PJ Media's Matt Margolis posted on Tuesday about a heavyweight "Round Table" hosted by four heavyweight Democrats and reported by the New York Times. The four Democrats are Frank Bruni, the long-time political analyst for the NY Times; former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan; Anat Shenker-Osorio, a campaign adviser and the host of the podcast “Words to Win By”; and Democratic strategist Lis Smith.
The upshot of the "Round Table" was grim.
"Many of the Democrats who succeeded this cycle — our best over-performers in House races, for instance — are people who ran against the Democratic Party brand," Lis Smith pointed out. "Trump tore down the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but he also expanded his vote the most in our bluest and most urban areas."
That strategy by Democrats in, for the most part, purple districts probably saved the party from total disaster. As it was, they actually picked up one seat in the House. And the three seats the GOP picked up in the Senate could have easily been more if some candidates hadn't run away from Biden/Harris.
The Democratic disaster can't be found in the numbers.
In a trio of focus groups, even voters who previously backed Democrats cast the party as weak and overly focused on diversity and elites, according to research by the progressive group Navigator Research.
When asked to compare the Democratic Party to an animal, one participant compared the party to an ostrich because “they’ve got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they’re failing.” Another likened them to koalas, who “are complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need.” Democrats, another said, are “not a friend of the working class anymore.”
The focus group research, shared first with POLITICO, represents the latest troubling pulse check for a party still sorting through the wreckage of its November losses and looking for a path to rebuild. Without a clear party leader and with losses across nearly every demographic in November, Democrats are walking into a second Trump presidency without a unified strategy to improve their electoral prospects. And while some Democrats blame Biden, others blame inflation and still others blame “losing hold of culture,” the feedback from the focus groups found Democrats’ problems are even more widespread and potentially long-lasting than a single election cycle.
The working class has become unmoored from the Democratic Party and is entirely up for grabs going forward. The scope of this disaster and the loss of massive supermajority support from blacks and Hispanics mean that, for the moment, the Democrats are little better than a regional and local party with dim prospects for nationwide success.
We're still close to being a 50-50 country — perhaps 51% or 52% in the GOP's favor — and the Democrats are still capable of winning the House of Representatives. However, the Senate map looks grim until 2028 or 2030, when more GOP senators will be on the ballot than Democrats.
Democrats are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that to about 2/3 of the country, many of their policies are toxic. And their arrogance in sermonizing on subjects like gender and sexual preference has many of their own voters streaming to the exits.
“This weakness they see, [Democrats] not getting things done, not being able to actually fight for people — is something that needs to be figured out,” said Rachael Russell, director of polling and analytics at Navigator Research. “It might not be the message; it might be the policy. It might be something a little bit deeper that has to be addressed by the party.”
Progressives are especially reluctant to follow the logic of their arguments to the obvious conclusion. "It might be something a little bit deeper" reveals the inability of progressives to come to grips honestly with their radicalism for fear of offending their base of support. The base wants the party to double down on radical leftism, and unless mainstream/establishment Democrats can head off that effort, 2026 will be a massacre.
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