Before the election, Julisa Rojas believed that Democrats were by no means perfect, but she thought they could steer the country in a better direction. So, she said she canvassed neighborhoods in Georgia, where she helped register people to vote.
Now, her hope has curdled into frustration — not just with President Donald J. Trump but with her own party. The Democrats’ response to an unrelenting Republican administration, she said, has seemed too scattershot and clumsy. When she saw them show up to Mr. Trump’s address to Congress in March wearing pink and holding matching signs, she scoffed. “A little pathetic, in my opinion,” she said.
“I don’t think that they’ve done anything,” said Ms. Rojas, a 24-year-old literacy instructor. “But also, if they might’ve done something it could’ve been washed-out from all the news in regards to Trump since he’s doing something every day.”
Her concern is shared by many rank-and-file Democrats, who believe the Republicans returned to power with a clear, aggressive and unsettling agenda, while their own party has yet to find its footing, much less coalesce into a formidable opposition.
In roughly two dozen interviews across the country over the past week, loyal Democratic voters expressed a hunger for the party to fight the Trump administration’s expansive view of presidential power, but they also discussed their uncertainty about whether the party has the gumption to do so effectively. While many liked certain politicians, ranging from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett and Bernie Sanders to Chuck Schumer, they described feeling stranded in a political wilderness and yearning for leadership and strategies to guide them out of it.
“The one thing all of us can agree on: Democrats across the country are angry, and they’re angry because there does not seem to be a unified fight,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, 70, the presiding prelate of the African Methodist Episcopal Church for a swath of the Mid-Atlantic region. “The real question, the real issue: What the hell is it that Democrats are willing to fight for?”
In many ways, he and others argued the test was no academic exercise: Tariffs on trade partners are threatening higher living costs and economic turmoil. The administration has taken a sledgehammer to the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Some Republicans are pushing for cuts to programs like Medicaid and Medicare.
Tiffany Chou, 38, is the primary care giver for her younger brother, who has autism. The Medicaid funding that pays for caregiving had already been reduced before Mr. Trump was inaugurated — to 15 hours a week from 30 hours. Those caregivers help him get to work at a small jewelry store his sister set up or run him to appointments, allowing her to balance the demands of her own business and motherhood.
Ms. Chou, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, doubts that the Democrats — especially with the current balance of power — can be much of an impediment to Mr. Trump’s agenda. She tries to stay “somewhat informed,” she said, but paradoxically, the higher the stakes have become, the harder it is to pay attention — it is “just one depressing thing after another.”
“It kind of feels like the Wild West,” Ms. Chou said. “The Trump team is kind of just doing whatever they want.”
Some Democrats compared the first weeks and months of Mr. Trump’s return to power to being on the wrong side of a fire hose. Amid the torrent of executive actions, lawsuits and court decisions, it could be difficult to parse where things stood and what the immediate consequences might be.
The friction that has caused within the party emerged when Mr. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, joined Republicans to push through a spending deal that would fund the government through Sept. 30. The move was condemned by many Democrats who saw it as a capitulation that only underscored how powerless they were. Mr. Schumer defended the compromise as necessary to fend off a government shutdown and even more severe cuts.
Rick Metcalf, 68, was among those who recognized and appreciated his dilemma. “He did what he had to do,” said Mr. Metcalf, a retired merchant marine from East Grand Rapids, Mich., adding, “I’m sure he knew he was going to get blowback for it.”
He has tried to extend some grace to party leadership more broadly, but it was tough. “They’re doing the best they can,” he said. Still, he said, the party seemed “splintered and off-balance.” Beyond that, he added, “There’s no leader that has the one voice.”
Still, some have perceived a shift as Democrats seem to push back. Antipathy toward Elon Musk has helped rally Democrats, particularly in a State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin on Tuesday where Mr. Musk has directed his money and influence. A House committee hearing gave Democrats a chance to grill the administration’s national security officials over their use of Signal, a commercial messaging app, to discuss an attack on Yemen, while apparently accidentally including a journalist.
On Monday, the upper echelon of the party — including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, Mr. Schumer and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries — sued to block an executive order requiring documentary proof of citizenship and other changes to voting practices.
The Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Ga., argued that, ultimately, the administration would be its own worst enemy. It’s just a matter of waiting it out. “It is inevitable,” he said, “and you don’t know what the tipping point will be and how it will go.”
Even so, he and others said that Democrats could not stake their fortunes solely on that.
He and other Democrats made a diagnosis that the party’s identity and mission had become far too entangled with Mr. Trump.
“There ought to be some core principle you should be willing to rise or fall on,” Bishop Jackson said.
Luis Chavez, a Democratic member of the board of supervisors in Fresno County, Calif., said the solution to the party’s problem was “a concise, specific platform,” preferably one centered on improving the lives and prospects of the middle and working classes.
“It’s not rocket science,” Mr. Chavez, 45, said. “If we get back to that, we can actually get back on the right track.”
Nipping at Mr. Trump’s heels certainly will not be a successful tactic, said Christina Allen, a housekeeper in Asheville, N.C. In November, Mr. Trump’s win was infuriating for her. These days, Ms. Allen, 47, is calmer.
“They just want to keep nit-picking,” she said of Democrats. If anything, she encouraged compromise with Mr. Trump. “You never know,” Ms. Allen said. “If they sit down and meet halfway, he might give the Democrats something they want.”
She was among those who mentioned Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting initiative, known as the Department of Government Efficiency — an undertaking some Democrats could get behind in theory, if not for Mr. Musk’s approach, which they saw as reckless and destructive.
Andrew Miller, a 66-year-old retired photojournalist from Louisville, Ky., said he would not mind some version of the effort during a Democratic administration, but only after it had been “reformed and reshaped.”
Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, the Democratic mayor of Scranton, Pa., who is up for re-election this year, said her mandate from voters in Scranton had been to clean up local government.
“Everybody wants to cut government waste,” she said.
The difference? “I will hand it to the president and his folks — they are better at branding, they always have been,” Ms. Cognetti said. “We’ve been doing this for five years, but I haven’t been calling it anything.”
David Hammel, 68, looked at the most visible Democratic Party leaders with disappointment.
Mr. Hammel, a retiree and lifelong Democrat, ticked off one by one their fatal flaws: too ingrained in the establishment, too polite, too perfect to the point of feeling inauthentic. The candidates and their campaigns at the presidential level had felt far too scripted and controlled.
“Somebody needs to come along who can do what Trump is doing, only not be a thug about it,” said Mr. Hammel, who lives in St. Paul, Minn.
He wants a fresh, frank voice effectively pushing back against Mr. Trump and bringing attention to the urgent needs that are not being addressed.
“There’s truths that need to be spoken,” said Mr. Hammel, “and they’re not being spoken by the Democratic Party.”
Christina Morales is a reporter covering food for The Times. More about Christina Morales
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South. More about Rick Rojas
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