Democrats are in deep trouble or maybe not

We've seen this movie before, it's just been a long time

As is typical of the party not in the White House, Democrats are having an internal fight over where the party should go. It’s often framed as being about the center versus the left and there is truth to it, but it’s more than just that. There is widespread anger at the party establishment, however vague that phrase is. That battle tends to involve younger Democrats pushing against older leaders who have been around for a long time.

I’m in the more centrist wing of the party, but, I also have a strong desire to see a change in leadership. They don’t get as much attention as their left-wing counterparts, but there are plenty of centrist Democrats who are younger and, per this New York Times article, are forming a new group with two main goals. One is to boost younger leaders at all levels of government. The other is to push back against the orthodoxy that it believes is holding the party back.

What’s different about this group, called Majority Democrats, is that it’s led by elected officials from all levels of government. That is key. Traditionally, groups advocating for the Democratic Party have been led by staffers, strategists and activists. The elected officials leading this new group come from swing states/districts as well as blue states/districts.

The group is not officially a centrist organization, but for all intents and purposes that is what it’s shaping up to be. It’s looks similar to the Democratic Leadership Council, which was a big deal in the 1990s and early 2000s and helped push Democrats towards the center. When I was a lot younger and a leftist, I hated the DLC, but it was mostly right and we need a newer version of it for today.

If you follow politics closely, you’ve probably heard plenty of takes about how Democrats should move towards the center. I agree with that, but moving towards the center is going to be nuanced and does not mean going down an issue list and checking every single box there is. It’s worth looking back some at the last decade to see where many Democrats, in my view, have erred, why that happened, what’s going on now and what should be done going forward.

Looking at where things are today, substantively, the country is more left-wing than it was in 2015. Gay marriage is legal everywhere and popular. The pre-Trump Republican agenda of slashing entitlement spending and pushing for “small government” is dead. As bad as the Big Ugly Bill is, it’s less bad than what Republicans pushed for in 2011 and 2017. The Affordable Care Act is now popular and covers way more people than it did a short while ago.

If you look back further to when I finished high school, 2005, things are even more left-wing, particularly on the cultural front. Gay people can serve openly in the military. The religious right is a shadow of its former self. We’re not arguing over evolution and everyone agrees that the war in Iraq was a failure.

As the country has moved leftward over the last ten years, Republicans also moved leftward. Trump attacked fellow Republicans from the left on entitlements, Iraq and trade. He slaughtered one sacred cow after another and only got stronger for it. Democrats have moved leftward, too, but more so than the country and that’s been their problem.

Long story short, the left has had a lot of success this century, but has overreached during the last decade and provoked a backlash. Democrats, having moved more to the left than most, have borne the brunt of it. Republicans adjusted to the country’s leftward shift by abandoning unpopular stances. In light of the backlash to left-wing excesses, Democrats will need to abandon some of their unpopular stances. The origin of that overreach can arguably be traced back to the 2016 Democratic primary.

Clinton unexpectedly struggled against Sanders. She couldn’t generate any enthusiasm for her own candidacy so she tried to compensate for it by moving leftward.¹ Attacking Sanders from the left on economics wasn’t an option, but on cultural issues it was. She attacked him on immigration by backing away from border enforcement and frequently invoked race. No one thought about it this way at the time, but she arguably ran the first woke campaign.

How much of a role that played in her losing is unclear and I don’t want to overstate its importance, but it did mark the beginning of a big shift in where Democratic Party actors stood on a series of issues. After Trump won, the response from Democrats almost everywhere was to move to the left. Democratic voters themselves were not were leftists and still aren’t, but candidates and elected officials either forgot that or, more likely, were unaware of it because of the small world they were inhabiting.

2017-20 saw the formation of a whole lot of new advocacy groups, almost all of whom were on the left or soon became that way. Other advocacy groups that had existed before raised more money than they ever had and hired a whole lot of new staff, many of whom were way out in left-field. For those wondering how the ACLU went from being a serious organization to an embarrassment beyond redemption, that is pretty much it.

During Trump’s first term, social media’s influence, especially Twitter, surged. It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal that was. Just about everyone in Democratic Party circles became addicted to it. Trust me, I know, because I’m on it a lot. I saw them all there. They weren’t the only ones addicted to that site. Trump was on it all the time and so was every single national political reporter.

The Democratic presidential primary in 2019-20 was when the left’s influence was at its peak. It was also when Twitter’s influence on Democrats was close to its peak. Those two are not unrelated. One reason why the primary went sideways is, I think, because it was the first competitive primary Democrats had in the age of social media. I don’t think any of the candidates running were prepared for the barrage of information and demands they were hit with. None of them had ever experienced activists shoving phones in their faces and demanding they take positions on their pet issues.

With social media, communication is instant and you hear about things happening all over the country or even the world. That’s not something we had until recently. Candidates and especially their staffers were, unbeknownst to many of them, ensconced in a tiny bubble. Since they didn’t know how small of a world they were in, they thought what they were seeing was the real world. It was easy to mistake the loudest for being the most representative and to give in to their demands.

The 2019-20 primary was really insane even at the time. Mistaking the preferences of the most vocal for the most representative is largely why that happened. Twitter probably played a bigger role in that than any one thing. I have no doubt that if you asked candidates who ran then if they regret many of the positions they took, they probably would all say yes.

Trump tweeted every five minutes and was almost always saying something awful. His tweets were covered obsessively and every Democrat everywhere felt the need to react to it. Because Trump was awful, that meant whatever he said was bad. That was certainly true much of the time, but believing the solution was to go in the opposite direction of him all the time was very wrong.

Trump was vulnerable on issues like immigration in his first term. The problem was not many Democrats then could take advantage of it because they were way out in left-field. One of the most infamous moments was during a presidential primary debate in 2019 when the candidates were asked if they favored decriminalizing border crossings. All but one raised their hand. All of them also said their healthcare plans would cover illegal immigrants.

The present and future

It’s popular for those in the politics business to be pessimistic about things. In the case of Democrats in the politics business, they’ve long been a neurotic, negative bunch of people. No matter what is happening, they’ll tell you Democrats are doing everything wrong and are doomed.

They have audiences to please and are just providing what people are demanding so I understand why they do what they do. The good news is they’re wrong. While Democrats moved leftward during the last decade, there is finally some serious pushback against it. I think the more centrist wing of the party had long been frustrated with the leftward move, but was held back from pushing against it by two things.

The first is the centrist wing didn’t have a whole lot of substantive ideas until recently. That has changed with abundance. There are so many reasons why I’m a big booster of that idea and one of them is that it gives the centrist wing something to be for. Being against the bad ideas from the left is necessary, but not sufficient. If you just oppose the left, then you’re defending the status quo, which is both bad policy and a political loser.

During Trump’s first term and Biden’s term, almost all of the ideas were coming from the left. They were usually very bad ideas, but you can’t beat something with nothing. What made things worse during that time was that to keep the left at bay, the party leadership in Congress and in the White House would usually give in to their demands on most issues. That was the other big barrier holding back the center.

Until now, the lodestar in Democratic Party circles was going to get along. Trump was such a threat that intraparty fighting needed to wait. That’s not a bad goal per se, but in practice it wound up benefiting the left. Since intraparty fighting needed to be avoided at all costs, that meant always saying yes when a group requested something. It was usually the left requesting things like pausing the approval of LNG export terminals and cancelling student debt and they tended to get what they wanted.

Unlike most Democrats in the politics business, I am fairly optimistic about the future. If you can put aside your feelings of doom, you can see that Democrats have already made great strides in moderating. Let’s take a look at some issues. We’ll start with immigration.

The positions many Democrats adopted in 2019-20 of basically opposing border enforcement, decriminalizing border crossings and giving health insurance to illegal immigrants are as good as dead. After flailing on the border for over two years, Biden endorsed an immigration bill in 2024 that was enforcement only. Later in the year, he finally clamped down on border crossings and they quickly plunged.

When Trump first came back into office, an immigration bill was quickly passed with bipartisan support. If he really cared about the issue, he could have asked Congress to pass the same bill Biden endorsed and it would’ve gotten to his desk by February. Since the election, many Democratic elected officials have publicly broken away from immigration advocacy groups and some, like Ruben Gallego, have proposed their own legislation. On the state level, states whose health insurance programs covered illegal immigrants are reversing it.

It was once common to hear slogans like “Abolish ICE,” but those days are long gone. Democrats everywhere have rightfully criticized Trump’s immigration raids and abuses of power, but few if any have responded by endorsing anything like open borders. Even the most left-wing Democrats seem to recognize how badly they erred. When the 2028 primary begins, you’re not going to see the crazy stuff you saw in 2019-20.

To be sure, while Democrats have moderated significantly on immigration, their public perception is still bad. Sure, there are plenty of bad faith actors with self-serving narratives to tell about Democrats, but that’s not really what’s going on. The perception most voters have of Democrats on immigration is Biden, who was very unpopular. His handling of immigration was poor and that is the perception a lot of voters have about Democrats.

The way to heal that is threefold. One is the passage of time. The further away we move from Biden, the less relevant he will be. That’s what happened with Republicans after Bush. He left office toxically unpopular and torched the party’s brand, but after a while he stopped mattering.

Two is the focus being on Trump again. He enjoyed a big advantage on immigration last year, but he wasn’t in charge and making decisions. Now he is and public opinion has shifted markedly against him. His raids are proving to be unpopular and views of immigration have gotten a lot more positive since he came back.

Three is to nominate someone in 2028 who is trusted by enough voters. I don’t know if that will happen or who that person is, but if someone like that is nominated it will make a big difference. There are so many hot takes going around discussing problems Democrats have on various issues and with different groups and they all have the same answer.

How can they win Gen Z? How can they win men? How can they do better with Hispanics? How will they ever gain back trust? The answer to those questions is they just need to nominate someone who connects with those groups and is seen as trustworthy. They’ll also need to have some good luck, but that’s beyond their control.

In sum, Democrats have moderated substantially on immigration, it just takes time for perceptions to change. Let’s look at another issue where they have moderated a lot, crime. On the national level, it’s usually not a big issue because the federal government only does so much on it, but it can help fuel perceptions of the parties.

For some in the politics business, the summer of 2020 never ended, but everyone else has moved on. Crime surged in 2020-21, but that has reversed sharply. In fact, homicides are down so much this year that we are on track to see the lowest number of them ever recorded. Some solidly blue cities briefly tolerated a rise in crime, but voters got fed up with it very fast.

District attorneys who were lax on prosecuting crime have been voted out or have done a U-turn. Mayors have been elected on a platform of cleaning up cities and supporting law enforcement. The sway left-wing advocacy groups had in convincing some Democrats to be soft on crime is over. It wasn’t long ago when ideas like defunding the police, not prosecuting all kinds of crimes and allowing people in jail to vote were widely discussed. That’s not the case anymore and come 2028 I’m not worried about Democratic candidates endorsing any of that junk.

It’s not just on substantive issues where Democrats have already moderated. Rhetorically, things have changed a lot. There are plenty who still rail against billionaires and corporations and have a zero sum worldview, but there are plenty who are more business friendly and positive sum in their thinking. Ruben Gallego is a good example of the latter and so is Elissa Slotkin.

It wasn’t long ago when all kinds of buzzwords were used in Democratic Party circles, but those are almost all gone. As someone who’s very online, trust me when I say those words have disappeared. I used to hear all kinds of jargon related to gender and race, but I haven’t heard any of that stuff in a long time. In the 2019-20 primary, there were candidates discussing their pronouns. There won’t be any of that in 2028.

Personally, I hope to hear Democratic candidates and elected officials stop using the word “undocumented” when talking about illegal immigrants. It’s not technically wrong, but it’s not a word that any normal person uses. I would wager that it strikes many voters as weird and downplaying the problem of illegal immigration. Plus, saying “illegal immigrant” would have the added bonus of pissing off left-wing advocacy groups, which can only help those Democrats running in competitive races.

One problem the last three Democratic presidential nominees had was being inaccessible. Clinton went nine months without having a press conference and rarely did interviews. Because of the pandemic, Biden had very few face-to-face interactions during the 2020 campaign. Harris did some interviews, but not as much as she needed to, given how little time she had.

That will need to change in 2028 and I have no doubt it will. More Democrats have been willing to talk to podcasters who are not natural allies and that will continue. Unlike when Bernie Sanders talked to Joe Rogan in 2019, when he did it again last month, nobody complained. Most everyone now recognizes that the risk averse approach of keeping appearances to a minimum and being scripted isn’t working.

While there are big differences between the centrist and leftist wings of the party, there seems to be a consensus that the obsession with identity has been a loser. Even those who are very far-left, like Zohran Mamdani, don’t talk about it anymore. I think it’s safe to say woke is no longer in hospice, it’s dead. For those who have built their entire brand around hating it, woke’s demise is an existential crisis, but everyone else is better off for it.

Some tips for candidates and elected officials

It’s important for Democrats to moderate on some key issues, but the biggest reason they will need to do it is so they can win more than 50-52 Senate seats. Often times, claims that Democrats should moderate are vague and don’t offer much in the way of specifics on ideas or strategy. I will offer a little of it here.

I’ll start first with elected officials. It’s not just Democrats in competitive places that should moderate. At least some Democrats from safe blue places should do the same. There are people like that such as Ritchie Torres and Jake Auchincloss, but they’re not enough. Other Democratic representatives and senators should speak out on some issues where they deviate from the left. Matt Yglesias has been beating on that drum for a long time and he’s right.

Ideally, party leaders like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer would make it clear that they want to compete everywhere and will welcome those who can make it happen. That would entail not just rhetoric, but actions. Namely, as Yglesias has argued, it would mean defending centrist members from attacks by left-wing groups. It would also mean having hard conversations with those groups and telling them that they aren’t helping. If those groups don’t listen, then Democratic leaders should talk to their donors about not funding them.

Pushing back against the influence of left-wing groups is absolutely necessary. It’s not something the party leadership wants to do because they’re risk averse, but something has to give. The interests of Schumer and Jeffries and the interests of the left-wing advocacy world don’t align. The left-wing advocacy world is not interested in winning elections. It’s interested in ideological purity, elections be damned. That’s in direct conflict with every single goal Democrats in Congress have.

I understand not wanting to take heat from your own side. It’s especially unappealing because left-wing groups are very vocal and are always paying attention, unlike normal voters. If Democratic congressional leaders told left-wing groups they’re not helping, they would get yelled at and complained about to the media. It may not be fun, but it needs to happen.

Schumer did show good leadership in March when he pushed against shutting down the government. He did the right thing and spared other members from taking heat. The problem is after he did that he basically went on an apology tour. He met with people from Indivisible, a left-wing group, and pleaded with them to not call for his stepping down as minority leader.

That’s exactly what’s wrong with the approach the party’s leadership has taken to left-wing groups. He shouldn’t have even acknowledged that group’s existence! No Democrat at any level of government should give two shits what Indivisible or any group like it thinks. Those groups have done nothing but push Democrats leftward since 2016, are accountable to no one and serve no useful purpose.

So much of why congressional Democrats have moved leftward is because they’ve outsourced policy positions on issue after issue to advocacy groups. Why did Biden have such a leftward immigration policy for so long? Immigration groups. Why did he pause LNG export terminals and pledge to not allow any drilling on public lands? Environmental groups. Why did he spend so much time on student debt? A whole hodgepodge of left-wing groups.

Changing the image of a party is hard and takes a long time, but it can be done. A lot of things had to happen for Trump to be nominated, but since he first was he has drastically changed the Republican Party’s image, for good or ill. Nominating someone good in 2028 and them winning would help change the Democratic Party’s image, but it’s not great to rely on one person to save you. That’s why I hope more Democrats at all levels of government, not just in Congress, speak up and articulate some views that are different from the party as a whole.

To be specific, the following are things I would like to hear some congressional Democrats from safe blue places denounce: banning oil and gas drilling on public lands, banning ICEs, banning fracking and banning gas stoves, plastic straws or plastic bags. Those are not things that a Democratic-controlled Congress should ever bring up for a vote. If a Republican-controlled Congress tries to pass something related to those issues, Democrats should be free to vote for it if they wish.

Of all the problems the Democratic Party has with its image, the hostility towards oil and gas drilling is, I think, the worst. It makes it look like they don’t care about the cost of living or jobs in a lot of places. More than immigration, crime or culture war fights, that is where many Democrats are out of touch with a wide swath of the country. If Democrats ever hope to compete in a state like Texas, they have to get over their antipathy to the oil and gas industry.

It was popular on the left to hate on Joe Manchin when he was the deciding vote, but that’s what you have to be willing to tolerate if you want to compete in many places. The alternative to a moderate Democrat in many states is not a liberal Democrat. It’s a staunch conservative Republican.

The goal is to win as many elections as possible and that’s going to mean tolerating things the left doesn’t like and even things I don’t like. For example, there is an effort to convince John Bel Edwards to run for senator in Louisiana. He’s staunchly anti-abortion, but I would love it if he ran. Louisiana is a deep southern state and is one where social conservatism is very high.

Next year, I hope Sherrod Brown runs again for senator in Ohio. To win, he’s going to need to be to the right of most Democrats on energy and probably some other issues and that’s fine. The same is true for anyone running in Iowa and Texas. It’s probably too late to significantly shift the party’s image in time for 2026, but anything to move the ball on that would help.

It’s important to remember that Democrats don’t need to become conservative by any means. In fact, their need to moderate is less today than it was after 1988 and 2004. It used to be that Democrats would have to nominate candidates who were stingy on the safety net, hawkish on foreign policy and anti-abortion. Today, with a few exceptions, pro-choice is a winner, including in red states. Support for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the ACA is universal among Democrats and a winning issue everywhere. In 2006, most Democrats who ran opposed gay marriage. Today, Democrats in some places may have to deviate from the left on gender affirming care and transgender athletes, but those are small potatoes compared to gay marriage and abortion.

As I mentioned earlier, the country is more left-wing than it was the last time Democrats felt like they were in the dumps. Not only that, but the party is in great shape to win back the House. In 2017, it looked like winning it back was going to be the fight of the century. Today, virtually nobody thinks Democrats won’t win it back next year. On the state level, Democrats are in way better shape than they were in 2017 by many miles. They have 23 governorships and will make it 24 in November. Next year, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to gain a majority of governorships for the first time since 2008.

Yes, Democrats have their work cut out for them. Yes, there are lots of naysayers and pessimists out there. Yes, they have a big internal fight on their hands. It’s happened before, but it’s been so long hardly anyone remembers it and social media didn’t exist then. It feels like Democrats are in an unprecedented hole, but they’re really not. They’re going to have to make some choices many would rather not make, but they’ll get over it and will be just fine.

1. Candidates who nobody is enthusiastic about tend to appeal to their party’s more ideological wing as a substitute for organic support. John McCain picked Sarah Palin because he was afraid the Republican base would abandon him otherwise. Mitt Romney went way out into right-field in 2012, culminating in his picking Paul Ryan as his running mate. Biden made concession after concession to the left and adopted much of its rhetoric, too, in the hope of generating some kind of enthusiasm.