As Americans prepare for the second inauguration of President Trump, the country’s attention is naturally focused on Trump, Vice President Vance, and the incoming Cabinet.

It will be historic. President Cleveland is the only other man to be sworn in a second time after leaving the White House. That was back in 1892.

Yet, in the background, a new drama is unfolding among Democrats.

We are witnessing the beginning of what will soon be a civil war inside the minority party.

There are two emerging wings of Democrats. The smaller wing will cooperate with Trump and the Republicans to survive. The larger wing will fight Trump at any cost.

The latter wing’s intensity and power is evidenced by the recent report that Governor Newsom and California’s Democrats have established a $50 million fund to fight Trump in the Golden State.

Think of the historic context in which Mr. Newsom and his allies are operating. Los Angeles is in the middle of the worst fire in American history. The state is going to need a lot of help from the Trump administration. Given this reality, why would California Democrats pick a fight with the incoming president instead of working with him to save lives and rebuild the city?

This behavior is a denial of reality. It is worthy of psychiatric study. These partisans hate Trump and the Make America Great Again movement so much they will let their own cities burn to fight him. 

In effect, they are selling out their state for their ideology. They feel compelled to because their ideology is at the heart of their beliefs — not the people they were elected to serve.

The coming Democratic Party civil war could also be seen when Democrats broke with their party and voted last week to pass the Laken Riley Act. 

The bill is named for the 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in Georgia by an illegal alien while jogging. It aims to detain immigrants charged with crimes until federal officials determine if they should be deported. 

House Democrats split 48 in favor and 159 opposed. In the Senate, 31 Democrats voted to move the bill forward. Nine voted against it, and seven did not vote.

This split over a popular, common-sense proposal with a powerful namesake is an indication of the depth of opposition among some Democrats against any effort to tighten up immigration laws.

The gap in House voting among Democrats will likely increase. Thirteen House Democrats come from districts Trump carried, and 21 come from districts which he was within 5 percent of carrying. These 34 Democrats are going to be under constant pressure from voters back home who want to help move Trump’s agenda.

In 1981, President Reagan got 46 Democrats to vote with him for the three-year-tax cuts — despite deep opposition from the Democratic speaker, Tip O’Neill, and the liberal wing of his party. 

Over the following years, the liberals gradually made life so miserable for the Reagan Democrats that many either became Republicans or retired. The Democratic Party moved steadily further to the left.

In 1996, we got 101 Democrats to vote with us for welfare reform while 101 Democrats stuck with liberal opposition to work requirements. 

This was a much more divisive bill than you might think. Some of the liberals who opposed the bill came to the floor and during the debate accused us of being Nazis. 

They claimed we were “coming for the children,” because they insisted the reform would hurt children of working parents. As it turned out, parents went to work, and more children were lifted out of poverty by that bill than any other in history. Yet on the left ideology mattered more than reality.

Trump is going to advocate several powerful reforms which will be popular with the country. At America’s New Majority Project, we know there are 70 percent and 80 percent support issues which the left will bitterly oppose. 

Many of these popular issues are in the 2024 Republican platform. The more rational Democrats will decide that they have to support them for their own survival back home.

The Democrats are starting to split — and it will rapidly get worse.