The Democratic Party continues to be in disarray. Throughout this year, especially last week, there were polls out there to prove it. It's also Democrats' own behavior, especially as they double down on the issues and attitudes that made them lose. The 2026 midterms aren't that far from now, and both parties are gearing up for the race. This is especially the case with the House races, especially as Republicans have such a narrow majority. There's already been plenty of polls out for 2028 as well. So, are Democrats learning their lesson? It doesn't look like they are.
Over the weekend, Axios put out this telling piece, "The 10 theories driving Dems' identity crisis." It comes from Alex Thompson, who, along with CNN's Jake Tapper, has a book coming out in May on President Joe Biden's decision to run for reelection.
"The party was cohesive in 2017 under a resistance banner. That's no longer the case — and the finger-pointing goes in all directions," the piece writes early on, which is somewhat curious, as we're still hearing plenty about how to "resist" President Donald Trump, including from liberal columnists, as we covered last week for VIP.
As he goes on to write, just before getting to the 10 reasons, "Why it matters: It's hard to win if you don't know why you lost," with the list being "based on conversations with dozens of top Democrats."
Now, onto the reasons:
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1. It's all Joe Biden's fault. For president, the party ran a deteriorating 81-year-old incumbent who had to drop out roughly 100 days before the election.
- With such unprecedented headwinds, the party actually did OK after Biden left the race: Kamala Harris boosted party members' enthusiasm and avoided a wipeout. She lost the Electoral College by just 230,000 votes. Dems won Senate seats in four states that Trump won (Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona).
Plenty of people seem to feel this way, with many having called on him to drop out, especially after his disastrous June 27 debate against Trump on CNN, with Tapper serving as one of the moderators. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had this specific reason not long after Election Night.
Thompson still tries to make excuses for the Democrats though, in a way, as he claims "the party actually did OK after Biden left the race[.]" There's no mention of how then Vice President Kamala Harris became the first Democrat to lose the popular vote since 2004. And, those Senate races in three of those four states--Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada--were particularly closer; Nevada was even closer than it should have been.
Further, the blame goes deeper against Biden in a way in that not only did he wait so long to drop out, but he rushed to endorse Harris. The Democrats didn't get the chance to have a primary, meaning Harris has yet to win a single primary vote in her two runs for president.
This brings us to another reason:
2. It's all Kamala Harris' fault. She was a bad candidate in 2019 and many Democrats didn't see her as their strongest possible choice in 2024. Some believe the party should have had a mini-primary before its August convention — or taken its chances with Biden.
- Even Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, recently said he believes their campaign was too cautious.
Harris truly wasn't a good candidate for last November. Time will tell if she has any better luck in a 2026 gubernatorial run in California and/or a 2028 presidential run.
It's funny that Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the particularly poorly vetted running mate--if he was vetted at all--is mentioned here, and to claim "their campaign was too cautious." It's worth reminding that Walz was the one behind the effort of calling now Vice President JD Vance "weird," which works for Harris, as it may be why he was selected for the role. He also attacked Trump supporters as Nazis, though, for daring to attend Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden days before the election. It was a move that both Harris and Walz doubled down on. Harris made her entire campaign about going after Trump, even in the campaign's final days.
The next reason speaks to Harris in a way as well:
3. Podcasts and social media. Harris and other Democrats should have gone on Joe Rogan's show, fully embraced TikTok, and met voters where they were.
- The party's policies were right, many Democrats say — but the voters didn't know it.
While Trump was all too happy to do podcast interviews, including when it comes to "The Joe Rogan Experience," Harris shied away. There's even a book coming out purporting to know the details of how that Harris-Rogan interview fizzled out, with Rogan responding to it, to debunk those details. He wasn't even consulted for the book.
Whether or not Harris should have gone on such a podcast at all has Democrats and her campaign in even further disarray.
The next one is a considerable issue when it comes to Dems in disarray:
4. "Too woke." Democrats struggled to defend their support for marginalized communities — transgender people, those who benefit from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and others.
- Republicans spent tens of millions on ads blasting Democrats as having gone too far left on such social issues. Democrats failed to effectively justify their positions and counter-program the attacks.
- Some Democrats, including potential 2028 presidential contenders Rahm Emanuel and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, argue that the party needs to moderate or focus less on such issues.
- Another possible 2028 candidate, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, quietly removed his pronouns from his X profile — a reflection of the calculus some Democrats are making post-2024.
Americans are done with being woke, and Trump's win shows that. Be wary of the mention of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, when it comes to their supposed efforts to "moderate," or any of this being "a reflection of the calculus..." They have a primary to win, assuming they win. There's no telling what they'll do once elected, especially as Biden ran as a moderate looking to supposedly restore the soul of the nation and then became a particularly destructive president.
Newsom has already been proven to be a hypocrite for his points made on his podcast, and by CNN of all places.
The next two reasons are pretty similar:
5. Elitist words. The party has become the party of the college-educated and for the college-educated — and its members talk like it in ways the working class often finds condescending or alienating.
6. Elitist policies. It's not just the way the party talks — it's the way it governs. The working class has felt left behind by the Democratic Party as it's embraced free trade and other center-left technocratic policies. Those voters have been drifting to the GOP for years. Now that's reached a crisis point.
These reasons further highlight how done the American people are with Democrats. Further, is there really any evidence that they've learned or will learn, at least enough?
The next reason is arguably major reason why Trump won last November:
7. Testosterone. Many men, especially young men, feel Democrats don't have an agenda for them and don't seem to care about their problems. So they've turned toward MAGA.
The blurb puts such a sentiment very politely. Men are outright mocked and derided by many Democrats, not to mention how men also are favoring the GOP's policies.
Walz as well as then Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff come into this as well, given that they were actually regarded as some sort of representation of masculinity and testosterone. How laughable! Trump did particularly well with men in 2024, even and including with young men of color.
We then get into a couple of major issues, including ones where Trump always polled ahead, whether he was running against Biden or Harris:
8. Inflation, inflation, inflation. Incumbents throughout the Western world have lost as voters vent about inflation. Any incumbent party would have had trouble holding onto the White House.
9. The border. Democrats mishandled the border under Biden and abandoned the tough-on-immigration policies the party had under Presidents Clinton and Obama, playing right into Trump's signature issue.
- Many Democrats assumed that Latino voters would be turned off by Trump's calls for mass deportations. Most Latinos stuck with Harris — but Trump set a new record for Latino support for a Republican, according to exit polls.
Biden's approval rating during his presidency was particularly poor on these two key issues, while Trump excelled in the polls and is at least doing better. While he could certainly improve on inflation, he's at least doing better than Biden did, and he's still doing rather well on immigration. It's his best issue in the polls, and respondents approve of his deportation efforts.
It's not just that Trump did so well during the campaign on these issues, but that the entire Biden-Harris administration and then the Harris campaign did so terribly, and Trump was in such stark contrast.
The country experienced record high inflation as well as an open border during the four years of the previous administration, and yet Americans were treated to gaslighting on it.
Even today, under the Trump administration, with border encounters down to record low levels, top Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), claim it's Democrats who want to bring these numbers down.
The blurb does have a particularly noteworthy point in that Democrats made a big assumption about Latinos favoring Harris, when they just didn't do so by the numbers they needed to. Even still, the writing was on the wall in the polls leading up to the election.
It's not until the last reason that Trump is mentioned as much as he ought to be:
10. Trump is one-of-a-kind. To explain Trump's victory in 2016, Democrats blamed Russia, social media, fake news, Bernie Sanders, James Comey, Anthony Weiner and media coverage of Hillary Clinton's email server.
- Democrats didn't grapple with the most obvious explanation: Many voters liked Trump and related to what he said.
The best part of the blurb, and possibly the piece, is acknowledging that Democrats don't acknowledge enough, or at least not enough of them, what makes Trump who he is, and why he's so popular with the American people, especially after four years of the Biden-Harris debacle.
Trump can't run for a third term, not without a constitutional amendment, but we have the 2026 midterms to see if he's still popular, and especially if he endorses a successor for 2028. Further, with how poorly the Democrats are doing, they may not win for years to come regardless.
