Dem
47
GOP
53
Let us commence this item with a brief historical narrative. As chance would have it, Monday was the day that (Z) delivered his lecture on the New Deal. And the basic storyline is this: (1) In 1933 and 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress implemented the First New Deal, which was more assertive than what predecessor Herbert Hoover had done, but wasn't TOO aggressive; (2) Then, Roosevelt largely cooled his jets, and watched the response from the American people; (3) The response wasn't great, in that numerous people—Francis Townsend, Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, etc.—rose to great prominence with various versions of the message "FDR isn't doing enough"; (4) FDR, who knew a little something about reading public sentiment, launched the Second New Deal in 1935, 1936, and 1937, tackling the Depression in a much more aggressive fashion.
Keep FDR in mind; we'll get back to him. There have been a few recent polls that, depending on how you look at them, look bad for the Democrats. NBC News and CNN/SSRS both did polls in which they asked respondents about their views of the Party. The former poll reported 27% positive, the latter 29% positive. In both cases, it's the lowest figure recorded in the history of the poll. Meanwhile, Democratic pollster David Shor has unveiled a poll (subscription needed) that, in effect, shows that if turnout had been better in 2024, Kamala Harris would have lost... by even more than she did, perhaps as much as 5 points.
The not-good-news-for-Democrats way to read these polls is pretty obvious. You could look at the CNN and NBC results and say something like, "It's unbelievable the Democratic Party is doing this badly, even worse than the wreaking-havoc-on-American-democracy-Republican-Party. People really hate them!" That was the basic view taken by, for example, Harry Enten, the CNN numbers guy who seems rarely to think critically about, you know, numbers. Meanwhile, you could look at the Shor poll and conclude that it's no longer the case that higher turnout favors Democrats, and that they were actually lucky to do as well as they did in 2024. That's certainly the basic conclusion that Shor reached.
We don't disagree all that much with Shor. That said, we don't think that "high turnout doesn't necessarily favor the Democrats" is the most important insight here. That's something we've suspected for years, and have written about, many times. After all, the Democrats are now capturing the people who tend to be reliable voters (e.g., educated suburbanites) while the Republicans are now capturing the people who tend to be unreliable voters (e.g., blue-collar white ethnics).
We think the real story of the Shor poll is that, even in a "throw the bums out" election, there was still a sizable percentage of the electorate that was unhappy with the Democrats, but that could not bear to vote for Trump, and so stayed home. Those folks are presumably re-capturable with the right kind of message and the right kind of campaign. And the Democrats' 2024 message ("Things are great! All is well!") is almost certainly less salable than what they'll run on in 2028, whether that is something like "We'll clean up Trump's messes" or it's something more substantive.
As to the NBC/CNN polls, the roughly 70% of Americans who don't approve of the Democratic Party are obviously two very different groups of people. A bunch of them are Republicans who are NEVER going to approve of the Democratic Party. But another large segment are Democrats who are angry with Chuck Schumer (see above) and angry with the Party, and who want to see more resistance to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, et al. In fact, about 75% of Democratic respondents, in both polls, said they were upset with their party's inaction.
It's not good for a party to be as unpopular as it's ever been. However, if it's going to happen, this is the very best time for it, since the next election is still many, many weeks (i.e., many, many lifetimes) in the future. Like FDR, all those years ago, the evidence could not be clearer that it is not only wise, but essential, for the Democrats to take strong action, as much and as best as they can. If they do, it will be manna to many voters' hearts. All three of the polls in this item say to us that a majority is out there, waiting to be won over—the Democrats just need to seize the day.
And if the blue team wants to think about making inroads into the Trump coalition, and to maybe try to rebuild some version of the Barack Obama coalition or the Bill Clinton coalition, the next item talks about some of the things they should maybe be thinking about. If the blue team's standard-bearer in 2028 can actually articulate a message for how he or she will try to revitalize rural America, and can get some rural-dwellers to buy in, that would be a game-changer. It's not an easy task, but should the nominee pull it off, you know who they will look and sound like? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who successfully ran on that very promise (among others) in 1932. Of course, he had the good fortune to run against a wealthy and out-of-touch Republican who oversaw an economic catastrophe, while simultaneously alienating trade partners across the globe. The 2028 Democrat, on the other hand, will... hmmmmmm... hey, wait a minute... (Z)