I’m on record as suggesting that Democrats not waste too much time on recriminations over 2024 while the wolf of Trump 2.0 is at the door. But there are some lessons relevant to the challenges right before them, and I tried to discuss at few at New York:
The ritualistic “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party” that ensued after the Republican election victory of 2024 was cut somewhat short by the brutal realities of the real-life consequences of letting Donald Trump regain power with a Republican-controlled Congress and all sorts of ridiculous claims of an absolute mandate to do whatever he wanted. But, in fact, while factional finger-pointing might have been are a self-indulgent luxury an opposition party living under the MAGA gun can’t afford, there are some lessons from the election results that are important to internalize right now. Here are a few.
For much of the 2024 campaign, a lot of observers believed that the only way Trump could win was if Democrats failed to mobilize their party base, either out of complacency or because key constituencies were disgruntled with Joe Biden (and, to a lesser extent, with Kamala Harris once she became the presidential nominee). An enormous amount of money, time, and effort went into securing maximum turnout among young, Black, and Latino voters on the theory that if fully engaged, they’d win the day. And in the end, these constituencies did turn out reasonably well (a bit less than in 2020, but more than in 2012 or 2016). Trouble was, too many of them voted for Donald Trump.
No, Trump didn’t win Black, Latino, or under-30 voters overall, but his performance in all those groups improved significantly as compared to 2020. Among Black voters (per AP Votecast, the most reputable exit poll), he doubled his percentage of the vote, from 8 percent to 16 percent. Among Latinos, his percentage rose from 35 percent to 43 percent. And among under-30 voters, his share of the vote jumped from 36 percent to 47 percent. Meanwhile, the GOP advantage in the Donkey Party’s ancient working-class constituency continued to rise, even among non-white voters; overall, Trump won 56 percent of non-college-educated voters. The Democratic base fractured more than it faltered. And there were signs (which have persisted into early 2025 polling) that defections have made the GOP the plurality party for the first time in years and one of the few times since the New Deal.
While rebuilding the base (while expanding it) remains a crucial objective for Democrats, just calling it into the streets to defy Trump’s 2025 agenda via a renewed “resistance” isn’t likely to work. Many former and wavering Democrats need to be persuaded to remain in their old party.
Republicans have massive incentives to pretend that all their messages struck home, giving them an argument that they enjoy a mandate for everything they want to do. But the honest consensus from both sides of the barricade is that demands for change to address inflation and immigration were the critical Trump messages, with doubts about Joe Biden’s capacity to fulfill the office and Kamala Harris’s independence from him exacerbating both.
What we’ve learned in 2025 is that Trump has considerable public backing to do some controversial things on these issues. A 2024 poll from Third Way showed a majority of swing voters agreed that excessive government spending was the principal cause of inflation, a huge blow to Democratic hopes that rising costs could be pinned on corporations, global trends, supply-chain disruptions, or, indeed, the previous Trump administration. But this wasn’t just a campaign issue: Trump took office with some confidence that the public would support serious efforts to reduce federal spending and make government employees accountable. And the fact that (so far) his approval ratings have held up despite the chaotic nature of his efforts to slash federal payrolls is a good indication he has some wind at his back, at least initially.
If that’s true on inflation, it’s even truer on immigration, where solid majorities in multiple polls support (in theory, at least) the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. If the administration was smart enough to limit its deportation campaign to those convicted of violent crimes, it would have overwhelming public support. But Democrats should fully accept they didn’t just lose votes on this issue in 2024: They lost an argument that persists.
That is why it is critical that Democrats point to evidence that Trump’s own agenda (particularly his tariff policies) will revive inflation that had largely been tamed by the end of the Biden administration, while focusing their immigration messaging on vast overreach, inhumane excesses, and ethnic profiling of Latinos by Team Trump in its efforts to deport immigrants.
Joe Biden in his 2024 presidential campaign (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Kamala Harris as his successor) put considerable stock in playing on public concerns about the threat to democracy posed by Trump as evidenced by his conduct on January 6, 2021, and his lawless behavior generally. While these arguments found traction among voters already in his corner, there’s little evidence they mattered much at all to the voters who decided the election in Trump’s favor. Indeed, a considerable percentage of voters worried about a broken political system viewed Trump as a potential reformer as much as an insurrectionist or autocrat.
At the moment, most office-holding Democrats and (more quietly) many Republicans are aghast at how Trump has gone about pursuing his agenda early in 2025, with a blizzard of executive orders, a federal funding freeze, and a blank check issued to eccentric billionaire Elon Musk to disrupt federal agencies and intimidate federal employees. Again, Trump is drawing on long-standing public hostility toward the federal government and to the size and cost of government as a spur to inflation and a burden on taxpayers. Fighting him with alarms about his violation of legal and constitutional limitations on presidential power is unlikely to work with an electorate unmoved by Trump’s earlier scofflaw attitude. Voters must be convinced in very concrete terms that what he is doing will affect their own lives negatively. As with tariffs and the immigration policy, Trump’s tendency to overreach should provide plenty of ammunition for building a backlash to his policies.
In 2024, as in 2016, Trump managed to win because unhappy voters who didn’t particularly like or trust either presidential candidate (or their parties) in the end chose to produce a change in party control of the White House and of Congress. In office, Trump and his allies will try to perpetuate as long as they can the illusion that they are still fighting for “change” against powerful interests aligned with the Democratic Party, even though it’s Republicans who control the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and also dominate the U.S. Supreme Court. The idea that Team Trump is a brave band of insurgents speaking truth to power is undermined very specifically by the fact that its chief disrupter, Musk, is the richest man in the world and the first among equals of a large band of plutocrats surrounding the president.
As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn observed during the transition to the second Trump administration, many of the same anti-incumbent tendencies that put a thumb on the scale for the GOP in 2024 will now work for the opposition:
“The president’s party has retained the White House only once since 2004, mostly because voters have been unsatisfied with the state of the country for the last 20 years. No president has sustained high approval ratings since [George W.] Bush, in the wake of Sept. 11 …
“Looking even further back, the president’s party has won only 40 percent of presidential elections from 1968 to today. With that record, perhaps it’s the winning party that really faces the toughest question post-election: How do you build public support during an era of relatively slow growth, low trust in government and low satisfaction with the state of the country?”
Based on his conduct since returning to the White House and his well-known narcissism, it’s not all that clear that the 47th president even cares about building public support as he ends his political career. That may give him the freedom of the true lame duck, but it also means Democrats can batten on his broken promises and the disappointments they will breed. The 2028 presidential candidate who may be in real trouble is the Republican who succeeds the 2024 winner.
New ABC/Washington Post poll (june 22):
Kerry 48%
Bush 44%
Again, another poll with Bush at 44%.
If this holds, and Nader’s support softens (which I assume it will). Kerry will win the election by 10%. Since the undecideds always go to the challenger.
I suppose it’s safe to say the “bounce” is over.
Yes, Jeff, I have noticed Bush’s “44% consistency” for quite some time now. It really makes me wonder if that’s his ceiling. I certainly hope so…
Have you guys noticed how Bush’s support seems to have stuck at 44%.
No matter what poll you look at, it’s always at 44%.
The differences always seem to come with Kerry’s numbers – which are as high as 48 or 49% or as low as 41 or 42%. Depending whether you count the “Democratic leaners” or not.
Something I found really interesting about this poll were responses to this question:
” Thinking ahead to the election in November, which TWO of these words best describe how you would feel if (John Kerry were elected / George Bush were re-elected) President? ”
If you group the list of adjectives given as choices into positives and negatives and tally up the totals for each, then…
Among all Respondents:
Net Positive
G.W. Bush: +8%
John Kerry: +24%
G.W. Bush
Most Common Answer: “Worried” (31%)
Total Positive Answers: 76%
Total Negative Answers: 68%
Uncertain: 22%
DK/NA: 2%
John Jerry
Most Common Answer: “Hopeful” (39%)
Total Positive Answers: 79%
Total Negative Answers: 55%
Uncertain: 29%
DK/NA: 3%
In the Swing States:
Net Positive
G.W. Bush: 1%
John Kerry: 34%
G.W. Bush
Most Common Answer: “Worried” (31%)
Total Positive Answers: 75%
Total Negative Answers: 74%
Uncertain: 19%
DK/NA: 2%
John Jerry
Most Common Answer: “Hopeful” (43%)
Total Positive Answers: 84%
Total Negative Answers: 50%
Uncertain: 28%
DK/NA: 3%
Among Independents (Nationwide):
Net Positive
G.W. Bush: -39% (!!!!!)
John Kerry: +37%
G.W. Bush
Most Common Answer: “Worried” (35%)
Total Positive Answers: 52%
Total Negative Answers: 91%
Uncertain: 17%
DK/NA: 4%
John Jerry
Most Common Answer: “Uncertain” (40% — beat “Hopeful” by 1%)
Total Positive Answers: 68%
Total Negative Answers: 31%
Uncertain: 40%
DK/NA: 11%
FYI, I regarded the following choices as positive: “Hopeful,” “Confident,” “Happy,” “Content” and “United.”
These I deemed negative: “Worried,” “Pessimistic,” “Depressed” and “Angry” (with “Uncertain” being regarded as neutral).
As consumers and workers and parents, women are in the same boat as men and children — sinking. But strictly as women, they continue to kick open locked doors and to punch holes in glass ceilings. The proportion of women in college and in white collar jobs continues to rise. This is striking when we compare young black women to young black (and poor white) men. As workers, women are losers; as women, women are winners.
I also noticed that oddity in the data. First, I question the value of asking voters about “winners” and “loser” given the multiple interpretations those terms could have. For instance, respondents could be thinking of the term “winner” as a way to say they like or support that group: i.e. I like women, so I’ll rate them “winners”. Second, we have no older data to compare to, so it’s perfectly possible that women used to be considered “winners” more in the past and less so now. I know I’d personally rank women to be “winners” now, regardless of Bush (I haven’t seen much evidence that he’s been any worse for women than men–he’s equally bad for everyone as far as I’m concerned).
One thing that strikes me as extremely odd in this poll is the winners/losers series and ‘women’ come out at 65% winner and 26% loser. I don’t understand this given the responses to others in this battery. It is right below big corporations (71% winner) and the wealthy (85%) and higher than George W. Bush (55%). Can this be right? Have women benefited tremendously under the Bush Administration and I have completely missed it? And how have women been winners over the past three years and children and the middle class have been net losers?
The Mother Jones site has LOTS of great graphs on this data, including each question broken down by party affiliation, vote in 2000, gender, income, red state/blue state and age. Sifting through all the data, the most striking and consistent information is found under party affiliation and, specifically, independent voters. Ruy’s absolutely correct, independents are much more like Democrats than like Republicans in their opinions on almost every question. In fact, on a couple issues, they’re even more pessimistic and demoralized than Democrats. Pay special attention to independents’ opinions about the last three years regarding, big corporations, the tax burden, personal privacy, average citizen being heard, job security and special interests. Another striking trend: “liberal or moderate Republicans” are strikingly similar to Democrats and Independents on several measures.
It brings to mind again the theory that by election day, “Bush fatique” will have completely set in and a huge rush away from Bush and toward Kerry is going to hit the electorate among Independents and liberal-moderal Republicans (much as what happened to Carter and conservative-moderate Democrats in the Carter-Reagan race of 1980). A year from now we may be discussing “kerry Republicans”. On a similar topic, I encourage you to read Howard Fineman’s article on MSNBC about Kerry “lying low” and staying “invisible” through most of the election cycle. This is one time I happen to agree wholeheardely with Fineman–let Bush stew in his own juices; Kerry will look all the more reasonable and be considered a worthy alternative to Bush by election day.
By the way, the Mother Jones survey was done by Stanley Greenburg’s polling outfit. Greenburg wrote “The Two Americas”; if you haven’t read it I strongly recommend you do so!