By Lawrence S. Wittner
Amid widespread revulsion at the behavior of the second Trump administration and its Republican loyalists, there is a curious tendency to blame Democrats for the slide of the United States toward fascism. As one enraged commentator put it recently, “the Democrats” have “let us down day by day by day.”
But, in fact, “the Democrats”―at the grassroots and at the federal government level―have repeatedly displayed overwhelming opposition to the rightwing Republican onslaught. By contrast, Republicans have almost uniformly backed Trump’s priorities. Indeed, the gap between the two parties on most key issues has been enormous.
The stance of grassroots Democrats on control of the economy is illustrative. A Gallup poll in August 2025 found that, asked about big business, only 17 percent of registered Democrats had a positive view of it, compared to 60 percent of Republicans. Furthermore, only 42 percent of Democrats regarded capitalism favorably, compared to 75 percent of Republicans. Indeed, 66 percent of Democrats had a positive view of socialism.
On the hot issue of publicly-supported healthcare, a poll in late 2025 showed that 90 percent of Democrats―but only 20 percent of Republicans―backed Medicare for All. Moreover, as a September 2025 KFF poll revealed, even when it came to the much more modest program of extending health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there was a clear partisan division.
Other surveys found even sharper differences between Democrats and Republicans. In August 2025, a Quinnipiac poll revealed that Trump’s dispatch of National Guard troops to Washington, DC had the backing of 86 percent of Republicans, but only 5 percent of Democrats.
U.S. policy toward Israel also triggered significant partisan divisions. According to the August 2025 Quinnipiac poll, 75 percent of Democrats opposed sending more military aid to that nation for its Gaza campaign, while 56 percent of Republicans supported sending it. Indeed, 77 percent of Democrats thought Israel was committing genocide. By contrast, 64 percent of Republicans thought Israel was not.
In January 2026, another Quinnipiac poll, conducted within days of Renee Good’s murder by an ICE agent, found that 77 percent of Republicans surveyed thought the shooting was justified, but that 92 percent of Democrats surveyed considered it unjustified. Similarly, 77 percent of Republicans approved of how Kristi Noem was handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while 85 percent of Democrats disapproved. A Data for Progress poll had comparable findings.
The elected representatives of the two parties in Congress also displayed sharp partisan differences on major issues.
In early April 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders, decrying the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage as “a starvation wage,” introduced the Raise the Wage Act. It would increase the minimum wage to $17 over five years and gradually eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities. When Sanders forced a vote on amending the Republicans’ Senate Budget resolution to this effect, every Democrat voted for the measure, while every Republican but one opposed it, thereby killing it.
On December 11, 2025, the Republican-controlled Senate defeated Democratic-backed legislation extending subsidies for ACA health insurance. The subsidy measure drew only 51 votes and, therefore, fell short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster. All 47 Democrats and 4 Republicans supported it. The other 49 Republicans voted against it.
Six days later, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a healthcare bill that omitted the health insurance subsidies. All 210 Democrats and 1 Republican opposed it, while 216 Republicans supported it.
In early 2026, every Democratic member of Congress voted to block U.S. military action against Venezuela without Congressional authorization. On January 14, in the Senate, a measure along these lines, supported by all 47 Democrats and 3 Republicans, was defeated by the votes of 50 Republicans and Vice President J.D. Vance, who cast the tie-breaker. On January 22, in the House, all 213 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted for a similar restraining measure, but were stymied by 215 Republican opponents.
Meanwhile, on January 22 the Republican-controlled House passed legislation providing additional funding for ICE, with 206 Democrats and 1 Republican opposing it and 213 Republicans and 7 Democrats supporting it.
One of the very few pieces of key legislation that drew majority support from both parties was military aid to Israel, a $3.3 billion package passed by the House on January 14, 2026. Even on this issue, however, there was a partisan difference, with opposition to the legislation coming from 57 Democrats and only 22 Republicans.
Probably the most sweeping and important legislation to pass Congress during Trump’s second term was a budget reconciliation measure that he called the Big Beautiful Bill. Its provisions included permanently extending Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, slashing Medicaid funding, cutting food stamp spending by 20 percent, dramatically increasing funding for border enforcement and ICE, phasing out clean energy tax credits, promoting fossil fuels, and increasing U.S. military spending by $150 billion. According to experts, the legislation created the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history.
In the Senate, the vote on the Big Beautiful Bill was 50 to 50, with 50 Republican Senators supporting it and all 47 Democratic and 3 Republican Senators opposing it. The bill passed when Vance cast a tie-breaking vote. In the House, it was supported by 218 Republicans and opposed by all 212 Democrats and 2 Republicans.
Of course, Democratic legislators―especially when elected to office in normally Republican or marginal districts and facing an avalanche of billionaire campaign funding for their Republican opponents―sometimes made political compromises.
Even so, as the record shows, there has been remarkably little Democratic support for the Trump agenda, just as there has been very little Republican opposition to it.
Overall, then, the Democrats have been, and remain, an important component of resistance to America’s descent into fascism.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
