Could you imagine how much better things would be if the Democratic Party today were still like it was in the 1990s? Back then, it was strong on crime and anti-illegal immigration. The party has always supported abortion rights, but back then, it believed it should have been rare. Its leftward shift has accelerated beyond parody, and at some point, it's going to cease to be a viable party. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
You know something has gone seriously wrong inside the Democratic Party when one of its own longtime strategists is making the warning. When someone like that starts talking about "electoral suicide," it's worth paying attention. The question is: does the party have the ability to change course?
Douglas Schoen, veteran Democratic pollster and former adviser to President Clinton, published a stark warning this week about where his party is headed. Writing for Fox News, Schoen argued that the Democratic Party's growing extremist wing is dragging the entire party away from the median voter and toward what he bluntly called "electoral suicide.”
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His core argument is simple: Democrats win when they act like Clinton-era Democrats and lose when they don't. When Schoen worked for Clinton, the winning formula was balancing the budget (thanks to Newt Gingrich, really), securing the border, tightening welfare requirements, and being tough on crime. That playbook built durable coalitions. What the party is doing now is the opposite.
Schoen identified four specific issues where leftist positions are toxic in swing states: transgender policy, immigration and ICE, Israel, and wealth taxes. What Democrats don’t seem to get is that these aren't just unpopular on the right — polling from Gallup shows that Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters actually prefer moderates to progressives generically when thinking about their vote.
What makes Schoen's warning especially pointed is his acknowledgment that even today's establishment Democrats are already to the left of past party leaders. They're not starting from the center — they're starting from the left and drifting further. Schoen argues they must still function as a centrist "bulwark" against the so-called progressive wing, even from that already-shifted baseline.
Schoen is also clear about what the endgame looks like if the far left wins this internal fight. If it succeeds in rebranding Democrats as the party of open borders, the Green New Deal, identity politics, transgenderism, and abandoning Israel, he says Republicans will dominate the presidency for the foreseeable future. Running against Trump, he insists, is not a sustainable strategy.
But here's the uncomfortable truth that Schoen won't say out loud: the activist wing of the Democratic Party has already won.
Far-left ideas may be electoral poison nationally, but the far left controls the energy, the money, the social media megaphone, and, increasingly, the party infrastructure. It's on the verge of pushing Chuck Schumer out of Senate leadership for crying out loud.
Schoen may be right about his party. But it’s too late. He can write all the op-eds he wants. The machine has already moved past him — and past the voters he's trying to win back.
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