Having spent much of the week watching the runup to a crucial Senate vote on appropriations, I had to express at New York some serious misgivings about Chuck Schumer’s strategy and what it did to his party’s messaging:

For the record, I’m usually disinclined to promote the hoary “Democrats in Disarray” narrative whereby the Democratic Party is to blame for whatever nightmarish actions Republicans generally, or Donald Trump specifically, choose to pursue. That’s particularly true right now when Democrats have so little actual power and Republicans have so little interest in following laws and the Constitution, much less precedents for fair play and bipartisanship. So it really makes no sense to accuse the powerless minority party of “allowing” the assault on the federal government and the separation of powers being undertaken by the president, his OMB director Russ Vought, and his tech-bro sidekick Elon Musk. If congressional Republicans had even a shred of integrity or courage, Senate Democrats would not have been placed in the position this week of deciding whether it’s better to let the government shut down than to let it be gutted by Trump, Vought, and Musk.

Having said all that, Senate Democrats did have a strategic choice to make this week, and based on Chuck Schumer’s op-ed in the New York Times explaining his decision to get out of the way and let the House-passed spending bill come to the floor, he made it some time ago. Nothing in his series of rationalizations was new. If, indeed, “a shutdown would be the best distraction Donald Trump could ask for from his awful agenda,” while enabling the administration to exert even more unbridled power over federal programs and personnel, that was true a week ago or a month ago as well. So Schumer’s big mistake was leading Senate Democrats right up to the brink of a collision with the administration and the GOP, and then surrendering after drawing enormous attention to his party’s fecklessness.

This doesn’t just look bad and feel bad for Democrats demanding that their leaders do something to stop the Trump locomotive: It also gives the supreme bully in the White House incentive to keep bullying them, as Josh Marshall points out in his postmortem on the debacle:

“[P]eople who get hit and abused and take it tend to get hit and abused again and again. That’s all the more true with Donald Trump, a man who can only see the world through the prism of the dominating and the dominated. It is a great folly to imagine that such an abject acquiescence won’t drive him to up the ante.”

The reality is that this spending measure was the only leverage point congressional Democrats had this year (unless Republicans are stupid enough not to wrap the debt-limit increase the government must soon have in a budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered). Everyone has known that since the new administration and the new Congress took office in January. If a government shutdown was intolerable, then Democrats should have taken it off the table long before the House voted on a CR. Punchbowl News got it right:

“Let’s be blunt here: Democrats picked a fight they couldn’t win and caved without getting anything in return. …

“Here’s the lesson from this episode: When you have no cards, fold them early.”

Instead, Democrats have taken a defeat and turned it into a debacle. House and Senate Democrats are divided from each other, and a majority of Senate Democrats are all but shaking their fists at their own leader, who did in fact lead them down a blind alley. While perhaps the federal courts will rein in the reign of terror presently underway in Washington (or perhaps they won’t), congressional Democrats must now become resigned to laying the groundwork for a midterm election that seems a long time away and hoping something is left of the edifice of a beneficent federal government built by their predecessors from the New Deal to the Great Society to Obamacare. There’s a good chance a decisive majority of the general public will eventually recoil from the misrule of the Trump administration and its supine allies in Congress and across the country. But at this point, elected Democrats are going to have to prove they should be trusted to lead the opposition.

We’ll go way out on a limb here, and say that 2025 does not appear to be a good year for making political predictions. But, if anybody can do it credibly, it would be Kyle Kondik, who writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

1. The electorate will be smaller.

Midterm electorates are not as big as presidential electorates, and there is no modern precedent for a midterm electorate having a higher turnout rate among eligible voters than the turnout rate in the most-recently held presidential election.

According to data from turnout expert Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, the average turnout rate for eligible voters in the 43 presidential elections held since 1856 is about 64%, while the average turnout in the 42 midterms held since that year is 49%. So the turnout is on average about 15 percentage points higher in the presidential than in the midterms, and the midterm turnout was never higher than the immediately previous presidential election. We went back to 1856 because that is the start of our modern two-party system, with the Republicans first fielding a presidential candidate that year to join the Democrats, a party that had existed in various forms prior to that year.

Of course, those who would have been an “eligible voter” was much different back then than it is now, with the franchise later expanding to previously disenfranchised groups like women, Black voters, and, in advance of the 1972 election, 18-20 year olds. Figure 1 shows the presidential and midterm turnout rates for this more modern time period.

Average turnout for presidential elections from 1972-2024 was 58%, and average midterm turnout in that timeframe was 41%, or a 17-point gap that’s very similar to, but slightly larger than, the presidential to midterm gap in the longer time period since 1856.

Note that turnout in both the last two presidentials and last two midterms have been high by recent standards—but even comparing the 2016 presidential election to the historically-high turnout 2018 midterm still showed a 10 percentage point smaller turnout in the midterm.

The bottom line is that the electorate in 2026 will be substantially smaller than 2024, it’s just a question of how much smaller…

2. The electorate should be whiter, older, and more educated.

Because midterm electorates are smaller than presidential electorates, it stands to reason that demographic groups that have historically had better turnout rates would make up a greater share of midterm electorates than presidential electorates. We see this with white voters in general, voters with a four-year college degree, and voters aged 65 and over.

Table 1 shows the makeup of the eight electorates by certain age, racial, and education groups from 2008-2022 (four midterms and four presidentials) from the Democratic data firm Catalist. Catalist’s reports on the makeup of the electorate are widely-cited and include analysis of state voter files that are not available to exit polls released on Election Night (2024 is not included here because that Catalist report is not yet out—neither is a similar analysis that we look forward to seeing later this year, Pew’s validated voter study).

While non-college voters have always made up a clear majority of the electorate, the midterm electorates have been a few points more college-educated than the presidential electorates. Pre-Trump, college and non-college voters (this includes people of all races), voted fairly similarly in both the 2012 presidential election and 2014 midterm election (the non-college group was slightly more Republican in each election). But starting in 2016, the education gap expanded greatly, so that by 2020, Joe Biden won college graduates 59%-41% in the two-party vote but lost non-college graduates 52%-48%, a 22-point gap in margin. The gap was similar in the 2022 congressional vote. Again, Catalist has not released its report for 2024 yet, but the Edison Research national exit poll for several media entities found a gap of a little more than 25 points between college graduates and non-graduates in 2024.

The 65 and over cohort has been growing over time, but their share of the midterm electorate was always at least 4 percentage points bigger than the previous presidential election during the 2008-2020 timeline. Likewise, the 18-29 group has always made up at least 3 percentage points less of the midterm electorate than the previous presidential—it likely is no coincidence that the drop off was smallest from 2016 to 2018, the only midterm in this timeframe conducted under a Republican president that also represented the best Democratic performance among these four midterms. Even though Donald Trump made some gains among the 18-29 group in 2024 compared to his previous performance with them, this is still a Democratic-leaning cohort, just like voters 65 and over remain Republican-leaning to some extent.

Finally, the electorate is usually a little bit whiter in the midterm compared to the presidential. Again, Trump made gains with nonwhite voters in 2024, but as a bloc, nonwhite voters are still markedly more Democratic leaning than white voters.

In this era of politics, the midterm having a higher share of college graduates than the presidential would seem to help Democrats, and the midterm having a smaller share of younger and nonwhite voters would seem to help Republicans. But an electorate’s demographic makeup does not necessarily tell us what the results will be: The 2018 midterm’s electorate was whiter and older than either the 2016 or 2020 electorates, but that was also the Democrats’ best election of the trio. Likewise, the college-educated share in 2022 was very similar to 2018 and perhaps even slightly larger, but that didn’t stop Republicans from winning the House majority that year.

3. The non-presidential party’s share of the House popular vote should go up.

Last week, in a piece on how House incumbents from the non-presidential party rarely lose in midterms, we noted that the presidential out-party almost always nets seats in the midterm. Democrats are hoping this trend continues, as they need to net just 3 seats to win the House next year.

In addition to typically netting seats, the non-presidential party also almost always sees its share of the total congressional vote go up in the midterm compared to what happened in the presidential.

Figure 2 and Table 2 show this dynamic, again going back to 1972. This shows the two-party House vote, and it corrects for unopposed seats in a given year by estimating the two-party vote in those seats. The data from 1972-2020 is from a past Crystal Ball contributor, the late Theodore S. Arrington of UNC-Charlotte, and the 2022 and 2024 data is from Split Ticket (they each use different methods to account for unopposed districts, but Arrington’s calculations and Split Ticket’s calculations for 2008-2020 are similar).

Read the rest of Kondik’s article for his charts, graphs and visuals and to see how he gets to his concluding sentence: “Overall, it would be a surprise if Democrats didn’t at least do better in the national House vote in 2026 than they did in 2024.”

In his NYT opinion column, “Even If Democrats Can Move to the Center, It May Not Help,”  Thomas B. Edsall writes: “There is, in fact, evidence that when Democrats moderate, they actually lose ground…Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford who has also examined the effects of candidate ideology, wrote by email that his research in “The Electoral Consequences of Ideological Persuasion” shows that

even substantial ideological shifts toward the center yield remarkably modest electoral benefits. Specifically, if a Democratic candidate were to shift their position from the median of the Democratic Party to a position as centrist as Joe Manchin, they would gain only about 0.6 percentage points in vote share through persuasion effects alone.

That persuasion benefit, Bonica continued, “must be weighed against the potential negative effects on turnout.”…When both factors are taken into account, “Democrats have achieved their greatest electoral successes precisely in cycles (2008 and 2018) when they did not moderate relative to Republicans,” while “in cycles where Democrats ran more moderate candidates (like 2010 and 2014), their electoral performance was notably weaker.”…Bonica’s bottom line:

The empirical evidence is increasingly converging around a clear conclusion: There appears to be very little electoral advantage from running to the center in contemporary congressional elections.”

Edsall writes further, “On Feb. 2, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, both senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, posted their paper “Renewing the Democratic Party.” In it, they wrote that the party must undergo an ideological “revolution” to win back even marginal support from the working class, which, they wrote, believes

that the Democratic Party is dominated by elites whose privileges do not serve the common good and whose cultural views are far outside the mainstream and lack common sense.

They believe that educated professionals look down on them and that the professional class favors policies that give immigrants and minorities unfair advantages at their expense.

They believe that educational institutions preach a set of liberal values that are out of the mainstream and that parents, not schools, should be teaching values. They reject the assertion that slavery and discrimination have made it difficult for Black Americans to work their way out of the lower class and believe that Black Americans can and should rise “without special favors,” as other groups experiencing prejudice have done.

Also, “In an email responding to my queries, Galston provided anecdotal evidence that the Democratic Party is changing in a favorable direction:

The Democrats’ shattering defeat last November has convinced many actual and aspiring leaders that to be competitive in future elections, their party must change. This opened the door to new ways of thinking and challenges to the status quo.

Some of Galston’s examples:

• “The party’s designated responder to Trump’s speech, Senator Elissa Slotkin, delivered a calm and moderate message, which was well received by Democrats.

• “The party’s likely candidates for this year’s high-profile governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia are moderates with impeccable records of service to the country.

• “Most Democrats have abandoned the extreme 2020 ideas — defunding the police, eliminating ICE, etc. — that their eventual presidential nominee, Joe Biden, opposed during his successful primary campaign.

• “Gavin Newsom — up to now, no one’s idea of a moderate — just decided to break with party orthodoxy on the hottest of hot-button issues — transgender rights.

• “Most Democrats have come to understand that Biden’s approach to immigration was a political as well as policy failure and are open to a discussion of alternatives. In a recent Pew poll, 40 percent of Black Democrats and 43 percent of Asian Democrats supported increased efforts to deport people living illegally in the U.S.”

In addition, Edsall notes, “From a different vantage point, Bart Bonikowski, a sociologist at N.Y.U., wrote by email that he

would challenge the assumption that Democrats should be moving to the center. There is little evidence that running on progressive policies has hurt Democrats or, conversely, that abandoning those positions has been electorally profitable.

Continuing to protect the civil rights of all Americans while expanding economic opportunity is not just smart politics — it is the party’s duty to its core constituencies. But more important, in the current political moment, calls for Democratic centrism are a distraction.

American democracy is being systematically dismantled before our eyes by an administration that has no regard for the U.S. Constitution. Thus, we are no longer in an era of political competition between liberalism and conservatism, but between democratic values and authoritarianism. It is time for Democrats to steadfastly defend those values, which are so deeply cherished by most Americans.”

Moving to his conclusion, Edsall writes, “Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, replied to my inquiries by email, saying that he, too, would push back against the “twin premises that the Democrats need to moderate across the board as the Democratic Leadership Council did and that the prime reason they can’t is professional liberal voters.”…Democrats, Hacker acknowledged, “have certainly been out of step on some highly salient noneconomic issues — the border crisis chief among them — and they have correctly started moderating here already.”

Hacker emphasized the point, however, that

Democrats should also be embracing a more forthrightly left-populist stance on economics in response to the oligarchic takeover of American democracy. In short, the diagnosis for Democrats shouldn’t be moderation as such but a deeper embrace and prioritization of economic populism.

The biggest challenge, in Hacker’s view…is the longer-term party building that’s needed to address the party’s biggest problems, such as conservative dominance of social media platforms, poor governance in blue states and cities (which hurts the brand and causes voters to locate in more affordable precincts of red America), the party’s organizational weaknesses (which have a lot to do with the decline of its traditional mass base of organized labor) and the fact that Democrats are the party of government in an anti-system era.

The threat Trump poses, Hacker continued,

may create leverage for tackling these big problems without the internal pushback that has doomed such efforts in the past. Democrats have a chance to become the party of change, seeking to redemocratize the corrupt lawless system that Trump and Musk are creating.

For this to happen, there must be broader social mobilization, not just a Democratic elite response, and the party must revitalize its own aging leadership and adopt a strong, optimistic and economically forward-looking orientation. Very dark possibilities loom for Democrats — and democracy — otherwise.”

Having closely watched congressional developments over the last few weeks, I’ve concluded that one much-discussed Democratic tactic for dealing with Trump 2.0 is probably mistaken, as I explained at New York:

No one is going to rank Mike Johnson among the great arm-twisting Speakers of the House, like Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Sam Rayburn, or even Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he still resembles Winston Churchill’s description of Clement Atlee as “a modest man with much to be modest about.”

But nonetheless, in the space of two weeks, Johnson has managed to get two huge and highly controversial measures through the closely divided House: a budget resolution that sets the stage for enactment of Donald Trump’s entire legislative agenda in one bill, then an appropriations bill keeping the federal government operating until the end of September while preserving the highly contested power of Trump and his agents to cut and spend wherever they like.

Despite all the talk of divisions between the hard-core fiscal extremists of the House Freedom Caucus and swing-district “moderate” Republicans, Johnson lost just one member — the anti-spending fanatic and lone wolf Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from the ranks of House Republicans on both votes. As a result, he needed not even a whiff of compromise with House Democrats (only one of them, the very Trump-friendly Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one of the measures, the appropriations bill).

Now there are a host of factors that made this impressive achievement possible. The budget-resolution vote was, as Johnson kept pointing out to recalcitrant House Republicans, a blueprint for massive domestic-spending cuts, not the cuts themselves. Its language was general and vague enough to give Republicans plausible deniability. And even more deviously, the appropriations measure was made brief and unspecific in order to give Elon Musk and Russ Vought the maximum leeway to whack spending and personnel to levels far below what the bill provided (J.D. Vance told House Republicans right before the vote that the administration reserved the right to ignore the spending the bill mandated entirely, which pleased the government-hating HFC folk immensely). And most important, on both bills Johnson was able to rely on personal lobbying from key members of the administration, most notably the president himself, who had made it clear any congressional Republican who rebelled might soon be looking down the barrel of a Musk-financed MAGA primary opponent. Without question, much of the credit Johnson is due for pulling off these votes should go to his White House boss, whose wish is his command.

But the lesson Democrats should take from these events is that they cannot just lie in the weeds and expect the congressional GOP to self-destruct owing to its many divisions and rivalries. In a controversial New York Times op-ed last month, Democratic strategist James Carville argued Democrats should “play dead” in order to keep a spotlight on Republican responsibility for the chaos in Washington, D.C., which might soon extend to Congress:

“Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.”

Now to be clear, Congressional GOP dysfunction could yet break out; House and Senate Republicans have struggled constantly to stay on the same page on budget strategy, the depth of domestic-spending cuts, and the extent of tax cuts. But as the two big votes in the House show, their three superpowers are (1) Trump’s death grip on them all, (2) the willingness of Musk and Vought and Trump himself to take the heat for unpopular policies, and (3) a capacity for lying shamelessly about what they are doing and what it will cost. Yes, ultimately, congressional Republicans will face voters in November 2026. But any fear of these elections is mitigated by the realization that thanks to the landscape of midterm races, probably nothing they can do will save control of the House or forfeit control of the Senate. So Republicans have a lot of incentives to follow Trump in a high-speed smash-and-grab operation that devastates the public sector, awards their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and wherever possible salts the earth to make a revival of good government as difficult as possible. Democrats have few ways to stop this nihilistic locomotive. But they may be fooling themselves if they assume it’s going off the rails without their active involvement.

The following article, “Dems’ own polling shows massive brand problem ahead of 2026” by Elena Schneider, is cross-posted from Politico:

The Democratic Party’s brand is in rough shape in the congressional battlegrounds.

Nearly two months into the second Donald Trump administration, a majority of voters in battleground House districts still believe Democrats in Congress are “more focused on helping other people than people like me,” according to an internal poll conducted by the Democratic group Navigator Research. Among independents, just 27 percent believe Democrats are focused on helping them, compared with 55 percent who said they’re focused on others.

Michael Scherer sets the stage in his article, “The Democrats’ Working-Class Problem Gets Its Close-Up” at The Atlantic: “The distant past and potential future of the Democratic Party gathered around white plastic folding tables in a drab New Jersey conference room last week. There were nine white men, three in hoodies, two in ball caps, all of them working-class Donald Trump voters who once identified with Democrats and confessed to spending much of their time worried about making enough money to get by…Asked by the focus-group moderator if they saw themselves as middle class, one of them joked, “Is there such a thing as a middle class anymore? What is that?” They spoke about the difficulty of buying a house, the burden of having kids with student loans, and the ways in which the “phony” and “corrupt” Democratic Party had embraced far-left social crusades while overseeing a jump in inflation.?…“It was for the people and everything, and now it is just lies,” one man said when asked how the Democratic Party has changed.”

In “Trump’s lies on tax cuts are another gut punch to America’s working-class,” Svante Myrick, President of People for the American Way, writes: “Trump’s numbers don’t add up. If he were getting a math grade for his speech to the joint session of Congress, he’d fail miserably… Trump is worse than a student who hasn’t done his homework. He’s a president who routinely lies to mislead the public, justify his wrongdoing and distract us from the real harm he’s doing to Americans and the lasting damage he’s doing to America… Trump made a lot of promises about a new “golden age” for America. But in reality, he and congressional Republicans are getting ready to sell out Americans and our future so he can deliver massive tax cuts to billionaires like Elon Musk… The budget bill House Republicans just approved is big, but it’s far from beautiful. Their top priority is providing $4.5 trillion in tax cuts whose benefits go overwhelmingly to the richest Americans. That will pile on even more national debt, leave us with less money to support families and communities who need it and force big cuts in Medicaid…Budget experts report that the Trump-Republican plan would give the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers an average tax cut of more than $300,000 — and that the richest 200,000 multimillionaires would get more money than 187 million families…  While the rich would get richer, lower-income households would be even worse off when you factor in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps that would be necessary to make his tax-cut boondoggle work….A majority of Americans who voted in the 2024 election voted for someone other than Trump. A third of eligible voters didn’t participate. Most Americans do not support a tax scheme that funnels most of the benefits to those who are already at the top of the economic pyramid. And the overwhelming majority of Americans want to preserve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

“In the wake of the 2024 election, pundits and politicos have had much to say about the battle for the American “working class,” with their commentary—whether from the left, the right, or the middle—invariably accompanied by the same image: guys wearing hard hats, toiling away at a construction site or on an assembly line…”Two-thirds of those without a four-year college degree—the criterion that many demographers use to define the “working class”—are employed in services (including health care, retail, and hospitality), compared with one-third in manufacturing, construction, and related industries,” Rick Watzman and Erin Contractor write in “America’s working class barely scrapes by. An outdated image of them doesn’t help” at Fortune…We know this because one of us has been researching and writing about this topic for many years. The other helped to shape labor policy in the Obama and Biden administrations… Their needs are distinct, and they remain largely unmet…We know this because one of us has been researching and writing about this topic for many years. The other helped to shape labor policy in the Obama and Biden administrations—and, perhaps more to the point, has a mom who has worked as an hourly employee at Walmart since the late 1990s. (She currently makes $17.78 an hour as a floor associate.)…”

Tyler Stone writes in “Why Is Trump Relatable? Listen To Him Talk, This Is How Working-Class People Talk” at Real Clear Politics: “On SiriusXM ‘The Megyn Kelly Show,’ Host Megyn Kelly is joined by comedian Andrew Schulz, whose latest Netflix special is “Life,” to discuss the Democrats’ failed messaging and inability to connect with the working class, why Trump’s boldness resonates with Americans of all political persuasions, Trump’s ability to talk like normal people, and more.” Stoner quotes Schulz: “I find a lot of times with the Democrats, there is this pretentiousness. There’s this, like, Ivy League educated, second or third generation kind of trust fund nepo babies that are telling people how they should live and how they should vote. And it’s like, first of all, if you’ve never had a real job, you don’t get to talk… You don’t get to tell people how they should vote… We just despise that. So what I think they have to do is get back in touch with the working class is very much make this a class issue, and you’ve got to call out those people who are giving you money, which these young billionaires and these corporations that are donating, and they won’t do it, and that’s why they’ll probably lose. But the first person in that party that calls it out, you’re going to see the Bernie effect happen again…another thing Democrats don’t understand. They don’t understand like — why this like billionaire who was given money from his dad is so relatable. Well, why don’t you listen to him talk? I’ve had conversations with like rich people. Okay, they don’t talk like that. Yeah, they are incredibly buttoned up a lot of them and concerned publicly about their image and they’re very deliberate about what they say…” The problem didn’t originate with Trump. Something of the same dynamic was in play with Bush v. Gore in 2000. Democrats flipped that script in Obama vs. Romney in 2012. Like Bush II, Trump is every inch a preppie. But he has developed an ear for worker-speak, and it has served him well. It wasn’t all that long ago that nobody thought a New York City guy would do so well in the south. Even bogus class identification trumps regional kinship in winning voters.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,  and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

It’s hard to believe Trump’s only been in office for a month and a half. He’s certainly delivering on many of his aggressive campaign promises and his general pledge to shake things up in Washington. His address to Congress on Tuesday night did not stint on retailing how far and fast he has gone in changing business as usual.

On one level, his fast start could be viewed as a smart response to the overwhelming sense among voters that the political and economic system in the country needs major changes or to be completely torn down. But is all this frenetic activity succeeding in expanding his coalition beyond those who supported him in the last election?

After all, it doesn’t follow that, even if most voters want big changes, voters will necessarily be happy with all of the big changes the Trump administration is pursuing and, importantly, with how those changes are being implemented. Voters don’t want change just for the sake of change; they want change that actually improves the system and brings it closer to their vision of how government should work. And they certainly don’t want change that might negatively impact them personally.

That helps explain why Trump’s popularity has declined from its post-inauguration high. At that point, his net approval (approval minus disapproval) was around +8, hinting at the possibility of an expanded Trump coalition. But now it is only around +1 in the RCP running average and his overall approval rating hovers close to his share of the vote in the 2024 elections.

That said, it is true that Trump’s popularity so far is running above his first term ratings; in that term his approval rating never cracked 50 percent and went into net negative territory very quickly. But that is a very low bar indeed since his early first term ratings were historically bad. Trump’s current popularity trend indicates his early bid to broaden his coalition beyond his 2024 supporters has not succeeded.

Internals from the most recent AtlasIntel poll—now Nate Silver’s highest rated pollster thanks to their stellar performance in the 2024 election—illustrate how similar Trump’s current coalition looks to his 2024 support. His net approval is +21 among working-class (non-college) respondents, but -27 among the college-educated. Among those with under $50,000 in household income his net approval is +16; among those with $50,000-$100,000 income, his net approval is +9—but among those whose household incomes are over $100,000 his approval is net negative: -18.

Of course, Trump’s 2024 coalition was a winning one so simply maintaining it is not an obvious disaster. However, Trump’s 2024 victory, while solid, was hardly a landslide—his popular vote margin was only about a point and a half and most of his swing state victory margins were close to that narrow national margin. If he doesn’t expand his 2024 coalition he and his party will be only modest voter defections away from an electoral drubbing. That could happen as soon as the 2026 midterm elections, where the incumbent party is generally at a disadvantage to begin with.

Digging into recent polling data reveals the contradictions in Trump’s approach that undermine his ability to expand his coalition. On the one hand, some of his actions are quite popular from cracking down on illegal immigration to getting biological boys and men out of girls’ and women’s sports and restricting medicalization of minors for “gender dysphoria.” He is also on secure ground in opposing affirmative action, advocating a colorblind meritocratic society and pursuing an “all-of-the-above” energy policy that includes fossil fuel production.

Even in these areas, the devil is in the details and Trump is in some danger of going too far too fast. But the dangers for him are much larger in another area where, at first blush, public opinion would appear to be on his side: cutting wasteful government spending and promoting efficiency. In a recent New York Times poll, 60 percent of the public agreed that government “is almost always wasteful and inefficient” rather than “does a better job than people give it credit for” (37 percent). Views were even more lop-sided among working-class (non-college) respondents; by 2:1 (64-32 percent) they believe that government is wasteful and inefficient.

Similarly, in a recent Harvard/Harris poll, 77 percent of voters thought a full examination of all government expenditures was needed, rather than letting all contracts and expenditures proceed unimpeded; 70 percent believed government expenditures were full of “waste, fraud and inefficiency,” rather than fair and reasonable; and 69 percent supported the goal of cutting $1 trillion from government expenditures. Such findings suggest that an aggressive attack on government waste and inefficiency has the potential to be very popular and expand Trump’s coalition.

But the key word here is “potential”. Activating that potential depends on two things the Trump administration is paying little attention to: 1) it has to be clear to voters that actual government waste and inefficiency is being attacked rather than just cutting government willy-nilly; and 2) it has to be clear to voters that cuts to government are not affecting and will not affect them negatively.

On both counts, the Trump drive to trim government, spearheaded by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is falling short. While DOGE audits have indeed found many examples of highly questionable government expenditures and related inefficiencies, DOGE has not exactly been wielding a scalpel to excise these inefficiencies. Instead, wholesale layoffs and expenditure stoppages have been implemented which, even if temporary, are difficult for voters to connect to the ostensible goal of eliminating government waste. Particularly egregious here has been the DOGE habit of firing any government employees who have a “provisional” status, presumably because this is a quick way of reducing headcount in agencies and generating savings.

But such moves have little obvious connection to promoting government efficiency. As Oren Cass, chief economist at American Compass, has put it, this is pressing the “easy button” for no other reason than it is easy. The result is likely to be neither productive nor popular.

This will be particularly the case where eliminating workers leads to staffing shortages in ways the public notices (e.g., at National Parks). And nothing makes voters more nervous than the possibility that entitlements—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—will be interfered with by DOGE’s actions or Trump’s future plans. This is a sure loser.

Given all this, it’s not surprising that voters’ enthusiasm for DOGE, Musk and the actually-existing project of overhauling government (as opposed to the theory) is rapidly ebbing. This is neatly illustrated by Navigator Research polling showing that the “Department of Government Efficiency” without Musk’s name linked to it is actually viewed favorably but once you attach Musk’s name to it—thereby evoking the real-world DOGE—favorability plummets to 37 percent.

Consistent with this, Musk’s favorability rating has been rapidly declining and in a recent Washington Post/Ipsos poll, his approval rating on the job he is doing within the federal government was a mere 34 percent. And in a recent CNN/SSRS poll, respondents by almost 2:1 thought Trump giving Musk a prominent role in his administration was a bad thing rather than a good thing. Views among working-class respondents were only slightly less negative.

Unsurprisingly, views are mixed on reductions in the federal workforce so far, both in terms of overall approval and specific effects. In a new CBS News poll, majorities thought that the reductions will eventually “remove workers doing unnecessary jobs” but also thought they will “remove essential workers” and “reduce or cut services for people like you.” This suggests thoroughly cross-pressured voters rather than enthusiastic supporters.

Also suggesting cross-pressured voters, respondents in the CNN poll by 55 to 45 percent thought Trump so far hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems rather than has had the right priorities. Clearly, the high profile efforts of DOGE aren’t helping the Trump administration get on the right side of that question which is probably a prerequisite for building his coalition.

Then there’s the economy, particularly the cost of living, which was central to Trump’s victory in 2024. Voters want to see improvements on this front, regardless of what else Trump does. It’s early days but so far voters are not impressed.

In the Washington Post poll, 76 percent of respondents rate current gas or energy prices negatively (not so good or poor), 73 percent rate the incomes of average Americans negatively and 92 percent (!) rate food prices negatively. In the CNN poll, only 27 percent think Trump has been about right on trying to reduce the price of everyday goods, compared to 62 percent who believe he hasn’t gone far enough. And in the CBS poll, 82 percent and 80 percent, respectively, wanted Trump to put a high priority on the economy and inflation but only 36 percent and 29 percent, respectively, believed Trump was prioritizing these issues a lot.

There’s a message there for the Trump administration should they care to hear it. His mandate was to shake up the system by pursuing popular priorities Democrats were ignoring, especially on illegal immigration, and deliver prosperity for ordinary workers and families. His mandate was not to do whatever excites his base the most or accords with his personal priorities.

In short, Trump may be over-interpreting his mandate, just as Biden did when he took office in 2021, which will prevent him from seizing the center from a disorganized and remarkably unpopular Democratic Party. Instead of a second Trump administration realigning American politics and building a more powerful working-class, populist GOP, the Democrats could limp back into power and our current partisan stalemate would continue.

Call it “Politics Without Winners.” In our paper of the same name my AEI colleague Yuval Levin and myself observed:

Surveying the parties’ decisions in one election cycle after another, it is hard to avoid concluding that they are stuck at 50–50 because they choose to be. Both have prioritized the wishes of their most intensely devoted voters—who would never vote for the other party—over the priorities of winnable voters who could go either way. They have done this even as the nature of their most devoted voters has changed. They have not operated as institutions geared to construct broad coalitions and win broad general-election victories. Instead, they have focused on fan service—satisfying their most partisan and loyal constituencies.

It’s early days for the second Trump administration but that still sounds about right.

This article , “California’s Gavin Newsom opposes trans athletes in women’s sports, splitting with progressives” by Bill Barrow, is cross-posted below from apnews.com. For Gov. Newsom, a former Mayor of San Francisco, who is frequently short-listed as a potential presidential candidate, this policy position represents a significant departure from public expectations and may herald a trend among Democratic politicians. The article:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, used the inaugural episode of his new podcast to break from progressives by speaking out against allowing transgender women and girls to compete in female sports.

Newsom made his declaration in an extended conversation with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old who built the influential Turning Point USA organization that helped President Donald Trump increase his support last fall among the youngest generation of voters. Kirk, like Trump, has been a vocal opponent of allowing transgender women and girls to participate.

“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness — it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom told Kirk on “This is Gavin Newsom.”

“I am not wrestling with the fairness issue,” continued Newsom, who played varsity baseball as a college student. “I totally agree with you. … I revere sports. So, the issue of fairness is completely legit.”

The governor’s comments are the latest in Democrats’ efforts to reconcile a 2024 election that returned Trump to the White House and gave Republicans control of both chambers of Congress. Among the disagreements since November is how much cultural issues – as opposed to economic policy and other matters – explain the party’s losses.

Overall, polling suggests that allowing transgender female athletes to play on women’s teams isn’t broadly popular. Even most Democrats — around 7 in 10 — oppose allowing transgender female athletes to participate in women’s sports, according to a January New York Times/Ipsos poll. A 2023 Gallup poll also found that Democrats were divided on whether transgender people should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity.Newsom, who has long positioned himself as a social progressive, drew sharp rebukes from LGBTQ+ advocates.

“Sometimes Gavin Newsom goes for the Profile in Courage, sometimes not,” said California Assemblyman Chris Ward and state Sen. Carolina Menjivar, who lead the state’s LGBTQ+ legislative caucus. “We woke up profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks.”

Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, said he was “disappointed and angered” by Newsom’s statements and that they “added to the heartbreak and fear” the transgender community feels under the Trump administration.

“Right now, transgender youth, their families, their doctors, and their teachers are facing unprecedented attacks from extremist politicians who want to eviscerate their civil rights and erase them from public life,” Hoang said. “They need leaders who will unequivocally fight for them.”

California law, enacted before Newsom became governor, requires schools in the state to allow transgender athletes to play on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Republican state lawmakers introduced bills in the Legislature this year to ban that practice, but they would be difficult to pass in the Democrat-dominated statehouse. The governor’s office declined to comment on the proposals, saying Newsom doesn’t typically weigh in on pending legislation.

Beyond questions about athletics, there is less public support for broader restrictions on transgender rights and issues like medical care for transgender people, particularly among Democrats.

According to AP VoteCast, 55% of voters in the 2024 election said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, while about 2 in 10 said it’s been about right and a similar share said it hasn’t gone far enough. Voters were also slightly more likely to oppose than favor laws that ban gender-affirming medical treatment, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors who identify as transgender.

But Republicans have nonetheless sought to capitalize on the cultural touchstone that sports represent in America.

Trump regularly hammered Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Newsom’s fellow Californian, for supporting LGBTQ+ rights. Trump promised at his rallies to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” and “keep men out of women’s sports.” His campaign also spent tens of millions of dollars on television and digital ads with the searing summation: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

“Boy, did I see how you guys were able to weaponize it,” Newsom told Kirk, before yielding to Kirk’s protest and saying instead that the ads were an effective “highlight” during the campaign.

Since taking office, T rump has threatened to withhold federal money from schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s’ or girls’ events. He declared victory on the issue recently when the NCAA, which governs collegiate athletics in the U.S., changed its policy to restrict women’s sporting events to those athletes who were assigned the female gender at birth. Previously, the NCAA had a sport-by-sport policy determined by the respective sports’ national or international governing bodies.

Ward and Menjivar, the California lawmakers, said playing on a team consistent with one’s gender hasn’t been a problem “until Donald Trump began obsessing about it.”

Kirk, not Newsom, brought up the overall issue during their hour-plus conversation, which focused in part on how Democrats can rebuild a broader coalition of voters. Kirk pressed Newsom on whether he would speak out in opposition to transgender women athletes in competition.

The governor attempted to mitigate his comments, saying the discussion is about more than competitive advantage.

“There’s also a humility and a grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with, as well,” Newsom said. “So, both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think is inherent in you but not always expressed on the issue and at the same time deal with the unfairness.”

Still, Newsom’s approach marks a different political tack than he took on same-sex marriage more than two decades ago. As San Francisco mayor in 2004, Newsom drew national attention for the first time by directing the city clerk to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

The move prompted legal action that led to a 2008 ruling from the California Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage in the nation’s largest state. That decision came seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court established same-sex marriage as a national right.

As an inveterate poll-watcher, I have been waiting for the moment when Donald Trump’s job approval numbers went underwater, his accustomed position for nearly all of his presidential career. It arrived around the time he made his speech to Congress, as I noted at New York:

Even as he was delivering the most partisan address to Congress maybe ever, Donald Trump’s public support seemed to be regularly eroding. An updated FiveThirtyEight average of Trump’s approval ratings on March 4 (released just as news broke that ABC was shutting down the revered data site) showed him going underwater for the first time since reoccupying the White House, with 47.6 percent approval and 47.9 percent disapproval. That puts Trump back in the same territory of public opinion he occupied during his first term as president, where (per Gallup) he never achieved more than 50 percent job approval, and averaged a mere 41 percent.

Perhaps Trump will get lucky and conditions in the country will improve enough to validate his agenda, but it’s more likely that the same sour public climate that overwhelmed Joe Biden will now afflict his predecessor and successor.

The Reuters/Ipsos survey that pushed Trump’s numbers into negative territory showed a mood very different from the 47th president’s boasts about a new “golden age” for our country:

“Thirty-four percent of Americans say that the country is headed in the right direction, compared to 49% who say it is off on the wrong track. When it comes to several specific issues, Americans are more likely to say things are off on the wrong track than going in the right direction: cost of living (22% right direction / 60% wrong track), the national economy (31% right direction / 51% wrong track), national politics (33% right direction / 50% wrong track), American foreign policy (33% right direction / 49% wrong track), and employment and jobs (33% right direction / 47% wrong track).”

So all the hype about Trump being a popular president who was in the midst of engineering a major realignment of the American electorate is already looking more than a bit hollow. Trump has a solid Republican base of support and a solid Democratic opposition, with independents currently leaning towards the Democratic Party on most issues. Perhaps Trump’s agenda will gain momentum and support, but since he’s not trying to reach out beyond his party’s base at all, he’s going to need a lift from Americans who only voted for him in 2024 as the lesser of evils and may not vote in the 2026 midterms at all.

At present Trump has lost whatever presidential “honeymoon” he initially enjoyed after his return to the White House, and needs to find new converts to return to genuine popularity. He’s not off to a great start.

This coalition of rural, progressive and Democratic organizations from across the United States is urging Ken Martin, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, to substantially shift more of the Party’s time, attention and funding into rural and working-class communities. Regretfully, our earlier post of this petition campaign omitted the link for those who want to sign it. They should click here. Also, here is the link for making contributions and signing up for the coalition mailing list. 

To: Ken Martin, Chair, Democratic National Committee, and fellow DNC officers

As you know, Democrats spent over $4 billion on advertisements in the 2024 campaign cycle, outspending Republicans on the presidential race as well as both Senate and House races. Meanwhile, rural and factory town Democratic committees and candidates were starved for funds, as they have been for many years. Allocating a small percentage of those funds annually to long-term organizing and outreach in these communities would, we are confident, do far more
to broaden our base of voters and win elections.

The signatories to this letter fight for rural and working-class people. Most of us hail from or reside in small towns and rural communities. Whether through local organizing and party building, developing concrete tools for policy and communications, or careful analysis of what
works and what does not, our collective experience can help Democrats change course and
rebuild our base.

We extend this invitation to you to work together in prioritizing and fixing the Democratic Party’s profound deficits with rural and working-class voters. We have an opportunity, right now, to change course and begin to win back millions of people now alienated from our party, including demoralized rank-and-file voters, donors and activists. Anything less than a major course correction will, we fear, lead to the loss of even more voters, including the women,
minorities, youth, and working-class men who once comprised the party’s base.

In the attached addendum to this letter, we highlight what we believe to be the most important causes of our losing trend and propose seven promising steps most likely to reverse our decline in rural America. The DNC has profound influence and moral authority within the Democratic coalition. If the leadership of the DNC would passionately and forcefully call upon the complex network of large and small contributors and Democratic fundraising organizations to explicitly direct just 10% of their resources to rural and working-class districts and candidates, it could produce deeply significant and enduring long-term gains for the Democratic Party as a whole. If Democrats had done this in 2024, we’d now have $400 million in organizing infrastructure to help mobilize and rebuild our base before the midterms.

We offer our partnership to you, committing our experience, tools and resources and on-the-ground networks to this essential mission and work. Thank you.

Signatories below:

Elected Officials and Candidates

Rep. Ro Khanna – Congressman, California’s 17th District

Sam Rasoul – Delegate, Virginia House

Ken Tole – Former State Senator in Montana

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez – New Mexico State Senator, District 16

Javier Martinez – Speaker of the NM House of Representatives

Andrea Romero – NM House of Representatives

Patricia Roybal Caballero- New Mexico House of Representatives

Dayan Hochman-Vigil- New Mexico House of Representatives

Charles Maughan – Mayor, City of Corvallis, OR

Mauree Curry – Councilwoman in Easton, MD

Christopher Wier – OK HD 4 Candidate, 2024

Tegan Malone – OK HD 95 Candidate, 2024

Ellen T Wright- Candidate for GA state senate SD29

State Parties, State and Congressional District Caucuses

Indiana Democratic Party – Mike Schmuhl Chair

Washington State Democratic Party – Shasti Conrad, Chair

Maine Democratic Party – Imke Schessler-Jandreau, Vice Chair, BJ McCollister

Tennessee Democratic Party – Carol V. Abney, Treasurer and Executive Committeewoman

Virginia Democratic Party 9th Congressional District – Rebecca Daly, Chair

Minnesota Democratic Party 7th Congressional District- Jennifer Cronin, Chair

Iowa 4th Congressional District- C.J. Petersen, Chair

Missouri Democratic Party Rural Caucus – Jacqueline Farr

Maryland Democratic Party Rural Caucus – Judy Wixted

Georgia Democratic Party Rural Council – Leonard Fatica

California Democratic Party Rural Caucus – Katie Jaycox

Virginia Democratic Party Central Committee – Joan Kark

Oregon Democratic Party Education Caucus- Liz Marlia-Stein, Communication Secretary

New Mexico Democratic Party Labor Caucus – Sara Attleson, Chair

Arizona Democratic Party State committee – Aaron J Essif

Washington State Progressive Caucus – Sharon Abreu

California Democratic Party – Rocky Fernandez, Regional Director

New Mexico Democratic Party Veterans and Military Families Caucus – Claudia Risner, Chair

Minnesota Democratic Party 9th Senate District – Jane Stock, ChairTulsa Young Democrats – David Wilson, Chair

Maine DNC Committeeperson – BJ McCollister

Democrats Abroad – Sue Alksnis

Eastern Shore, Maryland Democrats- Judy Wixted, Chair

Democratic County Committees

Cecil County, MD, John Dixon

Allegany County, MD, Cresta Kowalski

Druid Hills Community, DeKalb County, GA, Michael St. Louis

Marshall/Wicomico County, MD, Demetria Marshall-Leonard

Garrett County, MD, Judy A. Carbone

Port Townsend Precinct, Jefferson County, WA, John Collins

Tuolumne County, CA, Elaine Hagen

Washington County, NY, Jay V. Bellanca

Eau Claire County, WI, Gloria Hochstein

Cherokee County, NC, Diane Snyder

Coos County, OR, Garrett Kin

Conesus Town, Livingston County, NY, Maureen McCarron

Russell County Democratic Committee, VA – Dustin Keith

Scott County, VA, Patricia Kilgore, Chair

Pottawatomie County, OK – Kerri Keck, Ben Parker, and Sandy Ingram

Montgomery County, VA, Gretchen Distler and Deborah Olsen

Hart County, GA, Margaret O’Neal

White County, GA, Leigh Stephens

Oglethorpe County, GA, Jane Kidd

Lac qui Parle County, MN

City of Radford, VA, Vicki Tolbert

Columbia County, GA, Ron Battista

Benton County, MO, Jacqueline Farr

Talbot County, MD, Naomi Hyman, Rudy Reyes and Kaye Dutrow

Caroline County, MD, Jessica Taylor

Dorchester County, MD, Sydney Bradner-Jacobs

Kent County, MD, Muriel Cole

Morgan County, TN, Joel Derek Hawn

Bernalillo County, NM, Marisol Enriquez

Yamhill County, OR, Bill Bordeaux

Cambria County, PA, John Soyka

Denton County, TX, Anjana ParasharCumberland County, ME, Heidi J Vierthaler

Benton County, OR, Holly Shutta

Staten Island, NY, Elaine A. Friedland

Santa Clara, CA, Margaret Okuzumi

Linn County, OR, Susan Heath

Boone County, IA

Union County, OR, Randy L Knop

Riverside County, CA, Judy Rice

Mansfield Town, Bristol County, MA, Tyler Putnam

Palm Beach County, FL, Jill Sheridan

Trinity, Pasco County, FL, Ronald E Simpson

Wine Country Young Democrats (Sonoma County), CA

Adelante Progressive Caucus, NM, Colton Dean

Tioga County, PA

Grayson County, VA, Terry Dunlevy

Kent County, MD, Paula Reeder

Democratic Women’s Club of Greenbrier, WV, Carol F Evans

Phelps County, MO, Robert Cesario

Tuscarawas County, OH, Mike DiDonato

National Organizations

Progressive Democrats of America- Alan Minsky (Executive Director), Donna Smith (Chair of

National Advisory Board), Mike Fox (Deputy Executive Director)

American Family Voices- Mike Lux, Founder, Director

Rural Urban Bridge Initiative- Anthony Flaccavento, Executive Director

Community Works- Meredith Dean, Director

No Dem Left Behind- Hassan Martini, Executive Director and James Bartosh, Digital Director

Movement Labs/Contest Every Race- Yoni Landau, CEO

State Democratic Party Progressive Network- Sandra J. Klassen, Steering Committee

Dirt Road Democrats

RootsAction- Sam Rosenthal, Political director

Young Men Research Project and Democratic Messaging Project (DMP)- Lisa Liddle

State and Local Organizations

State and regional chapters of Progressive Democrats of America in

● Arizona

● Maryland

● Iowa

● Oregon● Nebraska

● New Mexico

● Florida

Blue Missouri

Rise Up WV

Network NOVA

Giles Political Action

Our Revolution Northern Virginia

New Rural Virginia

Tuolumne County Indivisible

Blue Horizon Texas

Center for Common Ground

Ohio Poor People’s Campaign

NJ Universal Healthcare Coalition

Indivisible VT

Open Democracy NH

California Nurses Association

Healthy Aging Coalition

Indivisible Northwest Indiana

El Dorado Progressives

Fighting 50 PAC

Speak Out Against Hate

Major Democratic Donors

Roger Milliken

Bernard Cossell

Donna Sylvester

Margaret Gupta

Edward Rice

Sally Ketcham

Shashi Gupta

Rural/Working Class Organizers, Advocates, and Analysts

Jim Hightower- Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner and lifelong activist

Andrew Levison- Editor, the Democratic Strategist

Arlie Hochschild- Writer, author of Stolen Pride

Beth Ruck- New York state rural and urban advocateJustin H. Vassallo- Writer/researcher, political economy and American political development

Jared Abbott- Director, Center for Working Class Politics

Bill Hogseth- Rural organizer, Wisconsin

Sage Lawrence- Rural organizer and former Campaign Manager for US Rep. Val Hoyle

Jared Jodts- Former Organizing Director, Wisco Project

John Russell- Founder, editor at The Holler

Georgia de la Garza- Illinois/Jackson-Union Editorial board of People’s Tribune/

Beth Macy – Writer and author of Factory Man

Local Democratic/Progressive Activists
As of this date, over additional 500 people from all walks of life have signed this letter or a petition with the same essential requests.