Change has swept through Washington. And what a change it is!
At this rate, Donald Trump may even turn himself into a Democrat.
It would not, after all, be his first political conversion. The president, whose Republican Party has just suffered a spectacular electoral defeat, has suddenly rediscovered the virtues of working with Democrats. He even has “friends” among them.
Friends!
Now, some of those Democratic friends were not quite so friendly toward Trump during the Mueller investigation and the various political dramas that followed.
But Washington is a place where almost anything becomes possible once the exit doors close and the only way out is to make a deal.
And who better to appreciate the fine art of making deals than Donald Trump?
The Democrats, meanwhile, have achieved something that even their own party had scarcely dared to imagine. They have won both chambers of Congress. The conventional wisdom was that Democrats could recapture the House while Republicans would cling to their narrow majority in the Senate. But the voters had other plans. Now comes the rather more difficult business of governing.
And this is where things get interesting. Because while Trump is discovering Democratic friends, Chuck Schumer is discovering that some of his most enthusiastic critics may be sitting on his own side of the aisle.
One might have expected the New York senator to be enjoying his victory. Instead, he is already facing questions about whether he should be the man to lead the new Democratic majority.
Enter Abdul El-Sayed.
The newly elected senator from Michigan has not even been sworn in, and he is already discussing alternatives to Schumer’s leadership. El-Sayed has expressed support for Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, should he decide to challenge Schumer.
Now that is what I call an ambitious entrance. The young tiger has barely arrived in Washington and is already contemplating a leadership coup.
El-Sayed has his reasons. He wants a new generation of Democratic leadership prepared to pursue an ambitious legislative agenda. But the Senate is a peculiar institution. It has its own traditions, its own hierarchy, and an astonishing ability to remember who said what about whom, even when everybody publicly insists that the matter has been forgotten.
The young senator may soon discover that one does not simply march through the grand doors, announce that the family needs a new patriarch, and expect everybody to applaud. Especially when the patriarch helped you get elected.
Schumer supported El-Sayed after his primary victory. Now the senator-elect is making clear that his gratitude does not necessarily extend to a leadership vote.
How very Washington.
In this city, it is sometimes easier to make enemies than friends.
Which brings me to the political irony of the whole situation. Trump and Schumer know each other from their New York days. Long before Trump became the undisputed master of the Republican Party, he was a businessman whose political affiliations were considerably more flexible. He was, for several years, a registered Democrat.
Schumer, meanwhile, was building his career in New York politics. The two men belong to a city where political differences do not always prevent people from doing business, attending the same functions or picking up the telephone when circumstances require it. And now circumstances may require it.
Trump has two years left in the White House. The Democrats will control Congress. A president who spent years defining himself against them may find that some of his ambitions depend on persuading them to make a deal.
Schumer has a different problem. Before he can negotiate with the president, he must establish precisely how much authority he commands over his own caucus. And that may prove no less complicated than dealing with the Republican in the White House.
I am hearing Brian Schatz’s name in conversations about the Democratic whip position.
Whip, whip.
A wonderfully appropriate title for an institution in which the principal difficulty is often persuading everybody to move in the same direction.
And while all this is unfolding on Capitol Hill, Republicans are conducting their own examination of the political wreckage.
Ron DeSantis has reappeared in the national conversation, pointing to Florida’s Republican performance while describing the national defeat in terms approaching an extinction-level event.
There is nothing quite like a political disaster to remind a former presidential contender that he may have a future after all.
Meanwhile, the conservative faithful have gathered at Mar-a-Lago for CPAC’s retreat and gala, where access, influence and the prospect of encountering somebody important remain among the capital’s most durable currencies. The Republican Party may be in considerable difficulty, but the business of political proximity continues.
And that is the thing about Washington. Today’s winner can become tomorrow’s loser. Yesterday’s political enemy can become your most useful ally. The friend who could not return your telephone call last week may suddenly discover that you are indispensable.
Power changes hands. Loyalties become negotiable. And everybody discovers a remarkable capacity for remembering friendships they had temporarily forgotten.
Which brings me back to Trump.
He began his political journey long before MAGA, spent years as a Democrat, and now finds himself facing a Democratic Congress with a Republican Party attempting to understand what went wrong. For a man who has spent his career making deals, perhaps this is not an entirely unfamiliar position.
The greatest irony may be that Trump could find it easier to negotiate with Chuck Schumer than Schumer finds it to manage the Democrats who have just been elected.
In Washington, one never knows. The president may have lost his congressional majorities, but he has rediscovered his Democratic friends. Schumer has won a majority, and now has to work out how many friends he actually has.
Sometimes winning an election is the easy part.
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