The Democrats won't be in the dumps for long

Globe and Mail

15 hours ago

It's not news that Canada needs. Our party in the United States, the Democratic Party, which we've always favoured over the less progressive Republicans, appears to be in dire straits. Typical of its troubles is a Wall Street Journal poll saying the party has reached a 35-year-low in public esteem, with 63 per cent of voters holding a negative view.
The Democrats are despondent and divided from their election defeat. Their credibility has taken a hit on account of their apparent cover-up of Joe Biden's cognitive decline. They are being steamrollered in Congress by the Republicans. They lack a coherent message, a strong leader.
It is all happening when, more than ever, a strong Democratic Party is needed to restrain the authoritarian impulses of Donald Trump, who is going so far as to have Barack Obama investigated.
But the party's condition isn't as dire as it is being made out to be. Much of what we're seeing is not unusual for a party in the months after losing a presidential election. Since first being based in Washington in 1978, I've seen the same pattern repeatedly. Initially it's all doom and gloom for the defeated party. Then the midterm elections come and that party invariably makes big gains and all the griping and crying and bad media stops.
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It's only natural that in the wake of the Trump defeat, there is dissent and finger pointing and division among the Democrats. It's standard fare to be trailing well behind the honeymooning victors in the polls. It's hardly surprising to appear rudderless given that in the American system, there is no opposition party leader as such. And it's to be expected that with the Republicans in control of the House, the Senate and the White House, they are having their way.
But despite their follies, the Democrats currently lead the Republicans in generic polls for Congressional control. The Trump victory has not translated in a boost in support for Republicans. In three polls released Wednesday, he was an average of negative-seven in favourability ratings. Only 38 per cent of Americans say the country is on the right track.
What is being overlooked by those attacking the Democrats is their talent pool. The party is stacked with talent. There's California Governor Gavin Newsom, there's former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Representative Ro Khanna, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
That doesn't include firebrand representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who political analyst Nate Silver and others are already touting as the favourite to win the party's 2028 nomination.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's prominence, however, is one of the reasons the party is said to be doing so poorly. She's dragging the party to the far left. She is therefore deemed to be a gift to Republicans.
That could well be the case. It could also be old-think, another example of an out-of-touch establishment mentality, discounting how American politics has changed and is changing.
Polls by Gallup and AtlasIntel show AOC scoring a higher positive impression than Mr. Trump. An Emerson College poll shows her neck-and-neck with Vice-President J.D. Vance.
AOC has passion and star power. She is inheriting Bernie Sanders's base of support. As a Latina, that base potentially extends to Hispanic America. At the age of just 35, her base extends to the youth of the country. She represents generational change in spades.
Clobbering all comers in fundraising, she brought in almost US$10-million in the first quarter of this year. The party needs a fighter who connects with working people; AOC is that too. An anti-establishment rising star like her is hardly an example of a party in decline.
On the Republican side, Mr. Trump has been scoring foreign policy wins, but they aren't vote-getters. The party just received rotten economic numbers, leading Mr. Trump to idiotically blame it on his statistics chief and, in banana-republic style, fire her. Most every economist is of the view that the Trump trade war will spark high inflation, handing the Democrats the affordability issue. His recently passed 'big beautiful bill' is getting a big ugly reception for cutting into social security and catering to the rich. The Epstein controversy is fracturing unity in the party's base.
This is all going to help Democratic Party disarray go away. In keeping with precedent, we can expect the party to vigorously reassert itself by the midterms, just like it did in the midterms in 2018. We recall how down in the dumps the Democrats were after losing to Mr. Trump two years earlier. It didn't last.