democratic party

Republican doesn't understand 'deranged' reaction to James Carville

Podcaster Tim Miller said every time Democratic strategist James Carville does a New York Times column, there is “a deranged reaction to it,” but what Carville says is often prescient. This includes his early warning that Biden was too old to represent the party, and the way the party had leaned too far to the left, culturally, while neglecting economic issues culturally in the run up to the 2024 election.

“Once again, he's always a lightning rod,” said Miller, referring to Carville’s recent article “Out with Woke: in With Rage.”

“The Democratic Party must now run the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression,” Carville told the New York Times. “It's time for the Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic attitude an altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is the only way out of our abyss.”

Miller agreed, adding that it had been a fair critique from “the Bernie left” that the establishment Democratic campaigns, particularly the Clinton and Harris campaigns, did not focus enough on the same message.

Miller acknowledged that Harris spoke on economic issues, but there was no “unmistakable platform of economic rage,” as Carville described it.

“Some voters are only going to hear one or two things about you” as a candidate, warned Miller, and Biden and Harris failed to emphasize it enough to leave the “unmistakable impression upon people that they were fighting on behalf of their economic pain.”

Carville, he added, has been making this argument since most people “were in short pants, no matter who you are — unless you're Bernie, I guess.” Carville's been doing this for quite some time.”

Miller had less enthusiasm for Carville’s attack on Democrat “wokeness,” however, being unsure the blame for that fell to Democrats.

“The era of performative woke politics from 2020 to 2024 has left a lasting stain on our brand, particularly with rural voters and male voters,” Carville argued. “The term Latinx was despised even by many Latino people. Calling folks BIPOC should never have been a thing. Defund the police was a terrible idea. Point shows that nearly 70 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party is out of touch and it's more interested in social issues than economic ones. We can no longer be a party with a whiff of moral absolutism.”

“I don't know that any one of those issues really would have mattered that much,” said Miller, pointing out that accusations of New York Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani being too “woke” fell flat because voters knew Mamdani was instead completely focused on the economic issues facing Americans.

Miller admitted critics will shout “Harris did de-emphasize that stuff,” that she “didn't talk about any of that stuff lefty, cultural stuff at the convention.”

“And that's true. She did. But she didn't emphasize something else,” Miller said. “She allowed herself to be defined because she didn't define herself necessarily, clearly enough for enough voters, around a specific topic or issue that they care about. And in the upcoming elections, that issue for almost every Democrat is going to have to be addressing the economic woes.”

Catch the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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Expert advises lawmakers against talking to Trump’s 'vindictive' FBI

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe urged Democratic lawmakers to be careful if they decide to talk to members of Trump’s politicized FBI this week.

CNN reports the FBI is taking the “highly unusual step” of seeking to interview six Democrats that appeared in a recent public service announcement reminding military personnel to disregard illegal orders. This decision comes on the heels of Trump’s Pentagon seeking to reduce the military rank and pension pay of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz) for his participation in the same video.

What the FBI has issued is simply a request to sit down and provide information, and lawmakers are well within their rights to decline that request. But McCabe suggested declining the request to be the safest option.

“We don't have any indication that there's a subpoena or some sort of legal process that would compel them to sit down and provide testimony. … But I would add that in the current climate, what this administration has done in several of these vindictive sort of retribution-flavored investigations is go after people for things they said during testimony or interviews,” said McCabe. “The case against [former FBI Director Jim Comey is a perfect example.”

“So, if you're a member of Congress and you're thinking about sitting down with the FBI to explain why they're wrong about looking into this, you have to be really careful, because if you say something that can then later be characterized as a misstatement or an intentional misstatement, you could be charged with lying to a federal official,” McCabe said. “So, it's really very shaky ground here. And they should be very careful about.”

McCabe added that one of FBI’s “most basic policies” is that “you never initiate an investigation or any investigative activity based solely on the expression of First Amendment protected speech.”

“And that is clearly what we have here, McCabe told CNN anchor Kate Bolduan. “This is a group of political people, a senator and five congressmen, talking about politics and encouraging other people to obey the law. You may not agree with their sentiment. You may think they should have minded their own business, or what have you, but that is nothing other than First Amendment protected speech.”

Additionally, he said that what the lawmaker’s said was likely also covered by Congress's “Speech and Debate clause,” which protects members of congress from any sort of repercussions, including criminal prosecution or investigation for things that they say and do in the course of their legislative duties.

But this does not mean a retaliatory and politicized FBI can’t try to embroil lawmakers in charges of lying to or misleading agents during routine interviews.

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'A huge mistake': Dems are ignoring a key voting bloc at their peril

Politics reporter Casey Quinlan tells the New Republic that major news media and political leaders are “very concerned about white men … holding onto their masculinity and status.” But when women struggle — especially women of color — it gets dismissed as an “inevitable part” of how the system works under capitalism.”

“In their analysis of how the economy has moved young men to the right, political pundits and leaders on the left shouldn’t forget that young women and mothers of all ages have also been unhappy with the state of affordability in this country,” Quinlan reports. There is no economic data making clear that men are doing a lot worse while women are “thriving,” as coverage suggests.

Quinlan acknowledges that men without a college degree have seen steeper falls in labor force participation, largely due to the decline in manufacturing and military jobs, complimented with mass incarceration and a rise in opioid use. Racism-fueled mass incarceration in the 1980s and 1990s hit Black men’s labor participation particularly hard.

“But it’s also true that labor force participation for men in total has rebounded a bit during stronger economic times,” said Quinlan, adding that political leaders and the media “should be wary” of ignoring women or throwing women under the bus while conducting the important work of communicating better with young men on economic issues.

“Women have already suffered under the economy Trump has helped build and are likely to continue to see major setbacks to their economic mobility,” Quinlan said. “They will be looking to Democrats to address it, and if they feel abandoned, it could derail the party’s goals.”

Celinda Lake, president of public opinion and political strategy firm Lake Research Partners, said young women who didn’t show up to vote back in November weren’t happy with Democrats, as Harris did not draw enough of a contrast with Biden as a candidate, and they were not convinced that the Democrats’ agenda was oriented toward them. A July Lake Research Partners report showed that among people who skipped voting in 2024, on economic issues, “the top two issues that most affected their decision not to vote for Harris were that she did not have a strong enough plan to get the cost of living down and that her economic plans mostly focused on the middle class and homeowners rather than poverty and inequality.”

“We have problems with men and women, and we have to be dealing with both. Our biggest opportunity for the long term is with younger women,” Lake reported. “We need to particularly improve our numbers with non–college educated women and our turnout of young women.”

Lake added that Democrats helped undo themselves last year when they dropped ambitious childcare proposals from Biden’s landmark legislation.

“That was a huge mistake,” said Lake. “The party is really divided on this. There are people who are saying just let the Republicans hang themselves, just let them do bad and stay out of the way. But that’s a profoundly flawed strategy when your own favorability is down to 35 percent, and when people can’t follow what your agenda is and think you have the wrong priorities.”

Read the New Republic report at this link.

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This 'eye-popping' shift in key midterm metric could haunt Trump and GOP: data analyst

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten delivered information on who may be gaining momentum as Republicans and Democrats move into an off-year election two weeks from today and midterms one year and two weeks away.

“Some new polling just out was really eye-popping,” said CNN anchor John Berman.

“It was shocking to me, John, and it comes down to party identification,” Enten agreed. “Do you identify as a Democrat or as a Republican? And traditionally speaking, this is a metric that has been quite telling of elections.”

Back in the first quarter of 2025, Gallup had party ID as a tie between the two parties, while Quinnipiac had Republicans ahead by one point.

“Look at how much Democrats have gained on this metric,” Enten said, explaining that Gallup now identified Dems as “ahead by seven points,” while Quinnipiac puts Democrats ahead by three.

“You know, last year, going into the 2024 presidential election, that was the rare time in which Republicans actually held a lead in Gallup's party I.D. measure,” said Enten. “That Republican lead is no more. Adios, amigos. Eliminated.”

Enten said Democrats are doing considerably better than they did back in the 2022 midterm cycle.

“Four points was a good year for Democrats in 2018 and they’re actually doing better than that,” Enten said. “… One point was a bad year for Democrats in 2022. When the GOP gains House seats, … Democrats were ahead by only a point. When the Dems gained House seats, [they] were ahead by eight points. Democrats are up by seven right now. If this seven-point lead holds in the next year and averages out next year in 2026, there is no historical precedent for Republicans actually getting House seats.”

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George Clooney already making moves to be a 'kingmaker' in 2028 Democratic primary: report

Actor George Clooney has reportedly begun positioning himself as a political influencer ahead of the 2028 Democratic presidential nominating cycle, according to a RadarOnline.com article published Monday.

The report claimed he is engaging with wealthy donors and celebrity allies in an effort to help shape the party’s choice of nominee for president.

The piece alleges that Clooney, 64, is leveraging his high profile following his vocal criticism of President Joe Biden and a public op‑ed in which he urged Biden to step aside during the 2024 campaign.

Clooney has not, as of this report, announced any formal role or title in the Democratic Party’s 2028 process. There is no public confirmation from Clooney or his representatives about this alleged “kingmaker” campaign.

A Democratic strategist quoted in the article claimed some in the party remain uneasy about Clooney’s growing political involvement, recalling the contentious fallout over last year’s election. The strategist said many have not forgotten how divisive that period was.

Another insider told RadarOnline that some Democrats question whether Clooney’s “blessing” of a candidate would help or harm, given the mixed reactions to his past interventions.

Clooney has in recent years been more politically outspoken.

In 2024, he wrote a New York Times op‑ed calling on President Biden to consider stepping aside amid concerns about his electoral viability.

He also publicly named figures he believes could be strong choices for future Democratic leadership, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D).

AlterNet reached out to the National Democratic Committee for comment.

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'Condescending and even hostile': DC insider orders Democrats to get their act together

Pollster and political consultant Mark Mellman said unity in action was one of the most important goals the Democratic Party needed to seize in the months leading up to the mid-term election.

“[W]hatever (MAGA) may mean for a given voter, there's no question the Republicans have a much clearer brand than the Democrats currently do,” said Mellman, a CBS News consultant and a pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for more than 30 years. “… Your brand is what people say about your product when you are not looking — and the American people are certainly very negative about the Democrats. They're negative about Republicans, too, but they're even more negative about Democrats.”

The issue, says Mellman, is proving to voters that the Party is “for the average person.”

“At present, the key association the public has with the Democrats is that they are for marginalized groups. There's nothing wrong with supporting marginalized groups. All Americans should have equal rights and freedoms. But the realpolitik is that by definition, marginalized groups are not the majority,” Mellman said. “If the public sees your party as primarily defending a minority of the population, then it is going to be very hard to craft a winning majority vote.”

“The Democrats need to 1) recognize people's economic pain points and 2) then offer ideas that connect directly with those pain points,” Mellman continued. “People have to understand how and why the Democrats' policies will actually help them.”

This means showing the American people that they care about them by speaking “directly, authentically, and sincerely to the American people.”

“Emulating the rhetoric of the Harvard Faculty Club is not going to win people over. Too often, Democrats are not speaking in clear and direct ways to the American people, and even worse, too many Democratic leaders and spokespeople sound condescending and even hostile to the needs, concerns, and worries of average Americans.”

Additionally, waiting for President Donald Trump to implode and take the Republican Party with him, he said, is not the best strategy because the impatience of wait-and-see “leads Democratic Party voters to be angry with and attack their own party and its leadership.”

This could spur Democrat voters to “elevate more radical leaders” that do nothing to help the party’s branding problem. Mellman did not provide examples of any current “radical leaders.”

And while polling puts the party beneath a president “acting as the country’s first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator,” the good news in the next months is that there are “now more Americans who are planning to vote for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican candidate in 2026” thanks to the White House’s impact on the economy and the justice system among other things.

Read the full Salon article here.

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'This isn’t working': Swing state Dem voters aim to 'save the Democratic Party from itself'

Editor's note: The last sentence of the second paragraph has been updated.

Despite raising more money and an army of grassroots campaign volunteers at her disposal, Vice President Kamala Harris lost every single swing state to President-elect Donald Trump in November. Now, Democrats in one of those states are expressing their frustration with party leaders, arguing they have so far failed to learn why they lost.

The Guardian recently reported from Saginaw County, Michigan, where Trump eked out a win over Harris by a little more than 3,000 votes across the county despite President Joe Biden narrowly carrying the county in 2020. Voters there recently had a back-and-forth with Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Democratic state representative Amos O'Neal, but came away unsatisfied with their party's current crop of leaders.

"I’ve been paying careful attention to the influencers within the Democratic party," said biotechnology scientist Vincent Oriedo, who was at the meeting. "Their discussions have centered around, ‘If only we messaged better, if only we had a better candidate, if only we did all these superficial things.’ There is really a lack of understanding that they are losing their base, losing constituencies they are taking for granted."

Saginaw City Council member Carly Hammond agreed that the party was so far learning the wrong lessons from 2024. She told the Guardian that Democratic leaders have "really put themselves in a position of loss for a generation" due to misunderstanding what she views as a fundamental political realignment based on working-class issues.

"We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that that do not criticize the moneyed interests," Hammond said. "They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs."

Saginaw Democratic Party activist Pat Parker — who has been active in Democratic politics over the last 20 years — told the outlet that she had been "screaming locally at the Harris campaign: 'This isn't working" in the lead-up to the election regarding their outreach strategy to Michiganders. She's since been organizing meetings of local union leaders, Black community stakeholders and others to re-energize the base. But Hammond said the national party apparatus has so far been resistant to hearing from local groups.

"A lot of people on the ground level, a lot of community organizers, a lot of people who were giving the warnings are exhausted of trying to save the Democratic party from itself," Hammond said. "They’re the ones who have been shown the door long ago as the party systematically excised criticism from its midst. The leadership actually don’t want a big tent, they want a very top down small tent."

Click here to read the Guardian's full report.

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'Our brand sucks': Dem reveals how party became 'a shell of itself' — and how to fix it

The Democratic Party not only lost control of the White House and the U.S. Senate in 2024, but also saw its advantage in traditional Democratic strongholds erode. One veteran Democratic operative is offering several explanations, and solutions for how to rebuild.

In an essay for the Bulwark, longtime Democratic campaign operative Steve Schale wrote that his party has now become "a shell of itself" in the wake of its 2024 loss. He specifically lamented that his home state of Florida has gone from a battleground state that Democrats carried in 2008 and 2012 to a Republican vote sink, with even the bluest counties trending increasingly Republican. He also pointed out that Iowa and Ohio have morphed from competitive swing states to safe GOP states since Barack Obama's presidency.

"That’s not just a canary in a coalmine. It is a massive boulder landing in front of you on the only road home," Schale wrote. "Even worse, my party has largely avoided reckoning with how big that boulder is. We can no longer do that or we will find ourselves in an even worse situation than we do following the 2024 election. Now is not the time for quick fixes. We must make real structural changes."

Schale argued that there are four ways Democrats can rebuild their party to once again have a 50-state presence. He proposed that Democrats should spend money earlier before voters' opinions can "harden" on contentious issues like crime, immigration, transgender rights and the economy. He called for more groups to be involved in helping candidates and campaigns make decisions, as opposed to one super PAC or group serving as a bottleneck. He also said Democrats should be smarter about using data rather than using it as a crutch, and that campaigns should make data work for them, rather than the other way around. And he pointed out that the far right has a "tremendous advantage" in delivering its ideas compared to Democrats.

"After 2020, I had a billionaire ask me what I thought would be useful going forward. My advice was to spend a billion dollars building out an ecosystem like the right to deliver information to not only our base but persuadable voters. There was an acknowledgement of the problem, but that was all," Schale recalled. "I worry that coastal Democrats don’t fully grasp just how much of a disadvantage we face on the news consumption front—especially podcasts and social media—and that to solve it, we need a donor or two willing to invest significant capital."

The Floridian said Democrats' pattern of gradually losing its base should be particularly alarming to party leaders. He noted that in the three predominantly Hispanic counties of Miami-Dade, Hendry and Osceola, Democrats went from having a 324,000-vote margin in 2016 to President-elect Donald Trump winning those counties by a total of 133,000 votes just eight years later.

"The truth is we got here because our brand sucks. We tend to put voters in different buckets—black, Hispanic, young, gay, etc.—and treat these groups like they are more progressive than they really are, and somehow unique from each other," he wrote. "At the same time, we’ve made decisions to stop talking to large chunks of the electorate."

Click here to read Schale's full essay in the Bulwark.

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'There is a realignment happening': Expert reveals how Dems were caught off guard in 2024

Although President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris wasn't the "landslide" MAGA media pundits are claiming it was — Trump, according to Cook Political Report, won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 or 1.6 percent — it was a victory nonetheless. And many Democratic strategists have been asking: What went wrong?

During a Friday, November 29 appearance on CNN, Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith argued that the election results reflected a "realignment" in U.S. politics.

"We are the party of the establishment," Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, argued. "I mean, there is a realignment happening in the American electorate where Democrats, you know, are representing kinds of different people than we thought we were. Our coalition looks a little different than we thought it did. And the Republican coalition is changing too, right? It's more multiracial."

Smith continued, "The Republican coalition, it's less wealthy. The Democrats are getting whiter and wealthier in terms of our voter coalition."

The Democratic pollster went on to describe the ways in which members of his party will need to respond to "changing parameters" and be "respectful of reality."

"OK, if that's our coalition, if that's the changing parameters of the American electorate, then how do we win within those parameters?" Smith said. "And one of the things you see is, um, you know, you have to make — you can't wish an electorate or a coalition into existence that, that you don't have. And there are a lot of people who want us to be the party of certain things."

Smith continued, "But the Democratic Party isn't a vehicle for any particular ideology or any particular constituency. It's not a reactive force against Donald Trump. The mission of the Democratic Party is to go out and win elections. And again, we have to be real about what that entails."

Republicans, according to Smith, have "stolen" Democrats' image as being "the popular resistance to the man."

"That's a field that used to belong entirely to the Democrats," Smith said, "and now, it doesn't."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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'Gaslighting': Mehdi Hasan unleashes on 'centrists' who say Harris was too 'left-wing'

One common theme of 2024 election postmortems is that Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump because her campaign was too far-left. Zeteo News editor-in-chief and CEO Mehdi Hasan took issue with that argument.

In a video posted to X, Hasan tore into Democratic establishment figures like James Carville and Adam Jentleson who said the "far left" was holding the Democratic Party "hostage." He blasted headlines in major media outlets like the Washington Post that read: Harris defeat is a stinging verdict for the left," and a New York Times op-ed titled: "When will Democrats learn to say no?"

"Are you f—ing kidding me? This is gaslighting of Trumpian proportions," Hasan said.

"There was nothing 'left wing' about Harris. I mean, the centrists literally got the presidential candidate they wanted: A tough-on-crime prosecutor who bragged about owning a gun and spoke about her love for a 'lethal' military," he continued. "A candidate who famously told migrants: 'Don't come to this country.'" And, during the one and only presidential debate, attacked Trump for not backing a bipartisan and very draconian border security bill."

Hasan went on to bash arguments that the vice president's campaign was too left-wing "ridiculous," "detached from reality" and "demonstrably and obviously false." He noted that she didn't once use the phrase "Latinx" or "defund the police" on the campaign stump, and "barely said anything about transgender rights." And he noted that in 2020, when "defund the police" was a more common saying, Democrats won the White House.

"It's as clear as day. Harris did not run a left-wing campaign. She didn't run on Medicare for All. She didn't run on student debt relief. She didn't run on a Green New Deal. And she didn't break with Joe Biden on Gaza," he said. "So when you say she ran 'left,' what on earth are you talking about?"

"This is a presidential candidate who campaigned way more with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban than with AOC and Shawn Fain. Who listened to her brother-in-law, the chief legal officer of Uber, than to Bernie Sanders," Hasan added. "The truth is, in 2016 and again in 2020, the Democratic establishment united to block Bernie Sanders, an actual leftist, from becoming their nominee. And in 2024, due to Joe Biden's stubbornness, they didn't even have a contest, just a coronation."

"So look, the centrists, the moderates, got their candidate in every single election in which the Republicans nominated Donald Trump: 2016, Hillary Clinton. 2020, Joe Biden. 2024, Kamala Harris. And they lost to Trump two out of three times," he concluded. "And now they're going to blame the left for that? No f—ing way."

Watch Hasan's full video below, or by clicking this link.

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Veteran journalist blames Harris’ failure on 'corporate puppets' who 'stand for nothing'

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to enter a second term after routing Vice President Kamala Harris in nearly all battleground states and currently leading in the popular vote tally. As pundits try to determine what went wrong, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist isn't holding back in assigning blame to Democratic Party elites.

In a lengthy tweet, Chris Hedges — who won the 2022 Pultizer Prize as part of the New York Times investigative team that reported on al-Qaeda — blasted Harris and the Democratic Party along with "the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris" for losing in a blowout to Trump. Hedges opined that it was a blunder for the party to deny its base a primary, process, saying that the vice president was "anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote."

The former Times journalist was particularly incensed with Harris' decision to embrace former Vice President Dick Cheney's endorsement, whom Hedges described as "a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating." And he lamented that the "smug, self-righteous 'moral' crusade against Trump" became a "national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics."

"It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base," Hedges tweeted, pointing out that "77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel."

"The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement," he continued. "The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump."

Hedges' point is underscored by exit poll data showing that the vast bulk of Trump's voters in 2024 were primarily motivated by issues pertaining to the economy. And while President Joe Biden's administration oversaw a period in which real wage growth (adjusted for inflation) outpaced price increases, a persistently low unemployment rate that hovered at or near 4% for the longest period in decades, the best post-pandemic economic recovery of all G7 countries and a stock market that hit multiple record highs, the economy was still tenuous for many working-class Americans.

In 2023, PBS NewsHour reported that chronic homelessness hit an all-time high. More than half of Americans who rent homes said earlier this year they feared they would never be able to actually own a home. And 86% of renters say they would like to buy a home but are unable to afford one due to sky-high home prices.

Aside from housing costs, millions of Americans are also unable to afford healthcare costs, even with insurance. 48% of insured American adults told the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) earlier this year that they worried about being unable to afford their monthly premiums. And large swaths of Americans with health insurance rated their coverage as "fair" or "poor" given the cost of premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

"About three in four adults say they are either 'very' or 'somewhat worried' about being able to afford unexpected medical bills (74%) or the cost of health care services (73%) for themselves and their families," KFF reported in March. "Additionally, about half of adults would be unable to pay an unexpected medical bill of $500 in full without going into debt."

Click here to read Hedges' post in its entirety.

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