Democrats In 2025: Learning Nothing And Forgetting Nothing
The DNC conference revealed a party adrift
The 2024 election devastated Democrats. They lost by a wide margin to a twice-impeached convicted felon. The defeat unleashed thousands of op-eds and social media posts about what the party should do next. If there was any consensus to the unsolicited advice, it was to ditch wokeness.
Last week’s Democratic National Committee shows the party didn’t listen. The party reaffirmed its commitment to the social causes that ruined its image with the public. The DNC elected a new chair in Ken Martin, but he’s more of the same–just in midwestern white guy form.
It's a long way until the 2026 midterms and even longer until the 2028 presidential election. A lot can change in the meantime. But if this is the Democratic agenda for both elections and the economy is strong, expect more losing.
The DNC meeting was a feast for X. Left-wing activists frequently disrupted panels and votes, illustrating the chaos within the party. Speakers were little better, as pretty much all of them did their best to burnish their leftist bonafides and obliviousness to political realities. The event began with a land acknowledgement, setting the tone for the rest of the weekend. On a panel discussing the 2024 election, gay black journalist Jonathan Capehart asked participants whether they believed “racism and misogyny” are at fault for Kamala Harris’s loss. Everyone raised their hand. “That’s good, you all pass,” Capehart exclaimed. Apparently, the fault for the 2024 loss lies with the people–not with the candidate.
Gender, race, and climate matters dominated conversations at the meeting–usually in a way that would not appeal to voters. Activists demanded quotas for their particular interest group. Outgoing DNC Jaime Harrison told the committee that it needs a “non-binary” representative. “To ensure our process accounts for male, female, and nonbinary candidates, we conferred with our [Rules and Bylaws Committee] co-chair, our LGBT Caucus co-chair, and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender-balance requirements in our rules,” he said. There was also an insistence on using idiotic gender pronouns. It was material ripe for a Republican attack ad.
To top it all off, lolcow David Hogg was elected as a DNC vice chair. The gun control activist has embraced every single leftist proposal, from abolishing ICE to defunding police. He even apologized for saying Abraham Lincoln was a great president. For a white man, he is as woke as you can be. His elevation indicates the party is committed to the path that lost the 2024 election.
Despite all these concessions to the Left, those from the “identity politics” wing of the party are still not satisfied. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who just released an animated panel about herself and “black girl magic,” complained to the New York Times that Democrats “have no coherent message.” She believes the party needs to rally around calling Trump a white supremacist, which is essentially a call to do what they did during his first term. The public seems to have little appetite for that.
While party leaders try to concede to far-left demands, they want the party to focus on the price of groceries. This can be a good issue to run campaigns on, but it’s uninspiring and insufficient for steering a party.
Democrats seem to have settled on the worst of compromises. Rather than adopting a bold, exciting vision, partyleaders settled on a mundane issue that polls well while still conceding unpopular items to left-wing groups. It’s little wonder that coverage of the meeting was scathing. Liberal columnist Jonathan Chait agreed with an attendee’s “terrified” assessment of the gathering. Chait argued that the event showed why Democrats lost. The Wall Street Journal quoted a Democratic politican’s negative opinion of his party’s current state:
“Twenty big cities, Aspen and Martha’s Vineyard—that’s what’s left of the Democratic Party,” lamented former congressional candidate Adam Frisch. “And I’m not exactly sure those 20 big cities are getting the best version of the Democratic Party.”
It’s not a pretty picture. But, as said above, it’s too early to predict the party’s doom. It might even be better if they have no real message at the moment. Following Republican defeat in 2012, the GOP said it was going to advocate amnesty and be more racially sensitive .In 2016, the party nominated the living rebuke of that “autopsy report” in Donald Trump and won the election. Following 2020, the GOP’s chief concern was to move on from Trump. They did the opposite in 2024. What a party actually runs on can be very different from what its leaders plan to run on.
The problem for Democrats is that leftism is baked into the cake for them. Many 2028 hopefuls are wanting to run to the center in their bid for White House. That may prove a tough sell in the primary. Progressive groups and ethnic lobbies set the conversation. They host the candidate forums, inspire the activists, and influence the media. Candidates are forced to take radical positions to placate these interests. It’s why in 2020 every primary candidate rushed to be the most left-wing choice possible. They all entertained reparations, abolishing ICE, mandating pronouns, scuttling American energy, and opening our borders to satisfy activist demands. They didn’t pay a price for this extremism in 2020, but the cost came apparent in 2024. Last year, Kamala had to repudiate everything she promised in 2020. It still wasn’t enough.
The same thing could happen again in 2028, as the DNC meeting shows.
It could even be worse for Democrats if South Carolina remains the first primary state. Biden made the party assign it first primary status in 2024. The Palmetto State’s Democratic electorate is overwhelmingly black. One must appeal to this demographic in order to win the state. That means 2028 candidates may promise reparations, soft-on-crime policies, support for racial quotas, and other items that would hurt them in a general election.
Democrats are banking on economic woes to reverse their electoral fortunes. It’s not a bad bet. Most elections hinge on the state of the economy. The economy was sluggish under Biden, and the voters responded in kind. If a recession hits, Democrats can probably be as woke as they want as long as they are not the party in power. The people will blame Republicans and Democrats will (likely) reap the benefits.
But if the economy is good and Trump doesn’t start any wars, then Democrats are left with nothing. Abortion won them the 2022 midterms, but it’s not enough to sustain victories beyond that. 2024 proves that. It’s also an issue diminishing in national importance. There doesn’t appear to be a revival of the resistance and the public seems to be concerned with other matters. Nobody outside of the DNC meeting wants to go back to peak woke.
It’s not even been a full month of President Trump part two. The public could still turn against him over the next four years, giving Democrats something to run on. But right now, they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Kamala Harris’s campaign was brilliant–the problem was with the voters. Democrats are still announcing their pronouns and caring about racial quotas. Left-wing activists wield tremendous influence within the DNC and they want the party to commit to policies that kill them at the ballot box. Democrats still can’t say “no” to them.
This is all good news for the Right in 2025. A confused, listless opposition makes it easier for Trump to make America great again. Just don’t expect the Democrats’ malaise to last forever.