paywall

paywall

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: AP Photos

You don’t need to be a political scientist or even a Democrat to know that the Democratic Party has some factional divisions. They are different in nature from the factional divisions among Republicans, which used to be over ideological orientations and policy arguments, but are now over relative degrees of loyalty to the chaotic views and corrupt interests of Donald Trump.

While it’s possible to slice and dice Democrats into multiple tribes, they mostly fall into the rough categories of progressives and centrists (or moderates, or “pragmatic progressives,” or whatever they choose to call themselves). These groups often differ, sometimes vociferously, over economic policy, cultural perspectives, America’s role in the world, and effective political strategies. Tensions between them have understandably been heightened by a painful and extremely consequential defeat in 2024. Ancient grudges between center and left have been revived in the guise of explaining that defeat, though it may have had little or nothing to do with which faction was driving the campaign bus. It’s time, however, for all Democrats to pivot toward the 2026 midterms, in which party unity is both possible and essential.

I cannot count the number of times when self-styled Democratic centrists (the tribe with which I have identified during much of my own career) have blamed Kamala Harris’s defeat on her unwillingness to stand up to The Left, defined as “woke” identity groups bullying politicians to follow their narrow but unpopular agendas (from transgender rights to loosened immigration laws), socialists pursuing big-government panaceas, and critics of America who never understood basic voter patriotism. And you see the mirror image of this blame game in a fairly typical offering at the New Republic this week from progressive organizer Aaron Regunberg:

[Kamala] Harris started off her campaign with talk of cracking down on price gouging, and other policies to rein in corporate corruption. By late summer, some journalists were asking questions such as, “The Populist Mantle Is Harris’s for the Taking: But Does She Want It?”

Alas, to our daily horror, she didn’t want that mantle. Her campaign pivoted away from economic populism and embraced the corporate-friendly centrism of Harris’s closest advisers. This shift was clear in her policy moves, like watering down her price-gouging crackdown and walking back proposals to tax the rich following pressure from her biggest donors, as well as in her rhetoric, as she curtailed earlier messaging on taking on corporate elites and went all in on a bipartisan theme of defending democracy.

Regunberg, of course, accuses the circle around Harris of being elitists who betrayed the economic interests of the working class, much as the centrist group Third Way in its diagnosis of 2024 accused progressives of never understanding the working class in the first place, being elitists who are “hostile to success” and “indifferent to people’s desire to attain wealth,” presenting economic policies “framed through the lens of identity politics” and “favoring excessive regulations, inefficient spending, and programs that don’t directly benefit” workers.

With rare exceptions, factional interpretations of the 2024 debacle turn into prophecies of future disaster if the party doesn’t turn one way or the other. Venerable political observer Larry Sabato is quoted by centrist New York congresswoman Laura Gillen as being full of foreboding about what might happen to Democrats if the left has its way:

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, warned that Democrats may already be nearing the limits of how far left they can lean without alienating the broader electorate. “They reached it during Biden,” Sabato says. “And they certainly reach it if they try and parallel what Bernie or AOC are doing—or now Mamdani. That doesn’t fit most districts. It doesn’t fit most states.”

Progressive Regunberg counters with a warning about midterm “purges” of progressives being threatened by “establishment Democrats”:

The antipathy toward populism has been most apparent lately in the New York City mayoral race, where Zohran Mamdani remains unendorsed by leading Democrats despite winning the party’s nomination and facing off against two Democrats (who turned independent for the general election) who are now collaborating with Trump. But it’s in relation to the party’s top campaign apparatuses—the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—that this refusal to learn the lessons of 2024 could be most catastrophic to the party’s prospects in next year’s midterm elections.

Because again and again, in must-win House and Senate races, rather than embracing candidates that are proving their capacity to spark grassroots Democratic enthusiasm and tap into the populist ferment of the American public, establishment leaders are working to tilt the scales in favor of exactly the kind of uninspiring corporatists that dug the party’s current hole.

My personal impression is that the DSCC and DCCC would endorse a reincarnated Karl Marx if they thought he could win a swing Senate or House race. The planted axiom here is that “grassroots Democratic enthusiasm” depends on “the populist ferment of the American public.” In a presidential or even a gubernatorial election, that could be true. But in midterm congressional elections, Democrats are pre-enthused regardless of the identity of candidates, as poll after poll has shown:

Nearly three-quarters of Democratic voters are feeling motivated to vote in the next election cycle, according to the latest CNN/SSRS poll [released on July 17]. The survey, conducted this past weekend, shows 72 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters are “extremely motivated” to vote ahead of the midterms, compared to 50 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters.

Among Democrats, motivation to vote his increased in the early months of President Trump’s term in office — up 10 points from October, when 62 percent of Democratic voters said they were eager to vote in the 2024 presidential elections.

As is almost always the case in midterm elections, most voters will perceive 2026 as a referendum on Donald Trump, who is, after all, the most galvanizing politician in recent American history. And most voters will show up or not show up and cast their ballots based on factors that have little or nothing to do with Democratic messaging or the poor favorability ratings of the party, attributable mostly to discouragement over a defeat that may soon be avenged. As G. Elliott Morris recently showed with his own polling, Democratic U.S. House candidates in 2024 did not do significantly better when identified as “moderates” or by other labels. This is very unlikely to change in 2026.

In 2028, of course, when the Trump era finally ends and there is an open Democratic presidential-nomination contest, intraparty factions may very well wage total war over the party’s positioning and image in what will be a comparative election rather than a Trump referendum. But they’d be wise to declare a truce for the 2026 midterms and put any struggle for the soul of the party off until it matters to general-election voters.

Democrats’ Best Midterms Strategy: Stop Fighting Each Other

Democrats’ Best Midterms Strategy: Stop Fighting Each Other