The Democrats are probably on course to have a pretty good 2026 election. They are the out-party, Trump isn’t particularly popular, Democratic partisans are highly motivated, and there is a lot of general voter discontent, particularly about the economy. That means Democrats will likely take back the House, where they only need a net gain of three seats, perhaps pick up a seat or two in the Senate and make some gains in governorships and state legislatures. Sure, Republicans will try their best to stop this by redistricting and other shenanigans but they will likely fail because the terrain is too favorable to their opponents.
That’s the good news for Democrats. The bad news is that this very success will likely cripple them going forward as they stare into the abyss of the 2028 election and the ongoing realignment of US politics. As they grasp onto the fool’s gold of midterm success, their opportunities to fix their party’s weaknesses will slip away—indeed, are already slipping away. This dynamic is succinctly explained by pollster Patrick Ruffini. He notes that Democrats went through a brief period of introspection after their 2024 presidential loss forced them to confront their weaknesses and the need for change. This was predictable. And also predictably brief.
But a few months later, this newfound openness to doing things differently has faded in the face of all-out opposition to Trump 2.0. In the U.S., midterm elections are a unique mechanism that squash[es] heterodoxy and lock[s] parties into sticking with their existing positions. The parties are thrown immediately back into campaign mode a few months after the election. That means the out-party quickly needs to maximize fundraising and enthusiasm from their base, which is usually at its angriest in the first few months of the opposing Administration’s term.
By favoring the out-party, midterm elections preempt the gnarly questions raised by the party’s last election defeat. And this false optimism carries through to the next presidential cycle.
If Democrats have a good election next November, you can count on their problems with Hispanic voters or young men to be memory-holed. Fans of the party’s existing strategy will argue that the current path works just fine. Just recall what happened after 2022: following a decent midterm, Democrats told themselves that Joe Biden was actually a viable candidate for re-election, that he was the only one who had beat Trump before and that he could do it again…
Or consider 2018, a smashing success for Democrats. The takeaway there was that all the party would need to do was take that Resistance mojo and double down on it for 2020. The party was on the upswing, and Democrats told themselves this meant a broad mandate for social change, not just a narrow repudiation of Trump. And so you got a race to the left to appease the groups, with hands raised on debate stages for decriminalizing border crossings and positions taken in favor of taxpayer funding for gender transition surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison.
We now know this created all sorts of downstream problems with traditional Democratic constituencies, problems invisible in the post-2018 euphoria but very apparent following the 2020 and 2024 elections…
Midterm success is all well and good, but a mere cyclical reaction to the party in power doesn’t solve the deep-seated problems exposed in the presidential year when the broadest set of voters participates…
Running a base mobilization strategy can work in midterms but in presidential years, usually gets canceled out quickly by an influx of low-information and more persuadable voters motivated by an entirely different issue set…
While many Democrats sincerely want to change how their party is perceived by low-propensity voters, all the incentives going into and following the midterms are lined up against them. The better Democrats do in the midterms, the more that arguing for a change in direction makes you the skunk at the garden party.
This all seems exactly right to me. In fact, I don’t see how any attentive Democrat could look at how the party discourse has evolved since November 2024 and not see this dynamic unfolding in real time. The fool’s gold of midterm success is once again poised to distract Democrats from what really needs to be done to secure their long-term success against a formidable populist opponent.
Before this happens and, as Ruffini puts it, they “memory-hole” their profound problems with key voter groups, it’s worth underscoring how much work Democrats have to do to re-establish support levels that might stand up in a presidential election context, when low-propensity voters flood into the electorate.
- The Democratic Party recently hit a record low in favorability (34 percent) in Gallup polling going back to 1992. As recently as when Biden entered office in 2021, favorability toward Democrats was 48 percent, exactly balancing the 48 percent who viewed the party unfavorably.
- This decline in Democratic favorability has been skewed toward nonwhites. Since 2021, there has been an astonishing 53 point swing away from the Democrats in net favorability among nonwhites. In 2021, Democrats’ nonwhite favorability was a very strong 39 points above water—66 percent favorable to 27 percent unfavorable. Today, the Democratic Party is 14 points underwater among nonwhites—just 37 percent favorable to 51 percent unfavorable.
- Party identification—even more consequential for voting behavior—has also shifted dramatically since those halcyon days when Joe Biden first occupied the White House. At that time, Democrats had a 10-point advantage in party identification over the GOP according to Pew. Now Republicans have a one point advantage.
- Here again the decline in Democratic party identification has not been uniform but skewed toward nonwhites. The Democratic party-ID advantage has declined by 17 points since 2021 among Asians (from 35 to 18 points), by 16 points among Hispanics (from 35 to 19 points), and by 16 points among blacks (from 68 to 52 points).
- Declining Democratic party identification has also been skewed toward the young. Those under 30 favored Democrats by 32 points in 2021; now the Democratic advantage in just 6 points. Looked at in terms of decadal cohorts (Pew does not use generational divisions), those born in the 1980’s favored Democrats by 20 points in 2021, an advantage that has now essentially vanished. And those born in the 1990s gave Democrats a 22 point advantage in 2021, now down to just 3 points.
- Most astonishing, back in 2023—two short years ago—Democrats had a very healthy party identification advantage of 26 points among men under 30 (62 percent Democratic to 36 percent Republican). Now this group has radically shifted against the Democrats and gives Republicans an 18-point advantage (52 percent GOP to 34 percent Democratic). That’s a 44-point shift in net party ID over two years.
If calling attention to these facts makes me “the skunk at the garden party” so be it. Maybe the Democrats need a few more skunks and a few less cheerleaders and others dazzled by that midterm fool’s gold.
Jimmy Carter was the first neoliberal President of the contemporary era (post New Deal/Great Society).
I don’t understand what you think the argument about polarization actually brings to the table. Does polarization explain why polarization happened or what the alternatives were or what the way forward is?
Shorter Teixeira: even good news is bad news. We have no idea how the public will see the Democratic Party in 2028. Win next year. See where you end up. How many voters sit around seething with discontent about the Democratic Party? How many are responding to pollster questions about something they otherwise would not give two thoughts to? How many are upset precisely because the Dems might be perceived as being not oppositional enough? How much of it is tied to the general decline in favorability of all institutions?
We know that Teixeira dislikes a certain strain of progressive activist. We know he has a dislike for a certain strain of ecological politics (even though business as usual in environmental policy is leading civilization toward catastrophe, but actual physics and biology are not in his wheelhouse.). We know that his paycheck is signed by AEI, hardly a friend of even the moderate left, which also is worth questioning. I think his analyses of the electorate are useful and worth consideration. But he is hardly a disinterested scholar dispassionately reading the numbers.
Teixeira’s association with AEI is pretty recent. The ad hominem argument actually makes any criticism of him weaker.
Like many voters he chose to distance himself institutionally from the party.
In general I agree with the conflict of interest argument, but regarding him at this point it reads more like the sort of sore loser critique that makes Democrats look weak on the one hand and uninterested in getting voters back on the other hand.
He is not alone in moving away from climate catastrophism, which he critiques both in substantive but mostly on messaging terms.
I’m the sort of voter who sees Democrats not being oppositional enough, but also oppose the general cultural radicalism of the party.
I think the views of those of us who decided to skip the 2024 race are more important than those of steady voters who are deeply ideologically liberal and will vote almost no matter what.
The party won’t win us back by blaming the messengers.
Agreed except I would question even Texeira’s feel of the electorate considering he dismisses the catastrophic decline of moderates of *both* parties over the past 2-4 decades as either the left’s fault or a collection of accidents. Sooner or later, the endless need for excuses becomes what counts.
I think you confuse him blaming the left historically with saying that distancing from the left currently is the correct strategy.
This confusion is unwarranted. After all, he coauthored the book that said that Democrats were headed to a permanent majority with the help of minority voters.
People seem really mad at him for accepting the reality that he was wrong.
The fact that there’s maybe one conservative democrat and no liberal Republicans in the Senate tells us that politics has changed. Bill Clinton did worse in the South than the otherwise less accomplished Jimmy Carter, after all. What other than a steady growth of the proportion of good ol boys who prefer the right to the center explains that? Since we have no reason to believe that trend ended in the 1990’s, moderates delayed doomsday if anything.
As for Texeira, asking us to horribly undervalue the economy when it comes to the election of 2024 compared to what political science tells us is too high a demand as it is. Also passing the buck for the destruction of the center to whoever is convenient? Insulting.
So, to understand you, you are saying the rise of the right was natural and inevitable and still is?
Who was/is responsible for the destruction of the center?
Texeira has never said to undervalue the economy when it comes to the 2024 election.
Also, he has clearly argued that voters won’t listen to economic proposals while there is no trust on cultural issues and presented evidence for this argument.
When he criticizes “all-out opposition to Trump 2.0” he discusses this in the context of Democrats not having their own ideas and failing to distance from radical cultural leftism. For me personally, this is most clearly the case in the context of immigration.
You never give actual examples of him saying ““there are consequences for too much obstruction”.
Do you realize that you present straw man argument after straw man argument?
Sorry, but history says that because presidents are so visible to the public to the exclusion of other officials (a lot of people famously don’t know who their Representative and senators are), there is no penalty to absolute opposition. There may be in cooperation, though, since the greater legislative activity may make the President more popular. Cold, yes, but accurate. Do not get hung up on “should”. As for factuality, some examples.
1992: A scandal-ridden Democratic Congress proves no threat to Bill Clinton. Until he’s President and gets the spotlight, anyway.
2002 and 2004: George W. Bush gets a some to a lot of support from Democrats for most of his policies during his first term. This just happens to be the one period since the 1960’s that a party has won more than two trifectas in a row.
2006 and 2008: Dems become more hostile to Bush and clean up.
Obama and Biden era: Republicans practice total opposition to these Democratic presidents. You might argue that they may have beaten him otherwise except that Mitt Romney did not embrace the Tea Party right *and* most presidents win re-election. They don’t usually have two midterm waves against them, though. Obama did.
First Trump era: In fairness to the Republicans, the opposition to Trump is not much less fierce. And by any half-objective measurement, it succeeded. So, even the argument that Republicans are held to some undisclosed different standard is debunked here. Not that Texeira would offend his MAGA colleagues at the AEI and Free Press anyway. I know he’d argue that stuff like this and “woke” denied Joe Biden a landslide, but that would be based on the worst election polls since 1980. ‘Nuff said.
You may point out 1948 and you’d be right in that one and only example, but it must be measured against the combined weight of the five above examples where you’d be very wrong.
How is any of this related to the actual article?
Because under Texeira’s logic (admittedly based partly on a naive assumption that “should” and “is” are always the same thing), the second Bush would be a one-termer, Obama would’ve done fine in midterm elections, and Trump would be undefeated in presidential elections.
Where does he say that? The main argument is that midterms are not predictors of the general election. Isn’t this exactly your argument too?
It’s very simple. He suggests that there are consequences for too much obstruction. Maybe there should be, but history says there isn’t. Either the President succeeds or he fails. That’s it.
Can you give examples of where he says that “there are consequences for too much obstruction”?
And where he says that this is central to his critique of contemporary Democratic party politics.
He quoted someone saying, “But a few months later, this newfound openness to doing things differently has faded in the face of all-out opposition to Trump 2.0”. And then typed, “This all seems exactly right to me”. In bolded text, might add?
(I know this reply’s in the wrong spot, but there seems to be a site problem that stops me from directly responding to your last post where it was).
And yet, Victor, despite your accusations of strawmanning, you can’t even offer an explanation for why Bill Clinton did worse in the South than Jimmy Carter, save polarization. That would seem to be an important step as this historical fact would seem to prove red states’ rejection of their own moderate Democrats as well as progressives really is what it looks like, not conditional on rank-and-file Dems being too far left.