It’s an anxious time to be a Democrat.
The party wants to move forward after its excruciating loss to President Trump but keeps getting dragged into the past over revelations about the deteriorating health of former President Biden.
It’s strongly united against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” but is powerless to stop it in either chamber.
Party leaders are scrambling to attract more young voters, but the controversy surrounding David Hogg at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has threatened to undermine the effort.
And while Trump has been successful in rallying Republicans behind even his most controversial policies, Democrats are sniping over the liberal identity politics that helped Trump return to office — and has some presidential hopefuls bashing their own party as out of touch.
Rahm Emanuel, a former Illinois congress member who’s eyeing a run at the White House in 2028, recently told The Wall Street Journal that the Democratic brand is “toxic” in the eyes of too many voters, who see the party as “weak and woke.”
The internal tensions are creating enormous challenges for Democratic leaders, who stress the urgency of winning back the House next year to check Trump, but can’t shake divisions over how to confront the brazen president in ways that will resonate with voters to achieve that goal.
Much of the clash is generational, especially in the wake of Biden’s last-minute bump from the presidential ticket last year amid mounting concerns about his health, and more recently with the announcement of his cancer diagnosis. The news has rekindled accusations that the party institutionalists did far too little to challenge Biden’s candidacy, and it’s been an unwelcome distraction for Democratic leaders, who want to shift the conversation to Trump — or anything else.
“We’re looking forward,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said when asked recently about Biden’s health by CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
“That’s it?” Hunt asked.
“That’s it,” Schumer said.
The Hogg saga is proving another headache for Democrats, who voted the 25-year-old gun reform activist into a top spot at the DNC in February, only to sour on him after he vowed to spend millions of dollars on behalf of young progressive candidates, even if it means challenging Democratic incumbents. A vote on whether to redo Hogg’s election is expected in June, sparking new charges from liberal activists who have long argued that party brass is protecting stale traditions at the expense of winning power.
“There’s a reason that the Democrats’ popularity in Congress is at a historic low. And there’s a reason that people are so willing to primary their incumbents from the Democratic establishment,” said Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for the Justice Democrats, a liberal group advocating for a new crop of younger progressives.
“The people of this country, particularly Democratic voters, are ready to clean-up shop in this party and unseat this large majority of corporate, do-nothing Democrats to elect real working-class champions who will fight back against Trump and Musk’s corporate coup with the urgency that this moment demands.”
Democratic leaders have dismissed the criticisms.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly pointed to a long string of state and local victories secured by Democrats in the months since Trump took office, including resounding wins in districts where Trump won by enormous margins. The list includes state senate victories in Iowa and Pennsylvania; a mayoral win against a MAGA incumbent in Omaha, Neb.; and a state Supreme Court victory in Wisconsin, where Elon Musk had spent more than $20 million only to see the Democrat win by 10 points.
“If that’s losing, what does winning look like? I’m confused,” Jeffries told reporters last week. “We have a very clear, quantifiably evident road map as to how Democrats are doing in this country and how Republicans are doing during this Trump era.”
Some recent polls offer reason for Democrats to be optimistic. A New York Times/Siena College poll, for instance, found that, on a generic ballot, 47 percent of respondents would vote for the Democrat, while 44 percent would choose the Republican.
Other polls suggest they should be more worried.
A survey conducted last month by SSRS for CNN found that 37 percent of voters approve of how Republicans in Congress are handling their duties this year, while just 27 percent approve of the Democrats’ performance. And an Economist/YouGov poll conducted last week found that just 36 percent of respondents approve of the Democratic Party, versus 41 percent for the GOP.
Many Democrats say it’s a crisis, not of values, but of marketing — especially for a party with no singular national leader at the helm.
“We’ve got to win back some independents, moderates — we’ve got to win back working people, and there isn’t just one voice that’s going to do that,” said Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), who’s calling for every Democrat in Congress to step up their public outreach.
“I want to see everybody generating content, us sharing that content, and having an apparatus to take on the media ecosystem, because we’re losing on that front. We know that,” she continued. “We’ve seen the data in terms of the things that are getting shared and going viral. It’s overwhelmingly Republican stuff right now.”
Other Democrats said that, while public messaging is a huge factor as the party vies to win over the voters it lost to Trump, it’s not the only one. These voices maintain that Democrats can tap into the same vein of unrest that Trump did, but to do it they have to walk the walk when they return from the trail to Capitol Hill.
“We should set more on economic populism, talking more about the working class, the working poor, to win elections. But then when we get in office, we should do stuff on behalf of those communities,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), 28, the youngest member of Congress.
“A lot of people are pissed off, and we have to keep talking about it. But it can’t be about defending this stuff. We have to talk about where we want to go,” he added. “I didn’t run for Congress just to protect this stuff. I ran for Congress to think about what’s the next iteration.”