'Be very afraid': Congressional Democrats warned they face 'revolt' like never before
The Democratic base has had enough of flimsy congressional leadership and is verging on a historic "Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt," according to new analysis in Politico.
Anger at Democratic lawmakers has manifested in vitriolic town halls and calls for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to step down for going along with the Republican spending bill that prevented a government shutdown.
Politico reported that just 40 percent of Democrats currently approve of the efforts of their congressional lawmakers, with 49 percent disapproving.
"That’s a dramatic change from this time last year, when 75 percent of Democrats approved compared to just 21 percent who disapproved," wrote pollster Lakshya Jain. "The Democratic base’s disillusionment runs so deep that it’s eerily reminiscent of Republican grassroots sentiment in the period leading up to Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party."
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Jain continued that he "trauma of the 2024 presidential election defeat appears to have ruptured" the relationship between congressional Democrats and their base, with a failure to stand up to President Donald Trump causing anger to spill over.
"A review of Quinnipiac University’s annual first-quarter congressional polling reveals that, for the first time in the poll’s history, congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings," Jain wrote.
The problem seems to revolve around which direction the party should head, with recent Gallup polling finding that "45 percent wanted the party to become more moderate, while 29 percent felt it should become more liberal, and 22 percent wanted it to stay the same," the report stated.
Jain wrote that congressional Democrats "hoping that the unrest blows over" should learn from past Republican mistakes.
"The Republican establishment learned it the hard way in 2010 and the two subsequent election cycles, when House and Senate incumbents and other party-backed candidates were frequently dragged into bruising primaries that resulted in shocking upsets."