The Democratic Party, divided into different camps since its bruising presidential election defeat, has come together recently. But Democrats disagree on whether Donald Trump played a role in the party’s newfound unity.
Melissa Byrne is a Democratic activist and organizer who was detained last year while protesting in Trump Tower. She lives in Philadelphia.
Justin Talbot-Zorn is a progressive Democrat who served as chief of staff for three members of Congress. He lives in Santa Fe.
Robert Shrum is a centrist Democrat who worked as a strategist on the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry. He lives in Los Angeles.
Byrne, Talbot-Zorn and Shrum represent different strands of the Democratic Party, different generations and different parts of the US. But they agree on one thing: The party has come together recently. They disagree, however, on whether US President Donald Trump had anything to do with the party’s newfound cohesion.
‘Bolder and stronger’
“Donald Trump is the unwitting unifier of the Democratic Party,” Shrum, now the director of the Center for the Political Future and the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, told DW. Putting a check on Trump is, he said, “the first thing the Democratic Party stands for” in the eyes of many voters.
It is no small feat to unify the party following its bitter presidential election defeat in 2016, a year when Democrats were split during the primaries between the centrist camp represented by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and progressives, represented by her opponent, Bernie Sanders.
But Trump, simply by being the president, unwittingly rose to the occasion, Talbot-Zorn told DW. “He is doing the work of achieving that.I would not go so far as that the Democratic Party has one united philosophical point of view at this point. But there is more convergence than we have seen at any time in recent history.”
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