LIZ PEEK: Warring Democrats will need more than Trump hatred to win in 2028
To paraphrase the late President Richard Nixon, what will Democrats do when they don’t have Donald Trump to kick around anymore?
It’s a valid question. Currently, shared hatred of Donald Trump is the baling wire holding the fractured Democratic Party together. The party is deeply divided over nearly every facet of government and policy, with progressives and moderates warring over taxes, gender issues, AI, climate change, law enforcement and Israel.
It isn’t at all clear who the party’s leaders are. Is it Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose approval rating nationally among Democrats barely clears 40%, or is it leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who may challenge Schumer for his Senate seat in 2028 but who is currently, astonishingly, under fire from progressives for trying to reach moderate voters?
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is among those criticizing his party’s lack of "vision," telling "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker, "We know very well what we oppose. What are we for?"
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He’s not the only Democrat critical of his party. At a recent DNC meeting in New Orleans, party officials were lambasted by progressives over their ongoing refusal to release the official autopsy explaining why they were scorched in the 2024 elections, a report that presumably could guide them forward. Axios has reported that DNC Chair Ken Martin fears the report could unleash "unnecessary party infighting"; he’s probably right.
Approaching the midterms, President Trump is less popular than he was during his prior term in office — by 7 points — but Democrats are a whopping 30 points behind where they were in 2018. Given the president’s many bold and controversial policy moves — from waging war against Iran, rebuilding the White House, implementing tariffs, bullying NATO and torching climate initiatives — those are remarkable readings. He has given the country — and Democrats — plenty to rail about.
Recently, scores of Democrats have threatened President Trump with impeachment or removal from office. Going into the midterm elections, Democrats, including California Rep. Ro Khanna and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, have promised that if they win control of the House, they will impeach President Trump again. In a recent MS Now interview, Khanna said, "Absolutely, he should be impeached now ... and the Democrats will impeach him once we take back the House and should impeach him for all the things he’s done."
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While not specifying what those "things" are, Khanna is, in effect, promising to put the country through more show trials and more bitter congressional hearings that do not improve the lives of average Americans and, assuming Democrats don’t achieve the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict, are an exercise in futility.
Not only have Democrats threatened impeachment, they have also vowed to go after anyone who worked in the White House as part of the current administration and even private businesses that cooperated with the Trump White House. This, from a party that wails that President Trump is out for "vengeance" and has weaponized his Justice Department to punish his enemies.
The leader of that program was former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who has ignominiously been drummed out of public office, accused of sexual assault. The ex-congressman proposed to act as judge and jury in making President Trump pay for his sins, promising: "We’re going into the majority a year from now. ... We will bring oversight and accountability, we will subpoena the Department of Justice, but also private actors who have done these drug deals with the administration, college campuses, entertainment companies, law firms. Accountability is coming."
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The singular focus on "resisting" Donald Trump may provide plenty of dopamine and give Democrats ample opportunity to get together and parade around in weird costumes, but it isn’t building credibility or a popular political party. A recent CNN poll shows only 28% of Americans hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party, with the Republican Party a few points higher at 32%.
If Democrats believed they had more to offer, they wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to reshape the electoral map in purple Virginia to their advantage and wouldn’t be working so hard to topple the Electoral College, which they believe favors Republicans. That effort is real and, according to a recent Washington Post op-ed, is gaining momentum.
When Trump leaves office, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party will go after moderate Democrats full-bore. The Zohran Mamdani-Bernie Sanders faction will insist on pushing tax hikes that threaten our economy, limitations on data centers and Big Tech that will undermine our global lead in innovation, and workplace policies that will slow productivity, as they have in France and Germany, while stifling energy development in service to green activists who are ignorant of reality.
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Their growing clout among young — often ignorant — voters makes these threats real. The election of Mamdani, a young, telegenic socialist with no meaningful credentials, to be mayor of New York was a wake-up call to adults in the room. Democrats are increasingly being led and funded by ideologues whose agendas are unrealistic and impossibly expensive.
Sadly, young voters have not been taught why socialism has repeatedly failed, leaving the citizens of once-wealthy countries worse off. They believed that Mamdani could deliver free buses and control rents without destroying the housing market. They actually look forward to a government-run grocery store that magically prices goods below market; they didn’t grow up reading about how people in the Soviet Union had to stand in line for hours to buy a loaf of bread in stores where the shelves were perpetually bare.
History suggests that Democrats will retake the House in November. They will run on an "affordability" agenda and hope voters don’t ask why the most expensive places to live in the U.S. are all run by Democrats. They will mostly bury their differences and campaign on opposing the president.
But come 2028, Democrats will go to war — with each other. And hating Donald Trump will not be good enough.