Democrats are in Crisis, Eat the Rich Populism is the only way forward

[somsai]

an air of denial — and, more recently, panic — has pervaded the discussion about what comes next. It’s easy to say drastic reform is needed, but there’s no agreement on what this should look like. In practice, the party establishment is doing what party establishments always do: counting on the other side to self-destruct so it can squeak back into power while changing as little as possible.

The strategy would be a lot more defensible if Democrats could write off Trumpism as a fever that was bound to break with time. But the evidence of the past few years points in the opposite direction — shrinking populations in blue states, an alarming drop in Democratic voter registration, dire math for retaking the Senate and crushing majorities who say the party is out of touch. Worst of all is the ongoing rightward shift in the working class, a challenge that goes beyond winning elections to strike at the heart of what it means to be a Democrat.

This kind of full-court press for the working class is a gamble. But there are no safe choices for a party whose approval ratings are bouncing around 35-year lows. Exhuming Liz Cheney one more time with the hope of turning out white-collar suburbanites is another risk, and in a country where the median full-time worker earns just under $63,000 a year and about 60 percent of adults don’t have a college degree, the numbers are with the populists. For every stockbroker in Greenwich that the party loses, there are two janitors in Kenosha to be won — the building blocks of a durable, coherent majority that can break through the paralysis in Washington and level the playing field for working Americans

But in a polarized party system, the true king makers — the voters who decide elections — don’t fall neatly into the left or the right.
According to Echelon, populists with fiscally liberal and socially conservative views are by far the largest group of swing voters, at 22 percent of the electorate. Libertarians are a distant fourth, with just 5 percent. Democrats have struggled over the last decade because their biggest gains came from this smallest section of voters, while Mr. Trump cleaned up with populists.

He goes on to say 10% of Trump voters in 2020 were Bernie Bros, probably more so in 24. Timothy Shenk on the NYT op ed page. Worth reading the whole thing https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/opinion/democrats-dan-osborn.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rE8.Wcw0.lzDP0UNpvETG&smid=url-share