A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Democrats were riding high, slinging woke-is-back jokes and blue wave gifs as socialists and centrists alike cruised to landslide victories.
It was last Tuesday in America, and my party was having a good election night for once – like, beating incumbent Rs in Georgia & Erie County, PA by 25 points good.
The thorough drubbing of Trumpism was both affirmation and accelerant of a political vibe shift that had been building for months – though neither Ds nor Rs had dared to admit it – weakening the lame duck president. (Sadly, nobody told ol’ Angus King.)
Most importantly, if you’re into the whole checks & balances thing, it set the stage for Ds to retake at least the House next year. Big wins in CA & VA likely netted ~8 seats in the redistricting wars. We regained ground with key Trump-shifting constituencies. Across 55 special elections this year, we’ve overperformed Kamala’s margins by 14%.
Ironically, it was in the middle of this electoral blue-phoria – not upon the great Senate surrender that inexplicably followed – that I began to fret about my party’s future. Cuz Democrats still haven’t had a proper reckoning. And the problem with winning is, it dissuades from looking look inward; convinces you there’s nothing to fix.
But our party remains broken. Both parties are broken. The system is broken. The American Dream is broken. Trump won the presidency twice on all this brokenness, and he’s razing what’s left of the old institutions like they’re the East Wing.
It’s a bleak circumstance – and a generational opportunity, if we’re willing to dig deep enough. From this American carnage, we can build a new, enduring majority and a new democracy that actually work for working people. But it requires a reckoning.
And with all this winning, I fear we’ll just keep papering over the foundational rot that got us into this mess, telling ourselves it’s fixed. And we’ll likely pull off more Potemkin wins in 2026 – running against President Trump without him on the ballot is basically an electoral cheat code – which will seem to validate the status quo… But we’ve seen this movie before, and it ends with liberal tears and protofascism.
Ds crushed VA + NJ elections in 2017; flipped 40 House seats in 2018; and reelected Dem governors in Kentucky & Louisiana (!) in 2019, nearly flipping Mississippi. (Spoiler: It did not usher in an age of Democratic dominance, and some of the shit we embraced on that 2019-2020 high d’resistance has not aged well for our heroes.)
So let’s not mistake last week’s wins for endorsements of our historically unpopular brand. Hell, exit polls in California – in an electorate that turned out solely to pass a Democratic redistricting measure by ~30 points – had the party’s favorability at 50/49.
Democratic Party favorability in California exit polls, as Prop 50 passed by ~30 points
Look, it’s not that we’ve learned no lessons. Ds from Mamdani to Spanberger & Sherill proved that relentlessly focusing on cost-of-living is more effective than narrowcasting a bunch of different identitarian messages to various slices of the electorate.
But we prefer surface-level lessons over hard ones. So now our band of poll-tested Ivy Leaguers are just yelling ‘affordability’ like it’s ‘Beetlejuice’ and if they chant it 3 times, the working class will emerge from their poor-caves to vote for Democrats.
Call me a cynic, but I’m not sure reprogramming our hollow wokespeak to hollow affordspeak is gonna rebuild trust with the disaffected masses. What do we actually believe? What are we offering people? What even is our affordability agenda?
Is it just repealing the tariffs + restoring funding for ACA subsidies & Medicaid? Cuz I don’t think everyone was thriving in 2024; we kinda lost a whole election over that.
Ask yourself this, dear reader: Other than reversing Trump policies, can you name a single tangible thing Democrats would prioritize if we regained power?
That seems like a problem. And I’m not satisfied to #RESIST our way to some midterm wins and pat ourselves on the back all the way to President Marjorie Taylor Green’s inaugural ball at the Donald J. Trump Coinbase White House Ballroom by Palantir.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard 2028 Dems say: “We can’t just be against things; we need to be for things” – but it’s almost never followed by an actual affirmative vision or a big, new idea.
Whatever you think of Zohran’s politics, the man went everywhere, listened to working people, and built an insurgent movement around a few ambitious, concrete, hat-length proposals to improve their lives – things that memetically captured what he’s all about.
I guess Walter from The Big Lebowski said it more succinctly.
By actually standing for things people could believe in, Zohran totally remade the electorate. He quadrupled turnout among 18-29 year-olds, winning 75% of them. A stunning 20% of voters were first-timers, up from just 1.2% in 2021. He won 35% of voters with an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party & 10% of Trump voters.
And while I do think economic populism should be part of the equation, you need not be a democratic socialist to replicate valuable aspects of this playbook!
Two first-year Senators climbing my 2028 Big Board
The more I watch ELISSA SLOTKIN and RUBEN GALLEGO, the more convinced I am that they won’t – and shouldn’t – “wait their turn” to run for president. The two purple-state national security Dems have more in common with Zohran than you might think.
They are young(ish), action-oriented pugilists whose energy matches the zeitgeist of the moment; whose disdain for the status quo is born out of a prevailing belief in the promise of America, betrayed by its current realities. They talk like normal people, to normal people, and fight to help normal people get ahead.
“Everyone’s like: ‘Oh, you’re looking down on Latino men by saying they want a big-ass truck.’ Quite the opposite. Actually, the problem that happens in elite Democratic politics is that we don’t think that the voter is that smart… They know when we’re throwing bullshit at them, and they will vote in their own interests. Until we’re willing to accept that, until we are willing to actually have real conversations, we’re going to [keep losing].”
They are comfortable in their own skin – unafraid to call out the party’s anachronistic establishment, but also willing to stand their ground on positions they know will piss off some on the left. (I believe deeply that our nominee will be someone who 1️⃣ runs at least partly against the Democratic Party, and 2️⃣ can handle getting yelled at.)
“We don’t need more, like, ride-along get-along Democrats. We just don’t.”
Slotkin is more polished; a smoother political athlete – though that can cut both ways these days. Gallego is rawer & rougher-around the edges; more likely to get tripped up, or choked up talking about his family – all of which plays to his authenticity. Both look like top-tier 2028 contenders to me.
I’d highly recommend watching Slotkin’s VoteVets town hall from this week, and the great interview Jorge & Paola Ramos just did with Gallego to see for yourself.
Other highlights from the Big, Beautiful Tracker
CHRIS MURPHY issued a stark warning to Dem folders at NH town hall this week: “This is the story of how democracies die. Would-be autocrats impose pain on the people, and then force the opposition party to sue for peace without any concessions… If you allow this president to weaponize our compassion against us permanently, it ends up just emboldening him.”
GRETCHEN WHITMER subjected MI’s budget to Caleb Hammer’s Financial Audit in a highly entertaining episode of the hit YouTube show. While not as ubiquitous as other top Dems, Whitmer tends to go more interesting places.
PETE BUTTIGIEG went into the lion’s den on All-In, and availed himself well in spirited exchanges with the Trumpy tech bros; he thrives in adversarial venues. He heads to La Crosse, WI on Tuesday for a town hall in Derrick Van Orden’s district, who started an ill-advised twitter fight about it.
