Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward

[Celerity]

The party’s standing is startlingly low after a defeat that felt like a cultural rejection. What comes next?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/us/politics/democratic-party-voters.html

https://archive.ph/YraA1


The first challenge is that, beyond Republicans and independents, Democrats themselves have soured on their party. Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times

One longtime Democratic researcher has a technique she leans on when nudging voters to share their deepest, darkest feelings about politics. She asks them to compare America’s two major parties to animals. After around 250 focus groups of swing voters, a few patterns have emerged, said the researcher, Anat Shenker-Osorio. Republicans are seen as “apex predators,” like lions, tigers and sharks — beasts that take what they want when they want it. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloths: slow, plodding, passive.

So Ms. Shenker-Osorio perked up earlier this year when a Democratic man in Georgia suggested that a very different kind of animal symbolized her party. “A deer,” he said, “in headlights.” The man had more to say. “You stand there and you see the car coming, but you’re going to stand there and get hit with it anyway.”

Six months after President Trump swept the battleground states, the Democratic Party is still sifting through the wreckage. Its standing has plunged to startling new lows — 27 percent approval in a recent NBC News poll, the weakest in surveys dating to 1990 — after a defeat that felt like both a political and cultural rejection. Communities that Democrats had come to count on for a generation or more — young people, Black voters, Latinos — all veered toward the right in 2024, some of them sharply.

And unlike Mr. Trump’s win in 2016, his victory last year could not be waved away as an outlier after he won the popular vote for the first time. The stark reality is that the downward trend for Democrats stretches back further than a single election. Republicans have been gaining ground in voter registration for years. Working-class voters of every race have been steadily drifting toward the G.O.P. And Democrats are increasingly perceived as the party of college-educated elites, the defenders of a political and economic system that most Americans feel is failing them.

snip

[Historic NY]

1. Stop being nice go for the juggler,

its the only way to out Republican the Republicans. Thrown them off balance.

[dalton99a]

5. +1

[ananda]

14. It's those white middle class nice patterns.

They're so ingrained, especially in women.

[Kid Berwyn]

16. Excellent advice!

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Not to worry

The consultant class has convinced the DNC to invest $20 million dollars to learn how to “listen to men”.

Communities that Democrats had come to count on for a generation or more — young people, Black voters, Latinos — all veered toward the right in 2024, some of them sharply.

Not quite accurate - male members of those groups who showed up to vote showed a shift towards Trump, but a majority of those voters in those groups still voted Dem. What’s not being discussed is the millions of young people, black voters, Latinos who voted in 2020, but didn’t vote in 2024.

Until Dems prioritize motivating more voters, especially young voters, to show up, rather than wasting resources persuading a relatively small group of male swing voters to swing back to the Dems, they will continue to struggle to win the presidency.

Young people, who overwhelmingly support progressive policies, are the largest untapped pool of voters in the nation, and Dems ignore or dismiss them at their own peril.

[RJ-MacReady]

3. There is truth to this

The party has become too reliant on academia and focus groups that make it sound out of touch. The party needs to engage with everyday people about everyday issues. Our platform is for the working class and always has been. We need to reclaim that title again. We have some good people on the bench.

[dalton99a]

8. +1. Ditch the cause celebre du jour and political correctness bullshit. Focus on economic issues

[Keepthesoulalive]

13. Why are you using republican talking points

The republicans are the ones playing identity politics. The assholes who voted for the TACO don’t give a damn about economics. Look at the red states who consistently vote for people who tell them to drop dead. I’m looking at you Joni.
If economics mattered Mississippi and Alabama would vote for Democrats.

[betsuni]

19. Democrats always focus on economic issues and policies, that's what the party is.

Why the Right runs only on culture wars, of course.

[pecosbob]

4. Gen Z men are voting right all over the world. Gen Z women are doing the opposite.

Democratic parties worldwide need to recognize and embrace the real struggle...people versus corporations and oligarchies.

In countries such as ours virtually all elements of power are aligned with corporate interests. This allows them to manipulate the voting process in innumerable ways.

In the short term one way to combat this would be to adopt compulsory voting as in Australia. The effects of media and government manipulation can be minimized when everyone votes, not just the motivated.

[dalton99a]

6. Democrats should learn to fight to WIN, not to run away and cower in fear or act like deaf mutes

[David__77]

7. It seems like most of these assessments lack concrete analysis of ideology and politics.

It’s more aesthetic or perhaps cultural, as if the “vibe”, so to speak, is the heart of the matter. If one views politics is principally a matter of technical competence, I guess I can understand that.

[Sympthsical]

11. Our culture is our politics. That is what social media has done.

Every aspect of culture is now infused with politics. Every television show or movie we watch, the music we listen to, the books we read, the video games we play. All of it is fodder for a social media machine that unrelentingly demands that people take sides.

Increasingly what you watch, read, play, or engage with becomes a marker of your identity.

And who people vote for becomes very tied up in that.

[David__77]

15. I agree with that. This is a matter of identifying causality.

Sure, with more media forms, there is a sort of broad ideologization. The thing is I don’t think that political changes in different groups is a matter of people simply responding to cultural signaling; rather, it’s people gravitating to ideologically appealing forces. And the “left-right” concept that prevails is really incorrect, I think, or certainly misleading.

[Ponietz]

9. The 2020 categorical imperative was to put that MF traitor behind bars and we failed

We failed to uphold the rule of law and reinforced his aura of invincibility. America loves a winner.

Single issue squeaky wheels on our fringe get too much attention, but they say that’s how the algorithm works. We need two or three overarching planks that can unite us. The rule of law, billionaire greed, and repealing Citizens United, for instance. But can we keep our eyes on the prize?

That’s why there’s a call for change; why should people believe the ones who didn’t get the job done before will do so given another chance?

[Sympthsical]

10. This article reads almost word for word what I've been posting on DU the past two weeks

Even uses a lot of the same verbiage. "[We've] lost credibility by being seen as alien on cultural issues.”

Anand Pandian's articles in the Guardian have parallel and tandem thoughts.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/16/look-around-you-why-increasingly-polarized

When people isolate themselves, only know themselves, and only talk to themselves, ability to communicate effectively with others breaks down.

[Ping Tung]

12. The Dems are on the winning side of most issues according to the polls. From woment's rights, to education, to

the environment, to basic civil rights for all.

They should start making issues and their stance on them the prime talking points.

Trump will destroy himself by attacking their stances because most people agree with them.

Play to your strength.

[andym]

17. GOP through Fox News and right wing news created one winning issue for them: an imaginary immigration dystopia

Trump ran on this-- that was the emphasis of his campaign-- to stop imaginary invading hordes. Secondary, the anti-woke commercials was used to paint Democrats as out of touch with main stream cultural values.
Trump has 38-45% favorability because of perceived success on immigration-- this needs to be challenged both on the lack of success in rounding up "illegals" especially the criminal gangs he keeps talking about, and consequently the lack of change in the US crime rate, which was already low though many people were unaware.

[andym]

18. Trump is popularising America First nationalism, and pretending to solve an imaginary immigration crisis

while using anti-woke ads to demonize Democrats as being out of the mainstream on cultural issues, when Democrats are really in the mainstream on many such as women's rights and abortion.

His is a populist approach: he is basically challenging globalisation with his tariffs-- that plays well with many working class folks. The Democratic Party needs to emphasize its own populism-- explain how Trump is actually putting America last, and that the spending money on the government helps America to be first through promoting research like the NSF, and NIH, and through immigration where the best and brightest in the world foreign nationals come here to study and then stay to make America stronger. The key is to recreate the idea of America as a shared experience for all-- that there is not a zero-sum cultural war to be won, but collective greatness to be achieved.Democrats need to project themselves as the real patriots.