Nate Cohn: The Democratic Party is in Trouble

Nate Cohn has a long newsletter today looking over the results of 2024 and putting it in context over the past 15 years or so of American politics. The bottom line is that Democrats appear to be in real trouble. 

Not so long ago it was taken as a given that changing demographics, fewer white people and more Hispanic and Asian people, would create a permanent majority for the Democrats. But what we’ve seen over the past 3 elections is that Donald Trump has broken up that consensus a little at a time to the point where the old consensus now looks like a fantasy. This chart really sums it up. 

In contrast, the only group that has moved significantly toward Democrats is white Americans with a college degree (+17). What Trump has done here came as a real shock to Democrats.

In each campaign, win or lose, Mr. Trump made major inroads among longtime Democratic voters. First, it was the Northern white working class. Then, it was Hispanic and Asian voters in 2020. Finally, it was young voters and, to a lesser extent, Black voters. In each case, Mr. Trump’s gains went far beyond what Democrats had ever imagined.

According to Cohn, there is an explanation for this. Part of it is that Trump’s populism resonated with these voters, but another part is that Democrats were simultaneously moving away from these same voters, i.e. away from their own brand of “little guy” populism in favor of elite wokeism that was dominating universities. And this too had a lot to do with Trump.

Even as Mr. Trump co-opted much of the traditional Democratic message, he offered Democrats an alternative path to victory: opposition to Mr. Trump himself…

While the backlash against Mr. Trump breathed new life into Democrats, in other respects it pulled the party further from its moorings. Many Democrats saw Mr. Trump as racist and sexist, or as proof that America was a racist and sexist country. It inspired a new wave of progressive activism on race and gender — from #MeToo to Abolish ICE — that often drew heavily from the language of academia. It nudged the party even further from economic populism and its working-class roots.

 For a while the anti-Trump left seemed to be doing well. They mocked his reaction to COVID and successfully shut down the schools at the behest of unions. They shamed his efforts to control the border and promised to undo them. They capitalized on the death of George Floyd to push for defunding the police and abolishing ICE and for more corporate and public school DEI programs. They won the 2020 election. But they got a bit too full of themselves and weren’t ready for the backlash when it came.

As the pandemic wore on, public support for coronavirus restrictions gave way to a backlash against prolonged school closures; mask and vaccine mandates; and the public health experts who insisted on the measures. It eroded trust in government officials, elites and the media.

The social upheaval during and after the pandemic caught Democrats flat-footed. The party’s activist base had been enthralled by calls for a more compassionate immigration and criminal justice system, when suddenly the pandemic and its aftermath brought a spike in crime, rising homelessness and a new wave of border crossings. In just a year or two, liberals and progressives were seen by many as discredited.

The Democrats moved hard left in 2020 and it cost them in 2022 and 2024. A lot of people who consider themselves Democrats now find themselves in a party that considers them right-wing. Here’s how one of the commenters put it.

My niece is an idealist. She rails against big industry and big finance while lauding big government. She wants to turn off the oil spigot tomorrow. She wants to ban all plastics today. She believes in open borders and restrooms open to any and all, regardless of gender. She flatly condemns Israel while praising the Palestinian “resistance”. 

My niece is obviously a Democrat. So am I. But I feel that she’s co-opted my party and turned it into a fantasy land. To her, I’m MAGA, even though I despise everything Trump stands for. ‘

The Democratic party had better regain control of its pragmatic side if its going to win back the middle of the political spectrum.

Another reader suggests the path back for Democrats doesn’t seem that difficult.

Inflation, immigration and trans issues hurt Democrats.  Poor policy in blue cities hurt national Democrats.  A candidate that didn’t have to go through a win a primary also hurt democrats.  Run a charismatic candidate that can address the first three issues above and they can regain power.  A Trump victory may help Democrats in the long run as they push the fringes of their party into the corner.  What seems to work is some level of populism on economic issues, moderation on social issues and some common sense.  Trump somehow positioned himself as the common sense candidate as odd as that sounds.

It’s a nice thought but it assumes that Democrats are rational politicians, not hard-left ideologues. In short, the left owns the party now and won’t let go so easily. Another reader makes the point well.

By giving this much agency to Trump, puffing him up, Democrats avoid looking in the mirror.

Far down the article it begins to examine the role of “activists” in pulling Democrats apart (I.e., energizing polarization) from voters.  This is a first attempt in assigning accountability to Democrats for our society’s bifurcation when the party would much rather see itself as a unifier.

Even inflation and immigration, widely credited as the reasons for electoral loss, have “activism” at the core of their problems.  In 2021 Democrats proposed multi trillion dollar fiscal spending and excoriated Manchin when he opposed the bills and forced spending of only one trillion dollars in each of two bills, one of which was laughably named the Inflation Reduction Act.  The beloved college loan forgiveness, a semi vote buying process, offered nothing to the non college population. 

Immigration only entered “activists” thinking in ridiculing the wall and decrying Republican governors’ actions to transport immigrants north, as if that was the problem and not the actual immigration numbers.

“Activist” Democrats will do anything to resist self examination.  They are far too locked in to their own righteousness for that.

I think this is all true but I have to put in one more plug for what I still believe was the biggest factor in Democrats’ downfall this year. They spent two years lying to our faces about Joe Biden. Whatever credibility they had to try to make their case blew up when they finally were forced to admit that Biden had really lost a step, contrary to everything they had said in public. There was probably no coming back from that with a lot of voters.