Democrats' identity crisis: Youth revolt rocks party after Trump comeback
The tract of political land where Democrats reside is unique.
It’s not the same political street address where they took up shop in 1995 after losing the House and Senate to the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 – which flipped control of the House to the GOP for the first time in 40 years. They still held the presidency then with President Bill Clinton.
It’s not the same zip code after the legendary House blowout in 2010 where they dropped an historic 63 seats. President Barack Obama remained in the White House.
It’s even a different electoral co-op for Democrats compared to 2016, when President Donald Trump unexpectedly prevailed over Hillary Clinton, winning in the Electoral College. Democrats controlled neither the House nor Senate in 2017. But a lack of support for Trump in Congress and his inexperience at governance undercut sizable portions of his legislative agenda.
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Fast-forward to 2025.
President Trump is back in the White House – this time after winning the popular vote and Electoral College, scoring a decisive knockout over former Vice President Kamala Harris. Republicans clung to power in the House and flipped the Senate. And the political real estate Democrats now occupy is a very foreign locale. They’re out of power in Washington. But President Trump returned to power resoundingly and emboldened. And this time, congressional Republicans – MAGA Republicans – stand foursquare behind Mr. Trump.
So it’s natural there’s Democratic infighting about what went wrong, who deserves blame and, more importantly, what direction the party should take next.
Here’s the schism:
Younger, more progressive Democrats are trying to weed out senior lawmakers and power brokers who have been in office for years.
Let’s start with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. She’s the best known of younger, energetic, left-leaning Democrats. She’s also the most-experienced figure in the Democrats’ youth movement. Ocasio-Cortez arrived on the scene, upsetting former Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., in a 2018 primary.
"We got them on their back foot. We’ve got them scared," said Ocasio-Cortez recently about MAGA-aligned Republicans.
They’re brash.
"Let’s go kick some a--! Let’s go win our young people back," thundered 25-year-old Democratic National Committee (DNC) Vice Chairman David Hogg.
And they’re blunt about Democratic errors and missteps.
"What if we didn’t suck?" asked 26-year-old Kat Abughazaleh, the Democratic Illinois congressional candidate and TikTok influencer.
Younger Democrats are trying to banish party veterans.
"We’ have to have a whole rebrand of the Democratic Party," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. "New leaders. Not the old guard."
Hogg is now spending $20 million to coax younger Democrats to primary longtime congressional incumbents.
"What we’re trying to do here is not just focus on primaries where there’s potentially an older incumbent. But more than anything, an ineffective person in that position. And replace with a generational leader," said Hogg on MSNBC.
Abughazaleh is primarying 80-year-old Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who is progressive. But she first came to Congress in 1998. She’s been a member of the House of Representatives longer than Abughazaleh has been alive.
"You have to look to the exceptions for real leadership, as the majority work from an outdated playbook. We need a makeover," said Abughazaleh.
But devouring your own is risky.
"Beating the other side is more important to many voters [rather] than who exactly is representing your own team," said University of Mary Washington political scientist Stephen Farnsworth.
But Farnsworth concedes that unrest brews on the Democratic side of the aisle.
"What we’re talking about here is a pretty powerful, generational clash within the Democratic Party over how to aggressively challenge President Trump," said Farnsworth. "The Democratic Party has to figure out where the sweet spot is. You have to be energized enough to motivate those voters who might stay at home."
Some top political handicappers like Nate Silver now believe that Ocasio-Cortez could be the odds-on favorite to emerge as the Democrats’ 2028 presidential nominee.
Now 35 years old, the New York Democrat is old enough to become president. Ocasio-Cortez has kept busy during the congressional recess by barnstorming the country with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the 83-year-old former Democratic presidential candidate.
"We’re here together because of an extreme concentration of power, greed and corruption which is taking over this country like never before," Ocasio-Cortez declared during a whistlestop in Missoula, Montana.
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So Democrats are searching for a toe-hold against the president. Younger voters favored Democrats for years. But a Fox News voter analysis found a staggering 11-point spike in voters under age 30 favoring Trump in 2024 compared with 2020.
"In the 2024 election, Democrats lost a lot of voters who had voted for Biden four years ago. Some of them went to Trump," said Farnsworth. "It seems to me that a more aggressive messaging strategy is certainly one way of connecting with voters who didn’t feel as warmly toward the Democrats in 2024 as they did in 2020."
Republicans found themselves at a loss in late 2012. They were perhaps overconfident that they were going to blow out President Obama. Republicans retreated to backrooms in Washington to conduct an "autopsy" about reaching out to minorities and retrenching the party. The party didn’t rely on the findings of that postmortem much. Republicans held the House and finally flipped the Senate after they tried to get control dating back to 2006.
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Republicans also won the House in 2010 after Obama’s big 2008 victory. In 2009, many Republicans felt it was best if the GOP took a couple of cycles to retrench their bench and agenda during the echoes of the presidency of George W. Bush. But Republicans found themselves in control of the House following the 2010 midterms. The party was more than happy to be back in power in the House. They viewed their victory as a repudiation of Obama and the policies of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. But, nonetheless, this was a strange piece of political landholdings to acquire for the GOP in 2010. In politics, you sometimes "inherit" property.
We don’t know what the political real estate market will look like in 2026. But Democrats now occupy a remote, unfamiliar province. Democrats are trying to map and navigate this alien territory.
But the key with any piece of real estate is how you use it. Do you build on it? Do you rent it out? Do you grow crops?
Democrats are trying to determine if drifting further to the left helps them use this particular land tract. Does cultivating youth boost them at the polls? Democrats are surveying their turf. Taking measurements. Understanding the topography and geology.
We’ll know in November 2026 if Democrats successfully converted their property into something useful. Or if it's a total wreck and undesirable.