‘Our 2028 Nominee Will Need to Come From America, Not Washington’

Democrats are acutely aware of their political problems.

On Sunday, for example, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told Kristen Welker on Meet The Press:

The Democratic Party brand, Bennet continued,

Bennet was not alone. “The Democratic brand is toxic right now,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California told Bill Maher on HBO. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was on “Meet the Press” earlier in March and warned his less active colleagues that “Americans want the Democratic Party to stand up and fight and to take risks.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged the crowd at a rally in Las Vegas, “We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us.

Post-election polls provide Democrats with little hope.

A March 22-25 YouGov/Economist survey of 1600 respondents found that unfavorable views of the Democratic Party by far exceeded favorable views, 55-36, while voters were less critical of the Republican Party, 48 unfavorable-44 favorable.

A post-election survey for Third Way, a Democratic centrist group, found President Trump favored over Kamala Harris to handle the economy and cost of living and tied with her on what have been bedrock Democratic issues, Social Security and Medicare.

David Shor, at Blue Rose Research, a Democratic data analysis firm, released a study last month, “2024 Retrospective and Looking Forward” that has already become a key political document.

Shor found that Democrats have distanced themselves from the mainstream and that the belief among voters was that Trump would better address their basic concerns than Harris. Crucially, Shor also found a loss of Democratic support among naturalized citizens. All of this is symptomatic of the party’s liability on the issue of elitism.

Some of Shor’s key findings:

Advertisement

• From 2020 to 2024, politically disengaged voters have become much more Republican,” he wrote, and because of this, “an expanded electorate” means a more Republican electorate, a sharp shift from the recent past when higher turnout benefited Democrats. In other words, Democrats will do better in nonpresidential years when turnout drops, but worse during presidential election years.

• Democratic short and long range prospects are threatened by the fact that young voters — regardless of race and gender — have become more Republican,” Shor noted, in another crucial finding, adding “that white men, white women, and men of color under 26 all supported Trump at rates greater than 50 percent.”

• “The gender gap between women and men is fairly stable — around 10 percent higher Democratic support among women — for voters between the ages of 40-70,” Shor wrote. At the same time, in the 2024 election the gender gap for voters under the age of 25, doubled in size to nearly 20 percentage points.

• Immigrants who have become naturalized citizens — for decades, a Democratic constituency — “swung from a Biden +27 voting bloc in 2020 to a Trump +1 group in 2024,” Shor wrote. This constituency, he pointed out, “is not a small group either —— naturalized citizens make up around 10 percent of the electorate.”

The dominant issue in 2024 was the cost of living, exemplified by inflation. Shor demonstrated its centrality by asking poll respondents whether the cost of living was more or less important than eight other campaign issues, including student debt, L.G.B.T.Q. concerns, race relations, income inequality, voting rights, the environment and climate change, abortion and immigration and border Security. In each case, voters said the cost of living was a more important issue by double-digit margins ranging from 69 to 94 percent.