One of the lessons for U.S. politics of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that it points out the risks for the out-party of pure rejectionism — simply opposing whatever the party in power says and does.
Opposing the in-party is often a healthy instinct. Democratic governments benefit when the opposition promotes policy alternatives. And there’s scant electoral risk in disagreeing with many of even the most popular ideas a president proposes; few voters, especially swing voters, are so attentive to policy questions that they would otherwise vote for challengers except that those challengers disagreed with them on something. It usually works the other way around: People decide who they’ll vote for first, and then adopt policy positions to match their vote.
It’s also true that when the out-party supports a president’s policies, those positions will tend to become popular. And that might, at least on the margins, make the president more popular. In most cases, then, there’s something to be said for automatically coming out against anything the president says or does.
