Democrats Fear They Are Missing the Moment to Remake the Party

[Shrek]

Link to NYT (no paywall)

There is almost universal agreement on a diagnosis of the party’s problem with the working class. The question is if there will be any consensus on a treatment plan.

Some favor shedding unpopular policies or reprioritizing new ones. Others focus on improving the messages deployed to sell those policies to voters — or on how to deliver the party’s message, whatever it turns out to be, in a fractured media environment. Already, a blizzard of organizations are holding focus groups, conducting polls and studying voting patterns to assess the severity of the situation, especially the party’s worrisome decline with groups where it once held sizable advantages, like younger voters and Latinos.

The pressure for Democrats to push back on President Trump’s expansive agenda further complicates any prospect of a unified, rigorous “autopsy” like the one Republicans conducted in 2012. Opposing Mr. Trump has been the Democratic Party’s greatest unifying force for nearly a decade. But the 2024 election showed that its coalition of resistance is no longer a majority.

(snip)

“Everyone has their pet theory for why the Democratic Party is in crisis,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist, who urged leaders to sit with rank-and-file workers to better understand their anger and aspirations. “But at some point, Democratic leaders need to break the decorum and be honest with themselves: Something is deeply wrong, and pretending otherwise won’t stop voters from noticing.”

The new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, has emerged as a surprising flashpoint, after he said, days before his Feb. 1 election, that “anyone saying we need to start over with a new message is wrong.”

The line has ricocheted through the party, leaving many Democrats shaking their heads in dismay and concluding that Mr. Martin will defend the status quo.