Rank-and-File Dems to Leaders: It’s Time to Take the Gloves Off
Recent polls show approval of Donald Trump hovering in a deep unlit trough around 40 percent. Yet his dismal ratings have done little to bolster the reputation of the opposition party. Commentators across the political spectrum have overwhelmingly agreed that the Democratic brand is shot. The American Prospect called it “damaged.” NBC said it was “weak.” Rolling Stone said it was “cooked.” Semafor announced that “left-wing ideas” had “wrecked” it, and Bill Maher compared Democrats to has-been companies like Sears or Kodak that had “screwed themselves out of relevance.” The pejoratives aren’t confined to the armchair critics. Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego lamented, with only slightly more finesse than the news outlets, the “national brand problem.” Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado, delicately agreed that the branding is “problematic.”
Is all lost for the Democrats, or is there opportunity in the shambles? When the only party offering a bulwark against Trump’s murderous, crackpot regime appears to be losing the vibes war—and as we approach the midterm elections that offer our last best chance to rein in the madness—these questions are not merely of political interest; they are a matter of existential importance.
And so, in a survey of 2,421 Democratic voters, conducted January 7–16 by Embold Research, The New Republic sought to explore what rank-and-file Democrats want to see from their candidates and elected representatives. Is it true, as one popular strain of criticism goes, that some of the party’s more liberal social ideas are a liability? How important to voters are housing, prescription drug prices, trans rights? How should we approach economic policy, foreign policy? How conciliatory or aggressive should party leaders be toward their foes? What, in other words, do Democrats want from Democrats?
Perhaps the most notable conclusion to draw from our poll is just how unified committed Democrats appear to be on a range of central issues. To put it in a nutshell, the rank and file overwhelmingly want their elected leaders to fight, and they know who they want their leaders to fight against: the superrich and corporate America.
Embold Research’s Andrea Everett was particularly struck by the “strength of sentiment favoring regulation”: Eight out of 10 respondents believe in strong government oversight over business. This emphasis was “very consistent across the board,” Everett said, and suggests that Democrats are “skeptical of business doing the right thing on its own.” A full 93 percent of respondents said they felt it was important to raise taxes on the rich; 91 percent want to raise taxes on corporations; and 77 percent want to regulate or break up big tech. When we asked whether the system is “rigged” against people like them, a resounding 71 percent said yes. Who is rigging it? Sixty-four percent blamed corporations and the rich.
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It’s impossible to come away from these results without concluding that economic populism is a winning message for loyal Democrats. This was true across those who identify as liberals, moderates, or progressives: An unmistakable majority wants a party that will fight harder against the corporations and rich people they see as responsible for keeping them down.
And if the system is rigged, as so many of these committed Democrats believe, it stands to reason that they would want their leaders to take bolder, more decisive action to stand up for them. In what seems like a striking repudiation of the rhetoric employed by Democratic presidents and presidential candidates over the years about working across the aisle, a clear majority—75 percent—would prefer that Democrats “be more aggressive in calling out Republicans,” while just 25 percent chose “focus more on working with Republicans.” Likewise, 62 percent said they want to see the party call out “corporate wrongdoing,” while only 38 percent said the party should “focus more on supporting businesses.”
But although the poll shows strong agreement among Democrats about who their enemies are and how they want to see their party go after them, it also implies real disappointment in their elected representatives’ actions on that front. Respondents overwhelmingly attested to frustration with what they see as their party’s timidity: A whopping 69 percent agree that it would be somewhat to extremely appropriate to describe Democrats as “weak.”
On a more hopeful note, our poll shows a persistent faith in what government can do: Nine of 10 respondents believe that it can make people’s lives better, and 81 percent believe “society mostly moves forward” by way of “government programs and solutions like Social Security and civil rights laws” rather than the innovations of the free market. This belief remains despite what appears to be a profound loss of confidence in the current administration (when rating their opinions of various institutions, respondents ranked the U.S. government near the bottom, only 2 points above oil companies). Unions, too, broadly retain Democrats’ good opinion; 87 percent view them favorably. How well our democracy functions, on the other hand? Just 7 percent feel good about that.
There was also notable accord about whom they want to see representing the party in the 2028 election. While 81 percent view Kamala Harris favorably, a strong 66 percent think she “had her shot” and shouldn’t run again. Perhaps even more surprisingly, a plurality of poll respondents—46 percent—want to see a progressive represent the party in 2028, as opposed to a liberal or a moderate. This proportion is higher than the percentage self-identifying as progressive, which clocked in at 32 percent. Perhaps this signals a shift in how voters are calculating the old shibboleth of “electability.” In 2020, a prevailing narrative was that voters chose their primary candidates based on how likely they were to be elected in the general, as Everett observed: “Maybe the way they’re answering that question is changing.”
Certainly there is evidence in this survey of a shift in attitudes toward the left wing of the party. When asked their opinions of various lawmakers, respondents felt most favorably inclined toward Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (They also like Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, who came in third and fourth, respectively, after Kamala Harris. And Biden, despite the shame heaped on him for dropping out of the 2024 race too late, came in fifth, with 72 percent expressing a favorable view of him.) Perhaps thanks in part to New York’s freshly inaugurated mayor, Zohran Mamdani, nearly three-quarters of respondents said they think that the label of “socialist” either doesn’t matter or is a plus. These answers may be more suggestive of respondents’ personal feelings than how they assess those of other voters—whether they think a socialist could win, for instance, “in Omaha,” as Everett put it. But either way, the data shows an undeniable softening toward a term that Republicans and quite a number of Democrats still seem to take for granted is an insult. If our poll is to be believed, for a majority of Democrats, that insult no longer lands.
For the moderates reading these results in alarm, take heart: There is still an identifiable pragmatic strain among loyal Democrats. Whereas 80 percent believe it’s important to protect transgender Americans from discrimination, they were more ambivalent about allowing trans teen athletes to compete in their gender identity, which just 39 percent think it’s important to do. And when it comes to electoral strategy, a wide majority believe it is more important to win over undecided voters than it is to energize the base (66 percent versus 34). They are more split about rights advocacy groups, which are often blamed for swaying lawmakers toward niche positions that don’t represent the opinions of the base: Exactly half feel such groups do good work, and half think they have too much power.
Such a split, in this data, is the exception rather than the rule. The base is far more united than it sometimes appears to be. Democrats may be dispirited by their recent losses and the daily injury of Trump’s deliberate ongoing assault on government, but they have hardly lost track of their values or their aims. They wholeheartedly believe in regulation and taxation. They want to keep a tight rein on corporations and the rich. And they want representatives who know how to fight. Strategists and candidates, be encouraged: There is a strong brand here for the taking.