The Republican Party Faces a Bigger Crisis Than the Democratic Party 

“Democrats Will Lose in 2028 Unless They Change Course Now” reads the alarmist headline to The New York Times opinion piece from presidential campaign strategist David Plouffe. In fairness to one of the architects of Barack Obama’s 2008 juggernaut, his article doesn’t say that. His argument is not that Democrats can’t win the next presidential election. Plouffe believes Democrats have “no credible path to sustained control of the Senate and the White House” (emphasis added) because “adjustments to the Electoral College map that look likely to come with the next census” will skew the maps rightward. Therefore, to “win races in politically unforgiving, even hostile, territory” requires “the party to overhaul its broken brand and stale agenda.” 

That Democrats need a fresh agenda for a post-Trump America is a given, whether “the party is still in crisis” as Plouffe asserts. Trump is raining hellfire on the federal government, the social safety net, the Constitution, the globalized economy, and the post-World War II liberal rules-based international order. Dusting off Center for American Progress papers from 2011 will not be sufficient.  

But panic can lead to rash decisions and half-baked thinking. For example, Plouffe insists that Democratic candidates should “call for new leadership, and say that, if elected, they wouldn’t support the current crop” and that the party should “get better about focusing on results, cutting red tape and getting things done for people, on time and under budget.” Yes, yes, Democrats have some people who should be thinking about retirements, and already 13 Democratic House members and four Senators are retiring this year (not counting those seeking other offices). However, indiscriminately dumping experienced leadership in favor of rookies may not deliver good policy results or win elections. (The 73-year-old Ohioan Sherrod Brown can’t run on a throw-the-old-guys-out argument to reclaim his U.S. Senate seat.) 

What’s the argument that Democrats cannot win successive elections beyond 2028? Plouffe writes: “After the adjustments to the Electoral College map that look likely to come with the next census, the Democratic presidential nominee could win all states won by Kamala Harris, plus the Blue Wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and still fall short of 270 electoral votes. An already unforgiving map gets more so, equally so in the Senate.” 

The Brennan Center for Justice has indeed produced post-2030 Census estimates that would give red states (Florida, Idaho, Texas, Utah) another 10 Electoral College votes, while subtracting the same from blue states (California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island). Two are lost from Rust Belt swing states (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). Two are gained by Sun Belt swing states (Arizona and North Carolina).  

This makes the map harder for Democrats, but not impossible. It just means that the 2024 blue states plus the Midwest’s purple states aren’t enough; Democrats must compete in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina—places where they have won statewide in recent years—and keep plugging away at the big prizes Florida and Texas, which have been stubbornly red but continue to draw new residents. 

In fact, it is precisely that population growth that poses a bigger problem for Republicans than for Democrats. The Brennan Center’s Michael Li observes:  

These potential gains are driven overwhelmingly by communities of color. Census data released over the summer shows that between 2022 and 2023, more than 84 percent of population growth in the South came from increases in the region’s Black, Latino, and Asian populations, with more than half of overall growth coming from Latinos. The majority of this growth, moreover, was in just four states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. 

At the risk of sounding like a naive Democratic operative, consider that the ongoing racial diversification of southeast and southwest states still poses a massive problem for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party. We know that Donald Trump stupefied Democrats by running an overtly racist 2024 campaign, yet still making inroads with minority voters and building a just-broad-enough coalition. He pulled off that trick by convincing enough Americans that he would make their cost of living more affordable, and any immigrant crackdown was going to be narrowly focused on criminals. He didn’t. It’s not. And Trump and his party have lost support because of it. 

We saw Democrats romp in the 2025 elections across red, blue, and purple areas, buoyed by a leftward shift among Latinos. I noted soon after the November elections that national and Texas polling showed hemorrhaging, with Trump’s job approval among Latinos running between 29 and 34 percent, far below the 46 percent share of the Latino vote he won in 2024. A poll from The Economist/YouGov—taken shortly after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis—shows Trump’s approval among Latinos down to 28 percent and among Blacks at just 9 percent.  

Trump bestowed on the GOP a tenuous coalition of unapologetic bigots and others willing to look the other way from racist rhetoric, initially held together by unrealistic economic promises, abandonments of longstanding party principles, and his own cult of personality. But that personality will never again be on the ballot, and the promises were not met. Now, Republican Party members can’t even articulate what their party’s principles are. The party once synonymous with low taxes is now responsible for high tariffs. The party, once in love with the free market, is directing the government to buy shares in private corporations and to meddle in merger deals politically. The party once proud of its role in winning the Cold War is cozying up to Russia and undermining NATO.  

Now that is a party in crisis. 

The Democrats face challenges, as any party does when out of power. Yes, they should bring in new blood. Yes, they should refresh their policy agenda. (The Washington Monthly has a few ideas about that.) But Democrats are not responsible for the current chaos. They have an excellent chance of taking control of the House after the November 2026 elections and—because they have strong candidates running in some red states—an outside shot at the Senate. Most importantly, Democrats still know who they are: the party that believes our government can improve people’s lives. Democrats should not look to the future with panic, but with confidence that they can compete across all regions of America.  

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