The Democrats’ Fork in the Road
Party of restoration or party of change?
Trump’s first hundred days are over. There is a blizzard of polling data indicating that American voters are not happy so far with their second ride on the Trump train. On RCP, Trump’s average net approval ratings (approval minus disapproval) are -6 overall, -13 on the economy, and -21 on inflation. Sad!
Any given poll these days is full of bad political news for the Trump administration. Take the latest CBS News poll, where Trump’s approval (45 percent) is right at the RCP running average. In the poll, most think the condition of the national economy is fairly or very bad and by almost 2:1 think that the economy is getting worse rather than better. They overwhelmingly believe the Trump administration is not doing enough on “lowering the prices of goods and services” but believe the administration is doing too much on “putting tariffs on goods from other countries.” On a personal level, respondents are far more likely to think Trump’s policies are making them financially worse off rather than better off and to believe his policies are making the prices they pay for food and groceries go up rather than down. Finally, most believe Trump’s policies are working against the interests of middle-class and working-class people while working for the interests of wealthy people.
Other polls are quite consistent with these data. This presents Democrats with an obvious opportunity to make up the ground they lost in the last election and perhaps shift the political terrain decisively in their favor. But will they—can they—do this? That is possible but hardly certain or even probable. In my view, Democrats currently are at a fork in the road to their political future and how that future turns out depends on which path they choose. Down one path lies the party of restoration; down the other lies the party of change. Let me explain.
Start with the party of restoration. Democrats’ first instinct in opposing Trump administration actions has been to denounce these actions in the most flamboyant terms possible. That’s understandable; many of Trump’s action have been very unpopular, from DOGE excesses to the chaotic tariff regime, and they are the opposition party. Fair enough.
But they’re also the party that comprehensively lost the last election and has been bleeding working-class voters for years. If the solution offered to the depredations of Trump is simply to restore the Democrats to power, that is unresponsive to the messages voters have been sending. Voters didn’t and don’t like the Democrats either; they don’t trust them to govern or manage the economy well and fear the party is obsessed with issues voters either don’t care about or actively oppose. They will not forget what they didn’t like about the Biden administration and the last 10 years of the Democratic Party so easily.
Yet Democrats are acting like this isn’t a problem. They seem to believe if they just turn up the volume high enough on how terrible Trump is, all will be forgiven and voters will re-embrace the Democrats. All voters really want, they assure themselves, is a Democratic Party that will fight hard enough against Trump and his evil minions and restore the good guys to power.
This may suffice to clear the low bar of taking back the House in 2026 but it is not remotely plausible as a longer term strategy to win back working-class voters and vanquish right populism. These voters do not want to see the status quo ante restored; they hated it! But what other than restoration are Democrats really offering at this point? Not much; it’s all fight, fight, fight with the implication that putting Democrats back in power will make everything dandy.
Indeed, the hottest political competition within the Democratic Party is who can call for fighting Trump and MAGA in the most exciting way. Bernie Sanders and AOC have cornered the market on the “fighting the oligarchy” approach. More recently, JB Pritzker, the Democrats’ designated “good” billionaire, has upped the ante on the anti-fascist approach in a New Hampshire speech to enthusiastic partisans:
It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once…Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box and then punish them at the ballot box…
Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces. Today, as the blaze reaches the rafters, the pundits and politicians—whose simpering timidity served as kindle for the arsonists—urge us now not to reach for a hose.
Thank you Winston, I mean JB. Yes, you will fight them on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields, and in the streets, etc. The thought of the portly JB Pritzker leading the heroic anti-fascist fighters into the streets is nothing if not hilarious. But many Democrats treat this nonsense with the utmost seriousness. Up and down the party, calls to “Fight!” differ more in degree than kind from Pritzker’s performative rhetoric.
What all this conveniently forgets is that voters may be upset with many of the Trump administration’s bone-headed moves but they don’t like the Democrats either. Not at all. Indeed, despite all that has taken place since Trump took office, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating is still far below the Republican Party’s. And in a recent NBC poll, positive views of the Democrats hit a rock-bottom 27 percent, the lowest in the poll going back to 1990.
A recent Washington Post poll found that 70 percent of voters think the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the country today. In a poll of swing Congressional districts by the pro-Democratic Navigator group, voters felt Democrats were “more focused on helping other people than people like me”. Most voters also felt Democrats don’t respect work, don’t share their values, don’t look out for working people, don’t care about people like them, and don’t have the right priorities. Polling for the new Democratic-oriented “Working Class Project” found working-class voters preferred Republicans to Democrats on representing their values, focusing on the issues they care about, valuing hard work and being patriotic. And so it goes.
What part of “voters just aren’t that into you” don’t Democrats understand? Voters want change. Big change. No amount of fulminating about Donald Trump is going to change that. Consider these data.
In the AP/VoteCast survey of 2024 voters, 83 percent said they wanted either substantial change or a complete and total upheaval in how the country is run. In Blue Rose research from the 2024 cycle, they found that just 18 percent of voters thought preserving America’s institutions was more important than delivering change and that more voters preferred “a major change and a shock to the system from whoever becomes President” to stabilizing the system. In recent Navigator group polling, 74 percent said the country’s political and economic system needs either major change or to be torn down completely.
In this situation, you don’t want to be the party of restoration. As Navigator’s chief pollster Ian Smith put it:
Most people don’t just want a system update. If you offer them a version 1.2 of America, they won’t see a difference in their day to day life. They’d rather see and feel change.
In other words, you want to be the party of change, not the party of restoration. Can the Democrats do it? I’ve got my doubts.
To be the party of change in our current populist era, when the party’s brand is in wretched shape and views of Democratic governance are so negative, you have to actually change the party. That’s not easy. Most partisan Democrats would be perfectly happy to just restore the previous regime and forget the Trump nightmare ever happened. As far as they’re concerned, things were pretty great when they were in charge! We really haven’t moved much beyond the infamous yard sign from the 2024 campaign, “Harris Walz Obviously,” except now it’s, “The Democrats Obviously.”
It wasn’t so obvious to voters in 2024 and it’s not so obvious to voters now. The truth is that Democrats will have to work really hard to convince voters, especially working-class voters, that they embody change, not the Establishment, and are worthy of an enthusiastic vote. The last Democrat to successfully do this was Barack Obama; that was a while ago and the party is more in need of reinvention than ever.
Yet the sense of urgency in Democratic ranks is lacking. They don’t realize that they are at a fork in the road. They’re content to hoist the anti-Trump flag high and hope for the best. Continuing down that road will make them the party of restoration in a change era—and ensure that the political breakthrough they are seeking will continue to elude them.
The problem for Democrats is that they have won all of the major battles. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, gay rights, civil rights, women' rights, awareness of environmental issues, ending the Vietnam War. We won them all! Trump's not going to touch any of these.
Now Democrats have no major battles to fight. So, they come up with trivial ones that don't resonate with the public. They go after police, they go after people who don't want their daughters competing in sports against biological males, they go after a war half way across the world that America isn't sending soldiers to, they go after peoples' pickups and tell them to get an EV instead or they are sinners.
And they end up looking flat and silly.
The country, folks, is a Democratic country. Not a Republican one.
And it is white baby boomers and Francis Perkins who were in that fight that we won.
Yet, one of the major foci of progressives' ire is now white males, the very people who were largely responsible for many of these changes/improvements.
And instead of looking at themselves and their failures, "progressives" are now just talking louder.
I love it when Democrats keep citing "polls" that were off by 3-5 points in November as if they are legit. There are NONE in the top five of RCP that are legitimate or which came close in November. Notice who is not on there? All the legit pollsters like Big Data Poll, who has Trump +1, Rasmussen who has Trump +5 and so on. But again---and even Baris and Mitchell admit this---they always, always, ALWAYS underpoll Trump by 2-3 points. So it greatly pleases me when people cite this as evidence of Trump's "unpopularity."
Meanwhile the REAL evidence, which I keep pitchin' and you keep missin' it, is the voter registrations that are universally and consistently moving GOP. This would absolutely be impossible if those polls were right. In just the last few days NH moved from R +4.8 to R+5, NC saw the GOP take a whopping lead over Ds of 83,000 (!!!) in NC, a state Ds led by 175,000 must a year ago, AZ where the GOP has shot to a 324,000 lead. But one of the more interesting is the deep red state WY, where the GOP gained more than Ds and Is put together last month
Between real wages growing, more native Americans being hired, inflation at half of what it was under Biden, gas prices falling everywhere, and that $8 trillion that Trump has brought in in investments JUST SO FAR, the economy will be roaring. So spin away. It does my heart good.