Pretty much every data point shows the same thing — by and large, Americans don’t like the Democratic Party or their approach, they’re just extremely angry with the Republican Party at the moment.
This will likely lead to a good midterm outcome for Dems. Maybe they’ll even flip the Senate.
This will lead many to think they don’t need to make any major strategic adjustments heading into 2028. They will be wrong.
In the 2022 midterms, Democrats did better than expected — partially due to backlash to the Dobbs decision, partially due to the fact that midterm electorates are just demographically better for Democrats these days (more college educated, more politically engaged, etc.).
That, among other things, gave Democrats a false sense of confidence — “look, we bucked the historical trend of getting our shit rocked in a midterm in which we held the White House!” — and they didn’t do any of the course correction that was necessary ahead of 2024. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered in terms of the 2024 outcome, but it was a mistake nonetheless.
We cannot make that same mistake with 2026 and 2028. The massive swings that we may see toward Democrats among less party-loyal groups like young voters and Latinos will not be permanent, nor even last in the medium-term. Maybe it’ll carry over into 2028 if voters are still super pissed at Trump, but — as @madrid_mike calls it — it’s more of a “dealignment” than a realignment among these types of party-fluid groups.
So don’t let Ken Martin or establishment Democrats or even leftists tell you that we don’t need to course correct as a party if we do well in November. That voters are buying wha we are selling. On most issues, including inflation, they’re not. They’re punishing Republicans, the party in power.
If we want to build a durable connection with more voters than we currently have in our coalition, we have to have hard conversations and take some (smart) risks.
Complacency will get us back to where we are now, sooner or later.
Now I’m gonna go outside it’s beautiful out.
This will likely lead to a good midterm outcome for Dems. Maybe they’ll even flip the Senate.
This will lead many to think they don’t need to make any major strategic adjustments heading into 2028. They will be wrong.
In the 2022 midterms, Democrats did better than expected — partially due to backlash to the Dobbs decision, partially due to the fact that midterm electorates are just demographically better for Democrats these days (more college educated, more politically engaged, etc.).
That, among other things, gave Democrats a false sense of confidence — “look, we bucked the historical trend of getting our shit rocked in a midterm in which we held the White House!” — and they didn’t do any of the course correction that was necessary ahead of 2024. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered in terms of the 2024 outcome, but it was a mistake nonetheless.
We cannot make that same mistake with 2026 and 2028. The massive swings that we may see toward Democrats among less party-loyal groups like young voters and Latinos will not be permanent, nor even last in the medium-term. Maybe it’ll carry over into 2028 if voters are still super pissed at Trump, but — as @madrid_mike calls it — it’s more of a “dealignment” than a realignment among these types of party-fluid groups.
So don’t let Ken Martin or establishment Democrats or even leftists tell you that we don’t need to course correct as a party if we do well in November. That voters are buying wha we are selling. On most issues, including inflation, they’re not. They’re punishing Republicans, the party in power.
If we want to build a durable connection with more voters than we currently have in our coalition, we have to have hard conversations and take some (smart) risks.
Complacency will get us back to where we are now, sooner or later.
Now I’m gonna go outside it’s beautiful out.
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