So Mark Sumner has a diary up on Daily Kos that says that despite Trump and the GOP's sinking approvals, they still aren't afraid because the Dems popularity is still even more underwater. He explains it's due to leadership's indecisiveness. I'm not saying those criticisms aren't wrong, in fact I agree with them. But as we've seen from t…
So Mark Sumner has a diary up on Daily Kos that says that despite Trump and the GOP's sinking approvals, they still aren't afraid because the Dems popularity is still even more underwater. He explains it's due to leadership's indecisiveness. I'm not saying those criticisms aren't wrong, in fact I agree with them. But as we've seen from the most recent elections, despite Democratic voters being pissed at the party, they are hardly demoralized from voting and coming out. Someone here said that fixing the image approval for the party maybe can't be fully resolved this year or next year. Democratic voters are also still pissed with the party because they can't believe they lost to Trump again. Don't want to get into 2028 primary talk but I think once we get closer to the Presidential primary, that's going to be the opportunity to really see massive improvement. Obviously, the party needs to get their shit together and I can understand folks not having any faith that Schumer can improve the party's standing. Jeffries I think has a better shot at doing that. I think letting folks like Buttigieg, Pritzker, Shapiro, Booker, Van Hollen, AOC, Crockett, Murphy, Sanders and anyone else who knows how to work the circuit be the spokespeople for the party. Grant it, we are already seeing that. Ultimately, I don't think the party's low public approval is going to hurt our chances in the New Jersey or Virginia Governors races and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections. But I do think it has to improve before next year and greatly approve of 2028. Thoughts?
The GOP is very good at pretending that bad approvals are “rigged” especially in the age of Trump so I wouldn’t expect them to be worried even if D numbers were better
He’s literally rage tweeting about how GDP contraction numbers are unfair to him. He’s the weakest but loudest personality in decades. Everybody knows to keep their head down around the giant 80 year old toddler
100%. The smart people in the room know how to read polls and the polls say Democrats are pissed at everyone. No one is spared right now considering how awful everything is. Us being mad at our party leadership should not be encouraging to them. Maybe we’ll take out some Dems in primaries but what comes after a primary? The general election and the GOP is next.
GOP favorables were also dogshit in the initial months of the 1st Obama term; not much evidence they serve as a weight on unpopular POTUS midterm backlash (they also improve over-time, as is already happening in current polling e.g. Dems are now leading on the economy)
As an aside, even I'm surprised at how quickly Trump shot his economy advantage to shit. All he had to do was *literally nothing* and he'd probably still have 50% or better approval on that issue...
I made a comment above on this topic and my brain had thoughts of maybe this is our Tea Party movement while typing it up. And your comment makes me go mmmmmhhhhmmmm. It’s a good thing we’re awesome and better and have morals. Our type of Tea Party movement wouldn’t be a careen to the left like their movement was to the right. It’d be a careen to fucking winning. It’s time play the game differently.
Speaking of playing differently, why didn’t Dems call in CEOs gouging us in the shopping aisles? Instead, we were stupid and were like, “Look over there!” (Famous RuPaul Drag Race quote for when the queens did a mock political Presidential debate.) Someone needs to drag in the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi and ask, “What in the actual fuck?!?” Everyone has some explaining to do at this point, even the eggs. The whole thing got way past the point of inflation and got into price gouging.
They also need to be asked if Donald Trump cut the corporate tax, why are they needing to jack up prices to screw us? We gave them tax cuts and they gave us higher prices. That’s a campaign slogan right there.
It'll never happen but I think a way that the party could start making inroads with the voters is a purge of elected officials from the early 2000s and anyone who isn't willing to fight. Slotkin has it right when she says that voters see the Dems as weak so we need to change that perception and vote out the incumbents that are seen as weak. If they're strong then they'll survive a primary challenge.
Dems unpopularity is more due to liberal dissatisfaction with their own party in contrast to Republicans enjoying the chainsaw wielded by House Reps if you see the breakdowns.
What really matters is the generic ballot where we are ahead and the midterms are a referendum on the president not the opposition party as multiple pundits point out. Republicans really think that this was landslide and are still high on the "vibe shift" narrative. Bush had a permanent conservative coalition and Obama had an upcoming Democratic majority. How did that turn out? We also have the optimized and reliable high propensity electorate for midterms as seen in 2018 and 2022 i.e the college educated, wealthier, older and more tuned in voters.
The thing that is personally demoralizing to me is that I really think the party decently had it's shit together last November, especially when all of the factors were taken into account. And we still got beaten. So, I'm not sure that getting our shit together again (and plenty can argue on exactly what that will look like) is going to save us. I do think the party needs change, but I don't know in which direction, and I'm not sure how much it will help.
We did not in fact have our shit together, I’m sorry, but we didn’t. Why Democrats decided to rerun the failed 2016 Clinton strategy “Trump is a danger to democracy” in 2024 is one of the key reasons we lost everything. Most people (even many supporters) don’t like Trump as a person, but they don’t care until he’s in office and only then do they get mad about it.
To be fair I don’t think any Democrat could’ve won as the majority of voters had made up their mind they wanted 2019 back again come hell, high water or Trump. But Harris and her team ran an old school race talking about what she wanted to do with policy (no one cares about that). Biden didn’t talk much about policy in his successful 2020 campaign.
The way to win modern elections is to make your opponent look unacceptable to the average/swing/doesn’t pay attention voter. People vote based on what they don’t want, not what they do want. We saw that in every election from 2017-2023 (except a mild blip in 2021 elections) as Democrats hammered Republicans and gained a ton of ground everywhere only for 2024 to come up and then for the party to completely toss the playbook that wins elections and go back to attacking Trump.
I do think this point gets brought up a lot but still not enough - nostalgia for pre-COVID still hasn’t subsided (indeed it may never) and a lot of people got basically cooked mentally 2020-22 and have never recovered. The equation “Trump = 2019” is inane logically but emotionally very, very powerful.
That’s also why I think his approvals have nosedived so fast - he’s very publicly and loudly *not* bringing the pre-COVID rosy warm nostalgia memory people (wrongly, as we were headed into recession by the end of that year, but nevertheless) want back and that they believe they elected him to bring back as a single-issue vote
The indicators around manufacturing output and similar were blinking as early as 2018 - a big reason why Powell started cutting rates, along with rising WH pressure heading into an election year, to get ahead of it
That said, a mid-to-late 2020 recession in a no-COVID scenario is probably more of a 2001 (pre-9/11) type contraction, maybe a smidge worse if short of 1990-91, than another 1982 or 2008
The biggest contributors to a Democratic Party getting its shit together....
1) Don't run a cognitively compromised octogenarian incumbent with an approval rating south of 40% and convince yourself that everything is gonna work out.
2) Don't let 10 million people cross your borders illegally and only begin making gestures to fix it a few months before the election.
I would say yes, it’s great Democrats are winning special elections at a greater rate this year than back in 2017 and Trump’s unpopularity is definitely helping Democrats.
However, let’s be reminded that Trump had to be elected again in order for this happen. We can’t keep waiting for any Republican POTUS to be elected in order to win elections. That’s too lazy.
Breaking up the media companies and system is a better approach and allows more healthy competition with the media as opposed to media giants and excessive disruptive technology always sucking too much of the oxygen in the market.
Your second paragraph makes me kind of laugh in a sad way. The ups and down of American politics is torturous. But, your point is correct and we shouldn’t have the ups and downs so hard in the first place. People should be smarter at what they’re voting for and do it consistently. We should also have a safe real life version of Jurassic Park so it’s whatever.
Honestly, just like corporate sales departments push their sales executives to sell deals no matter the odds, the Democratic Party should do the same in how it elects Democrats.
I would love the DNC to get Democrats to think of red states like LA and OK as must-win states, just so that it raises the stakes. I know it may be a low probability of happening but why not?
In the mindset of a CEO, I don’t want to hear more Democratic Party insiders talk about how 2026 is going to be difficult for them in the Senate. I want them to bust their ass and win.
So Mark Sumner has a diary up on Daily Kos that says that despite Trump and the GOP's sinking approvals, they still aren't afraid because the Dems popularity is still even more underwater. He explains it's due to leadership's indecisiveness. I'm not saying those criticisms aren't wrong, in fact I agree with them. But as we've seen from the most recent elections, despite Democratic voters being pissed at the party, they are hardly demoralized from voting and coming out. Someone here said that fixing the image approval for the party maybe can't be fully resolved this year or next year. Democratic voters are also still pissed with the party because they can't believe they lost to Trump again. Don't want to get into 2028 primary talk but I think once we get closer to the Presidential primary, that's going to be the opportunity to really see massive improvement. Obviously, the party needs to get their shit together and I can understand folks not having any faith that Schumer can improve the party's standing. Jeffries I think has a better shot at doing that. I think letting folks like Buttigieg, Pritzker, Shapiro, Booker, Van Hollen, AOC, Crockett, Murphy, Sanders and anyone else who knows how to work the circuit be the spokespeople for the party. Grant it, we are already seeing that. Ultimately, I don't think the party's low public approval is going to hurt our chances in the New Jersey or Virginia Governors races and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections. But I do think it has to improve before next year and greatly approve of 2028. Thoughts?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/30/2319667/-Democrats-are-losing-the-most-important-fight-in-history?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
The GOP is very good at pretending that bad approvals are “rigged” especially in the age of Trump so I wouldn’t expect them to be worried even if D numbers were better
Agree. I think the smarter GOP operatives would be worried but they know that they are more worried about pissing off Trump.
He’s literally rage tweeting about how GDP contraction numbers are unfair to him. He’s the weakest but loudest personality in decades. Everybody knows to keep their head down around the giant 80 year old toddler
100%. The smart people in the room know how to read polls and the polls say Democrats are pissed at everyone. No one is spared right now considering how awful everything is. Us being mad at our party leadership should not be encouraging to them. Maybe we’ll take out some Dems in primaries but what comes after a primary? The general election and the GOP is next.
GOP favorables were also dogshit in the initial months of the 1st Obama term; not much evidence they serve as a weight on unpopular POTUS midterm backlash (they also improve over-time, as is already happening in current polling e.g. Dems are now leading on the economy)
As an aside, even I'm surprised at how quickly Trump shot his economy advantage to shit. All he had to do was *literally nothing* and he'd probably still have 50% or better approval on that issue...
“You didn’t go to jail and now you get to golf for four years, again not in jail. Just don’t do anything too stupid Kay”
I made a comment above on this topic and my brain had thoughts of maybe this is our Tea Party movement while typing it up. And your comment makes me go mmmmmhhhhmmmm. It’s a good thing we’re awesome and better and have morals. Our type of Tea Party movement wouldn’t be a careen to the left like their movement was to the right. It’d be a careen to fucking winning. It’s time play the game differently.
Speaking of playing differently, why didn’t Dems call in CEOs gouging us in the shopping aisles? Instead, we were stupid and were like, “Look over there!” (Famous RuPaul Drag Race quote for when the queens did a mock political Presidential debate.) Someone needs to drag in the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi and ask, “What in the actual fuck?!?” Everyone has some explaining to do at this point, even the eggs. The whole thing got way past the point of inflation and got into price gouging.
They also need to be asked if Donald Trump cut the corporate tax, why are they needing to jack up prices to screw us? We gave them tax cuts and they gave us higher prices. That’s a campaign slogan right there.
It'll never happen but I think a way that the party could start making inroads with the voters is a purge of elected officials from the early 2000s and anyone who isn't willing to fight. Slotkin has it right when she says that voters see the Dems as weak so we need to change that perception and vote out the incumbents that are seen as weak. If they're strong then they'll survive a primary challenge.
Is that what Slotkin said, though? Didn't she complain they were too woke?
Dems unpopularity is more due to liberal dissatisfaction with their own party in contrast to Republicans enjoying the chainsaw wielded by House Reps if you see the breakdowns.
What really matters is the generic ballot where we are ahead and the midterms are a referendum on the president not the opposition party as multiple pundits point out. Republicans really think that this was landslide and are still high on the "vibe shift" narrative. Bush had a permanent conservative coalition and Obama had an upcoming Democratic majority. How did that turn out? We also have the optimized and reliable high propensity electorate for midterms as seen in 2018 and 2022 i.e the college educated, wealthier, older and more tuned in voters.
https://www.racetothewh.com/senate/26polls generic ballot average
The thing that is personally demoralizing to me is that I really think the party decently had it's shit together last November, especially when all of the factors were taken into account. And we still got beaten. So, I'm not sure that getting our shit together again (and plenty can argue on exactly what that will look like) is going to save us. I do think the party needs change, but I don't know in which direction, and I'm not sure how much it will help.
We did not in fact have our shit together, I’m sorry, but we didn’t. Why Democrats decided to rerun the failed 2016 Clinton strategy “Trump is a danger to democracy” in 2024 is one of the key reasons we lost everything. Most people (even many supporters) don’t like Trump as a person, but they don’t care until he’s in office and only then do they get mad about it.
To be fair I don’t think any Democrat could’ve won as the majority of voters had made up their mind they wanted 2019 back again come hell, high water or Trump. But Harris and her team ran an old school race talking about what she wanted to do with policy (no one cares about that). Biden didn’t talk much about policy in his successful 2020 campaign.
The way to win modern elections is to make your opponent look unacceptable to the average/swing/doesn’t pay attention voter. People vote based on what they don’t want, not what they do want. We saw that in every election from 2017-2023 (except a mild blip in 2021 elections) as Democrats hammered Republicans and gained a ton of ground everywhere only for 2024 to come up and then for the party to completely toss the playbook that wins elections and go back to attacking Trump.
I do think this point gets brought up a lot but still not enough - nostalgia for pre-COVID still hasn’t subsided (indeed it may never) and a lot of people got basically cooked mentally 2020-22 and have never recovered. The equation “Trump = 2019” is inane logically but emotionally very, very powerful.
That’s also why I think his approvals have nosedived so fast - he’s very publicly and loudly *not* bringing the pre-COVID rosy warm nostalgia memory people (wrongly, as we were headed into recession by the end of that year, but nevertheless) want back and that they believe they elected him to bring back as a single-issue vote
We were heading into recession at the end of 2019? Or just because COVID happened?
The indicators around manufacturing output and similar were blinking as early as 2018 - a big reason why Powell started cutting rates, along with rising WH pressure heading into an election year, to get ahead of it
That said, a mid-to-late 2020 recession in a no-COVID scenario is probably more of a 2001 (pre-9/11) type contraction, maybe a smidge worse if short of 1990-91, than another 1982 or 2008
The biggest contributors to a Democratic Party getting its shit together....
1) Don't run a cognitively compromised octogenarian incumbent with an approval rating south of 40% and convince yourself that everything is gonna work out.
2) Don't let 10 million people cross your borders illegally and only begin making gestures to fix it a few months before the election.
Can't really argue with that.
I would say yes, it’s great Democrats are winning special elections at a greater rate this year than back in 2017 and Trump’s unpopularity is definitely helping Democrats.
However, let’s be reminded that Trump had to be elected again in order for this happen. We can’t keep waiting for any Republican POTUS to be elected in order to win elections. That’s too lazy.
We have to stomp out GOP revisionist history whenever and wherever it crops up
100% agree!
Right. But how? Fox and the like aren't going to be forced off the air and the internet.
Breaking up the media companies and system is a better approach and allows more healthy competition with the media as opposed to media giants and excessive disruptive technology always sucking too much of the oxygen in the market.
Your second paragraph makes me kind of laugh in a sad way. The ups and down of American politics is torturous. But, your point is correct and we shouldn’t have the ups and downs so hard in the first place. People should be smarter at what they’re voting for and do it consistently. We should also have a safe real life version of Jurassic Park so it’s whatever.
Honestly, just like corporate sales departments push their sales executives to sell deals no matter the odds, the Democratic Party should do the same in how it elects Democrats.
I would love the DNC to get Democrats to think of red states like LA and OK as must-win states, just so that it raises the stakes. I know it may be a low probability of happening but why not?
In the mindset of a CEO, I don’t want to hear more Democratic Party insiders talk about how 2026 is going to be difficult for them in the Senate. I want them to bust their ass and win.