talk about his being a renegade and a one-man wrecking ball, he displays a clear appreciation of the centrality of party to American government. From his first term through today, he has worked hard to ensure that he and Republican lawmakers move in lock step. While the vision he unveiled during his Inaugural Address relied heavily on executive action, he will need help from Congress to deliver on campaign promises like tax cuts and a sweeping crackdown on immigration. The tactics he employed during his first term offer clues to how he might try to manage his party and a model that even Democrats could learn from.
Mr. Trump has long understood that the best route to push his preferred policies through a narrowly divided Senate is through the reconciliation process, which prohibits a filibuster. This is why he has focused on achieving his legislative goals in his second term through “one big, beautiful bill.” Although this strategy could easily fall apart, it suggests that Mr. Trump intends to govern as he did the last time: through an aggressive, centralized, partisan framework that deploys every procedural mechanism available to work around the Democrats and every ounce of presidential pressure possible to keep congressional Republicans in line.
None of this should come as a surprise. During his first term, despite endless commentary about his civil war with the G.O.P., Mr. Trump usually operated as a party man. Many of his greatest successes involved core Republican agenda items, such as dismantling workplace regulations and weakening union power. Though he went further in attacking free trade than many Republicans did and was softer on Russia than hawks preferred, he stayed largely within the conservative comfort zone. On key issues — supply-side tax policy, reproductive rights, climate change and immigration — Mr. Trump’s positions were aligned with where the Republican Party had been for decades. It convinced many members of the party that he would advance their interests.
Even some of Mr. Trump’s more unorthodox-seeming stances were not so aberrant. Public opinion toward China, as James Mann of Johns Hopkins has argued, had been hardening before Mr. Trump took office in 2017. Tactically, the party has been playing political hardball at least since the 1980s and ’90s, when Newt Gingrich weaponized routine processes — such as funding the government and raising the debt ceiling — to achieve policy and political goals while encouraging his caucus to use extraordinarily divisive language to describe Democrats.
Mr. Trump learned from Mr. Gingrich’s example, as well as the Tea Party’s threat in 2011 to send the nation into default, and built on those precedents. More than many other recent presidents, Mr. Trump was determined to be deeply involved in congressional politics. Since his victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, he has been a constant presence on the campaign trail. Although his intervention in down-ballot elections has sometimes backfired, it has made him and his supporters a formidable electoral force, one that Republican incumbents know they must factor into their decisions about how to vote or what to say. Mr. Trump wields his immense skill at securing attention — the key commodity of modern politics — to persuade and scare legislators.
Not all presidents have been as comfortable diving into the messiness of congressional party politics. Jimmy Carter famously detested the presidential role of party builder. Although he enjoyed unified control of government, with much larger majorities than Mr. Trump has ever had, he angered members of his own party by pushing policies, such as the Panama Canal Treaties, that didn’t mesh with their political needs. He rarely courted fellow Democrats, and by the time his presidency ended in 1981, much of the party had drifted away from him.
Mr. Trump understands the importance of party loyalty; it proved invaluable to him during both of his impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, when he survived because Republicans, including those who had condemned the Jan. 6 riot, prevented his removal.
Partly for that reason, unlike most presidents, Mr. Trump spurned the need to reach out to the opposition party. He instinctively understood the dynamics of the red-blue map; rather than fight its divisions, he exploited them to his advantage, energizing and mobilizing Republican politicians by convincing them that he was their best chance to win office.
Of course, sometimes his tactics work against him. Many of his chosen candidates (such as Herschel Walker in Georgia) probably cost Republicans valuable seats, and many of his legislative initiatives, such as his repeated attempts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, have failed.
His overreach on health care led Senator John McCain, a lifelong Republican, to kill the repeal effort in 2017 and contributed to strong Democratic performance in the 2018 midterms. His political future fell into doubt during the first half of the Biden presidency, with his party’s standing hitting its lowest point after the G.O.P.’s weak performance in the 2022 midterms. His congressional majorities now are razor thin, smaller in the House than any time since 1931. He is vulnerable.
Should Mr. Trump take steps in his second term that threaten the long-term viability of the party, as measured by deep and sustained electoral losses, representatives and senators may turn on him just as quickly as they rallied behind him in 2016. A resurgence, caused by his tariffs, of the inflationary conditions that dragged Democratic approval ratings down into the tank could strain his support within the party base and jeopardize fellow Republicans. So could the reality of mass deportations or another failed response to a major domestic or international crisis, as occurred with the Covid pandemic. In the end, the party will do what it needs to win and maintain power.
In the meantime, Democrats can learn something from Mr. Trump. Responsibly embracing their own partisan instincts and deploying their congressional power will give them the best chance of thwarting Republicans’ far-right agenda and rebuilding their own party. Of course, they shouldn’t go as far as to cast doubt on the results of free and fair elections or derail essential legislative procedures, as their opponents have. But they can focus on using committee hearings, floor debates, amendments and oversight to cause the G.O.P. as many problems as possible.
Democrats should also resist the urge, which Mr. Trump’s triumphant return has intensified, to try to win over Republicans by echoing their arguments. The party needs to converge on a fresh set of ideas for providing real relief to struggling Americans and to promote those ideas with clear, consistent and compelling messaging. By acting in unison and offering an alternative to the conservative populism of the Republican Party, Democrats can increase their odds of clawing their way back to power in 2026.
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