Savannah Kuchar brings the bad news in “Democratic Party’s favorability hits record lows in two polls after 2024 losses” at USA Today: “The Democratic Party’s latest approval ratings hit record lows in a pair of polls on Sunday, coming after a bruising 2024 election for the party in which it lost control of the White House and Senate… An NBC News poll found 27% of registered voters say they view the party favorably − the lowest favorability rating for Democrats in NBC polls going back to 1990. Only 7% of survey respondents said they said they have a “very positive” view of the party…Another poll released by CNN similarly found 29% of voters view Democrats in a positive light, a low in CNN’s polling since 1992. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 63% said they have a favorable view of the party…In the CNN poll, 57% of Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents said they believe party leaders should focus on stopping the GOP agenda, compared to 42% who said they want to see Democrats work with their Republican colleagues…NBC found that, among self-identified Democratic voters, 65% said they want their party to “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington.” Thirty-two percent said they want Democrats to “make compromises with President Trump to gain consensus on legislation.”…The NBC poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters in the U.S. from March 7-11. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points. The CNN poll surveyed 1,206 adults in the U.S. from March 6-9. It has a margn of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.”

“For weeks, Donald Trump and Republicans have insisted that social security, Medicaid or Medicare would not “be touched,” Lauren Gambino writes in “Democrats train fire on Musk as unelected billionaire dips in popularity” at The Guardian. “Now Musk was suggesting the programs would be a primary target. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, Democrats pounced…“The average social security recipient in this country receives $65 a day. They have to survive on $65 a day. But you want to take a chainsaw to social security, when Elon Musk and his tens of billions of dollars of government contracts essentially makes at least $8m a day from the taxpayers,” Hakeem Jeffries, the US House minority leader, said in a floor speech the following day. “If you want to uncover waste, fraud or abuse, start there.”…As the second Trump era comes into focus, Democrats have found a new villain: an “unelected billionaire” whose bravado – and sinking popularity – they believe may offer their party a path out of the political wilderness…“There’s nowhere in America where it is popular to cut disease research, to gut Medicaid and to turn off social security,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “So it’s hard to see a place where what Musk is doing for Trump doesn’t become an albatross for Republicans.”…Despite mounting criticism of Musk, the president has embraced his beleaguered ally, who spent close to $300m helping elect him to the White House…Public polling underlines Democrats’ interest in Musk. A new CNN surveyfound that just 35% of Americans held a positive view of the billionaire Trump adviser, a full 10 percentage points lower than the president. The poll also found that he is notably better known and more unpopular than the vice-president, JD Vance…More than six in 10 Americans said Musk had neither the right experience nor the judgment to carry out a unilateral overhaul of the federal government, though views broke sharply along partisan lines. Roughly the same share said they were worried the reductions would go “too far”, resulting in the loss of critical government programs.”

In “Democrats Have a Man Problem” John Hendrickson writes at The Atlantic:  “Chances are low that Joe Rogan will save your soul—or your party. Since Donald Trump’s election victory, countless Democrats have lamented their party’s losses among men, and young men, in particular. One refrain has been a yearning for a “Rogan of the left” who might woo back all the dudes who have migrated to MAGA. If the wishfulness is misplaced, the underlying problem is real: Trump carried men by roughly 12 points in November, including 57 percent of men under 30. …I recently spoke with Democrats across different levels of leadership to see how they were trying to address this electorally lethal gender gap. Two theories for how to win back men, I found, are bubbling up. One is to improve the party’s cultural appeal to men, embracing rather than scolding masculinity. The other is to focus on more traditional messaging about the economy, on the assumption that if Democrats build an agenda for blue-collar America, the guys will follow….These approaches are not necessarily in conflict, but they each present a challenge for the modern Democratic Party. And as pundits and consultants peddle their rival solutions, they highlight another risk: Even if Democrats can settle on a message, will voters believe they really mean it?…Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts is one of many Democrats who believe that the party has to make a serious, sustained outreach effort to connect with men. What Democrats should not say or do seems more obvious than what they should proactively offer. “No one wants to hear men talk about masculinity,” Auchincloss, a former Marine, told me. “We’re not going to orient society’s decision making to the cognitive worldview of a 16-year-old male.” Read more here.

At Axios, Alex Thompson explains why “Why some Democrats are warm to Trump’s tariffs“:”Democrats across the Rust Belt and in several congressional swing districts, along with leaders of historically Democratic unions, have voiced support for many of Trump’s tariffs — even if they believe he’s haphazardly implementing them.

• Rep. Jared Golden of Maine introduced legislation to put a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the U.S. He told Axios: “The world is changing, and some Democrats haven’t quite caught up to that fact.”
• Golden, whose largely rural district voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024, added: “I think Trump did identify the problem. In many ways, Democrats are doubling down [on free trade] in reaction to him.”

“Some have said that we have really healthy trade with Canada, and I don’t agree,” Golden added. “I’m not arguing we should embrace tariffs as part of a campaign strategy. I’m arguing we should do it based on the merits of the policy and what is good for working-class Americans.”

• The United Auto Workers union, which endorsed then-President Biden last year, said this month: “We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class.”

…Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) has criticized Trump’s “chaotic” implementation of tariffs, but argued that “the answer isn’t to condemn tariffs across the board.”

• “Democrats need to break free from the wrong-for-decades zombie horde of neoliberal economists who think tariffs are always bad,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed.”