Bunchy Carter
I'll Take The Money Over The Honey
A Hillary Clinton supporter wears a donkey hat with a Hillary doll on Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center, July 27, 2016, in Philadelphia. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
The Democratic Party has spent most of the past decade deciding to lose.
Or so argues a new report from Welcome PAC, an organization that backs center-left candidates, so as to build “a big-tent Democratic Party.”
It is no secret that the Democrats are in a sorry state. They’ve lost to an exceptionally unpopular Republican presidential nominee twice in the last nine years. They have long odds of regaining control of the Senate next year and aren’t even certain to retake the House of Representatives. They’re historically unpopular, having lost ground with much of the party’s traditional base — including voters who are working class, people of color, young, or all of the above.
To determine how this happened, Welcome’s Simon Bazelon conducted six months of polling with nearly half a million voters, examined the results of hundreds of recent elections, analyzed shifts in the Democratic Party’s legislative priorities, and crunched various other data points. In so doing, Bazelon produced a rigorous and thorough accounting of what the centrist organization already knew: The Democratic Party has veered too far left, effectively choosing to prioritize progressive orthodoxy over electoral success.
Welcome’s report has already resonated with many of the Democratic Party’s leadership. And if Bazelon’s analysis proves persuasive to Democratic insiders, it could shape the trajectory of the party’s 2028 presidential primary — and thus, the future of American democracy.
To see how well that analysis stands up to scrutiny, I spoke with Bazelon about various progressive objections to his arguments. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Give me the short version of your story: How did Democrats end up in their present state?
Since Barack Obama won reelection in 2012, the Democratic Party has undergone two really major shifts. First, we have shifted our priorities, focusing less on kitchen table economic issues and more on issues that are less concrete and more abstract to voters: climate change, democracy, abortion, and other identity and cultural issues.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party became a lot more left-wing than it used to be across the board. In 2013, 24 percent of Democrats in Congress co-sponsored Medicare-for-all. In 2023, that was 47 percent. In 2013, 41 percent of Democrats in Congress co-sponsored an assault weapons ban. Now, it’s 88 percent. Only 1 percent co-sponsored a reparations study bill in 2013
. Now, that’s a majority. And I think these two shifts are primarily responsible for the situation that Democrats are in today.
Read more at: The real reason why Democrats are so unpopular
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If a half dead Joe Biden hadn't won the presidency in 2020 I'd be willing to concede a lot more of these points. I don't think it's as much about policy as it is about the candidate. Hillary was unprepared for Trump's trolling and got mopped. Joe was a brand name and Trump couldn't rattle him and Trump lost. To me it's that simple. Having a bunch of centrists hire a guy to go out and do a bunch of polls in order to find EXACTLY everything they already believe doesn't sway me. You trying to convince me that Dems are losing because more of them are voting for Medicare for all than they did 12 years ago? That's asinine. The Dems have flaws but in my opinion the right candidate with the right messaging trumps Trump and his brand of politics.
