“With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany. Mark my words,” he said, repeating the phrase months later on Nov. 6 at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser hosted by the law firm Sidley Austin.
The pitch struck a chord with Democrats in the 2020 primaries. Many bought into it, particularly older voters nostalgic for a gentler politics. Biden won the nomination and went on to defeat Trump. But his prophecy didn’t materialize. Even in defeat, Trump held control of his party and returned to the White House even stronger with a decisive victory in 2024 — after having adopted a posture of all-out political warfare with Democrats.
The Republican epiphany “did not happen,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg deadpanned in an interview.
Contrary to Biden’s prediction, she said, “in the 2020 election, it’s pretty clear that a big part of the why Trump lost was because of his handling of Covid. It was not necessarily a rejection of Trump or Trumpism. And I think that’s partly what we see in 2024 — is that there were folks who never actually rejected that.”
Democratic voter attitudes rapidly shifted to seeking a confrontational posture toward the GOP, similar to what Republican voters had demanded of their party since 2009.
In March 2025, NBC News polling found that 65% of self-identified Democrats wanted their representatives in Congress to “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done,” while just 32% said they wanted to “make compromises with President Trump to gain consensus on legislation.”
That was a dramatic inversion from April 2017, around the same point in Trump’s first term, when NBC News polling showed 59% of Democrats wanted their leaders to compromise, while 33% wanted them to hold firm in their positions at risk of gridlock.
As far back as 2011, Democratic voters had preferred a posture of compromise over combat. Trump’s second-term victory triggered something new within the base that didn’t exist under Presidents Biden or Barack Obama.
It’s a far cry from former first lady Michelle Obama’s famous quote, “When they go low, we go high.” In fact, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., quotes himself on the front page of his website saying, “When they go low, we strike back.”
Former Senate Democratic leadership aide Adam Jentleson, a fervent real-time critic of Biden’s “epiphany” rhetoric, saw it as a close cousin of Obama’s ill-fated predictions that the GOP “fever” would break after he won re-election in 2012.
“There was a sense that Trump was an aberration,” Jentleson said. “Seeing him lose an election and fall out of favor and then reassert his control over the GOP and get re-elected — that completely shattered any illusion that Republicans of sound conscience were going to rise up and take back their party.”
Still, Biden allies note that his quest for bipartisanship yielded some successes. He was able to secure significant legislative achievements with Senate Republican votes during his first two years of the Democratic trifecta — including passing an infrastructure package and the CHIPS and Science Act, overhauling the Postal Service and codifying same-sex marriage.
But some of those victories were forged out of a unique mix of factors (mainly a swath of retiring GOP senators eying their legacies) that haven’t been replicated since, and Trump re-established his status as GOP kingmaker in 2024 nonetheless.
Amanda Litman, a co-founder of the group Run for Something, said Biden’s “epiphany” rhetoric and Obama’s “fever” predictions represent “a misunderstanding of the modern GOP.”
“It’s Trump’s party all the way down. Even when he’s gone, it’s still his ideology driving things forward,” she said. “I do think, however, that the GOP is screwed post-Trump because his bulls— doesn’t connect as well when it’s not him spewing it.”
She said the Obama-Biden belief in a return to bipartisan compromise is falling out of favor.
“Democratic primary voters are sick of pretending we can revert back to the status quo or that we can take the high road. They have a more clear-eyed view of the GOP than the Democratic electeds,” said Litman, who is encouraging younger candidates to launch primary challenges against older incumbents.
Democratic voters’ preference for more combative candidates is shaping primary contests all over the country. In New Jersey, progressive activist and self-described agitator Analilia Mejia defeated the party’s preferred contender and handily won a House special election. In Maine, populist outsider Graham Platner built such a big lead in the Senate primary that he pushed out two-term Gov. Janet Mills, who had been favored by Senate Democratic leaders.
That’s a sharp contrast from 2018, when Democrats largely nominated center-left moderates aligned with the priorities of party leadership in competitive races. That year, Democratic voters held largely positive views of their party; today, that has shifted, and the calls for a new crop of leaders have grown.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Democrats need to “fight fire with fire” and stop assuming Republicans will become more compromising simply because they lost an election.
“Obviously, I want our party to be more pugilistic. But I also want our party to offer an agenda to Trump’s base that is attractive,” he said. “So it’s not just about punching MAGA in the mouth. It’s about understanding there’s a lot of his base that actually does believe in things like a higher minimum wage and industrial policy and much more tightly regulated technology. We have the opportunity to win over a lot of Trump’s votes if we hew tight to two messages: unrig the economy and unrig the democracy.”
Murphy said his biggest fear is that Democrats overinterpret potential victories in the coming years without offering an affirmative vision and a commitment to fight for it.
“The biggest danger to our party is believing that winning the 2026 or the 2028 election is enough. We could score a temporary electoral victory but do nothing to make our movement more attractive to Trump voters,” he said. “That would be a disaster.”