In the 2024 presidential election, President Trump swept all seven swing states, won the popular vote, defied the polls and shocked Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats with his decisive victory. In the days that followed, I heard from several high-level Democratic operatives who shared essentially the same message: We are done being bullied into unpopular, losing positions by the far-left wing of our party, they said. We will get back to our roots of looking after the working class, the poor and the disenfranchised, they said.
Except they didn’t. Exactly the opposite.
Seven months after Trump redefined how to win a presidential campaign, Democrats have been backed deeper into a corner by the far-left activists they still fear, whose creed contains only three fundamental dogmata: Trump-hatred, perpetual self-victimhood, and identity politics as the center and source of all decisions.
All three of those doctrines were strongly rejected by the majority of voters in 2024, including an increasing number of Black and Hispanic men, non-white voters in general, the disenfranchised, younger people and independent voters. The reason was obvious to everyone paying attention: Trump-hatred, forever victimhood, and identity politics are not policies. They are angry rants — and tired ones at that. Left-of-center HBO host Bill Maher has made this point time and again.
Those who switched to Trump in 2024 did so for one reason: He was addressing the “bread and butter” issues that were upending voters’ lives and threatening their futures.
There are a great many voters who have come to believe that the Democratic Party is not only leaderless, but completely lacking when it comes to real solutions to the problems affecting their lives and futures. Whether or not the Democrats or mainstream media admit it, these are people who took the time to listen to Trump in 2024, with a growing percentage believing his policies would address their needs.
The question for the Democrats now, come the midterms and looking to 2028, is: Will more from those communities once loyal to Democrats also educate themselves and move away from a party that has taken them for granted for decades? Current trends and Trump’s piling up of “bread and butter” victories indicate that this is a real possibility.
When voices from these communities and others disenchanted with Democrats turn their weary eyes to the new leadership of that party of today, what do they see? Sadly for them, only the doubling down of “hate Trump,” identity politics and “forever victimhood.”
Two of those pushing these hardest are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). Both seem laser-focused on winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
But as both preach this tripartite Democratic gospel, there is a very easy test by which potential voters can judge them: What have they actually done to improve the lives and safety of the constituents in their districts? You know, as in the people they were elected to serve.
Hating on Trump and creating as much self-serving publicity as possible are neither policies nor strategies. Rather, they are actions that could be viewed as narcissistic behavior.
Famed sportscaster and longshot 2028 Democratic candidate Stephen A. Smith recently addressed this issue on his podcast, He criticized both Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett, whom he believes will turn off a majority of voters.
“I think if you are a Democrat, if you are a leftist who rails against the system … if you believe that higher taxes is the way to go, that a focus shouldn’t be on securing the borders, if you believe those kind of things, and that’s where you stand ideologically, AOC is your candidate,” he said. “Most people in the country are centrists, they’re moderates. Whether they’re Republican moderates or Democratic moderates or just flat-out centrists who are independents — that’s most of the American population … she gives the impression, when you talk about universal healthcare and you talk about other things, if you equate it to taxing Americans 70 percent of their income she wouldn’t be against it. That ain’t going to win you elections.”
Smith also singled out Crockett for seemingly having just one position on anything: Being against any policy or opinion Trump champions. Bingo.
Like him or not, Smith has his finger on the pulse of tens of millions of disenchanted voters — working-class, poor and disenfranchised, wondering more and more why the current leadership of the Democratic Party has abandoned them and their needs in favor of more self-serving rants against Trump.
The Democrats ignore these millions of voices — who know the difference between useless bumper-sticker slogans and actual policy — at their own peril.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
