The Democratic Party's Path Forward Primary

Democrats are offering competing visions for how the party can rebuild—whose will prevail?

LEFT: Pete Buttigieg. CENTER: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Image Credit: Getty Images. RIGHT: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Image Credit: Getty Images.

As we’ve now crossed the 100-day mark of Donald Trump’s second term, it’s worth noting that it’s not just a milepost for Trump but also for the Democratic Party.

The party of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, completely shut out of government at the federal level since January 20, has had 100-plus days to prove itself capable of leading the resistance to MAGA fascism. So how are the Dems doing?

While Trump has had a decidedly disastrous first 100 days, for Democrats, the news is a bit more mixed.

On one hand, the Democratic Party is not exactly beloved, coming in at 41% favorable rating in the latest Fox News poll, down from 47% last July. Notably, the decline is due to a drop in favorability from Democrats (-10%) and Independents (-11%.)

At the same time, voters are ready to give Democrats back the House majority, preferring them in the generic Congressional ballot by seven points over Republicans.

By comparison, at this point in 2017, Democrats led Republicans by five points in the generic ballot. They went on to retake the majority in the 2018 midterm elections, gaining 40 House seats and winning the popular vote by 6.7%.

It’s somewhat surprising that Democrats are faring better this year than eight years ago, considering the party was arguably in much better shape then than it is now. In 2017, Democrats were coming off a successful two-term Democratic presidency, and Trump’s victory was largely seen as a fluke of the Electoral College.

2024’s defeat felt much different, leaving Democrats in the political wilderness. The party was at a loss for how to win back voters, many of whom had traditionally voted Democratic but shifted rightward in 2024.

And now, just over 100 days into Trump’s term, Democrats are still struggling to answer that question: How do we move forward and rebuild in this new era of Trump?

Several Democrats are stepping forward to offer theories. I’ve broken these down into essentially three camps: The Messengers, The Fighters, and The Reformers. In today’s piece, I’ll lay out examples of each and explore whether any one theory of leadership has the best shot at returning Democrats to Congressional majorities and the presidency in the years to come.

The Messengers

This group of Democrats believes that we can win elections if we learn how to reach voters who have swung to the right, especially within the so-called “manosphere.” They want to correct a mistake Democrats were accused of making in 2024, namely, in a time of increased diversification of media, how can we deliver the Democratic message in a real way where voters actually are?

In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom launched a podcast called This Is Gavin Newsom. While bold as a concept, it soon ran into rough waters as a predictable result of the line-up Newsom had booked. His first guest was right-wing agitator and MAGA darling Charlie Kirk, who goaded the Governor into conceding that trans women competing in women’s sports is “unfair.”

This drew major backlash from progressives and the LGBTQ+ community. It seemed to many a sign that Newsom was planting a flag, betting that the culture was going to continue to swing toward Trump and MAGA, and that he was planning to be that Democrat.

While Newsom has disputed this characterization, the fact is that with his launch, Newsom platformed three notorious MAGA figures: Kirk on March 6, conservative talk radio host Michael Savage on March 10, and renowned white supremacist and January 6th architect Steve Bannon on March 12.

As The New Yorker put it:

The point of all this, Newsom explains in an introductory segment, is “tackling tough questions, engaging with people who don’t always agree with me, debating without demeaning.” Newsom seems to believe that regular Americans have grown tired of polarization and want to see ideological enemies find common ground.

Newsom of course could have accomplished this without choosing to brand his podcast from the start as the place to go to normalize MAGA extremism. Considering the more liberal (or at least, normie) bent of his subsequent guests, Newsom must have gotten the message. Or perhaps he saw that Trump and MAGA were swiftly crashing and burning and that he had made the wrong bet from the start.

Either way, Newsom clearly believed that being an effective messenger for the Democrats meant elevating MAGA figures and giving their views a platform. But that’s not the only model out there. Instead of inviting MAGA in, what about meeting MAGA voters where they are?

That is Pete Buttigieg’s approach. In the Trump 2.0 era, the former Transportation Secretary has headed into spaces where Democrats rarely venture, with essentially the same goal as Newsom, namely, to build bridges with “the other side.”

Buttigieg has long had a reputation for going into the proverbial Lion’s den, such as Fox News, and owning the interviewer. By leading with facts and Democratic values while winning over right-leaning audiences, he has earned praise from Democrats across the political spectrum.

Recently, Buttigieg went on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast, the sort of bro comedy “manosphere” podcast that Democrats ceded to Republicans in 2024 (Flagrant was one of the many podcasts Trump went on last year that Harris did not.)

During the almost 3-hour show, Buttigieg held a masterclass in messaging, communicating not only as a former Democratic candidate and official but as a regular guy: a veteran, a married gay man, and a dad of two adopted Black children.

He went viral in particular for expressing an inspiring Democratic vision for America, which wowed the hosts and had the Internet cheering.

During the interview, Buttigieg shocked the hosts by informing them that Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon referred to AI as “A-1” during a speech. He also explained in a clear and succinct way what was really behind Musk’s and Trump’s lie that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security benefits (a message that one host confessed he thought was “a fact.”)

Buttigieg later explained the value of going into spaces where Democrats rarely tread. When he goes on MSNBC, he noted, he is one of many people on the network saying the same things. But when he goes on Fox or a podcast like Flagrant, it’s often the first time the hosts—and importantly—the audience are hearing them.

As Brian Tyler Cohen explained:

“Pete going into these spaces is what we need to be doing. Our only job right now is to expand the tent. Our job right now is to bring people back into the tent. We do that by making the case where people are.”

This message of bridge building has been echoed by Maryland’s Democratic Governor, Wes Moore, who said during his commencement speech at Lincoln University, the historically Black college his grandfather attended:

“We need to be a country that really gets to know each other again and works together and serves together.”

He made the case for reframing patriotism as a Democratic value:

“Our country is currently divided into two camps, not left versus right or red versus blue, but between those who use patriotism as a club to beat others and those who feel ashamed to bear the flag, between those who think loving America means hating half the people in it and those who allow cynicism about our nation’s history to obscure their aspirations.”

And even sought to rework Trump’s classic catchphrase in hopes of delivering a Democratic message to those who usually don’t hear it.

“Making America great doesn’t mean telling people, ‘You’re not wanted.’ Making America great doesn’t mean saying, ‘You’re not needed.’ Making America great means telling people, ‘The ambitions of this country would be incomplete without your help.’ ”

The Fighters

If the Messengers seek to find some common ground with Republicans, the Fighters of the Democratic Party want to vanquish them. This group is best personified by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the populist firebrands who have barnstormed the country filling stadiums and arenas with their Fighting Oligarchy tour of western and midwestern states, notably hitting many red states and districts.

As for the impact Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are having, the numbers don’t lie.

According to The New York Times,

Roughly 36,000 people in Los Angeles. More than 34,000 attendees in Denver. And another 30,000 on Tuesday night near Sacramento.

Those monster crowds — more than 200,000 people in all, according to organizers — have turned out to cheer on a fiery anti-Trump, anti-billionaire message…

A stop in deep-red Nampa, Idaho reportedly drew 12,500 people, the largest political event since Obama visited in 2008.

The message of the anti-oligarchy tour is a reboot of Sanders’s presidential campaigns, as the NYT put it:

The system is broken, with the wealthy enriching themselves while others scrape by.

“All over this country, people are struggling, every single day, just to survive,” Mr. Sanders told the crowd on Tuesday in Folsom, Calif. “Brothers and sisters, in the richest country in the history of the world, we can do a hell of a lot better than that!”

This message has new resonance with the re-emergence of Trump in the White House, as he has empowered Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to decimate government, and has elevated various millionaires to the top level of government without any discernible qualifications.

But just as important is the message these fighters are sending to other Democratic leaders:

Even as some top Democrats tack to the center or try to find common ground with the emboldened Republican president, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez dismiss the notion of any concessions.

In other words: we must give no ground to Trump and his pliant Republicans.

The sheer numbers of rally attendees for the Fighting Oligarchy tour demonstrate the ravenous appetite the Democratic base has for leaders willing to stand up and take on Trump and Musk in such an unapologetic way.

And while some on the left are distrustful and cynical about the motives of the tour, AOC made clear at a recent stop in Montana that it’s not just about flexing muscle in this moment. It’s about actually working to block Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson’s regressive harmful agenda.

Illinois Governor and likely 2028 presidential aspirant JB Pritzker is taking a similar tack. Just last week Pritzker delivered an impassioned speech in New Hampshire laying out his vision for how Democrats should be positioning themselves in this new Trump era.

“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.”

He went on:

“These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They must understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have.”

Pritzker gave voice to the millions of Americans who march and protest against Donald Trump’s authoritarianism every week, tapping into activist energy in what many read as his first speech of a possible 2028 presidential run.

The Reformers

There’s a third school of thought that many Democrats are advancing, which focuses on the sins of the party and leans into criticism of Democratic leaders, hoping to reform—and ultimately reboot—the party from within.

As we might expect, among the Reformers there is some overlap with the Fighters category. For instance, while Pritzker framed Republicans as the enemy we must fiercely fight against, he also took aim at Democrats, especially those who are simply waiting for Trump and the right to implode.

As Pritzker said in his recent New Hampshire speech:

“Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces. We need to knock off the rust of poll-tested language, decades of stale decorum.”

His critique seemed to target fellow potential 2028 aspirants, particularly the “messengers” like Newsom and perhaps even Buttigieg, criticizing Democrats generally for

…flocking to podcasts and cable news shows to admonish fellow Democrats for not caring enough about the struggles of working families.

He added, pointedly,

"Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts and gumption."

Likewise, Bernie Sanders often goes after the Democratic establishment in his messaging, as he did in a recent email to supporters:

While members of the Democratic Establishment have occasionally applauded our efforts on the road, a number of them and their corporate media backers are becoming increasingly nervous. They warn their followers that progressives shouldn’t be taken too seriously, that we are “far left,” “extreme” and “out of touch” with American society.

According to these politicians, analysts, media pundits and wealthy campaign donors, the future of the Democratic Party lies in “moderation.” We shouldn’t be talking about oligarchy…

According to these leaders of the Democratic Establishment, the path forward is to continue doing exactly what they have been doing for the last 10 years. In other words, tell the world how bad Donald Trump is while continuing to defend a rigged and corrupt economic and political system that makes the rich richer, while working families fall further and further behind.

Sanders’s message is likely targeting the likes of Chuck Schumer, whom critics charge leads the Senate minority with a bizarre lack of urgency, as though doing the same old thing, or even nothing, will somehow give us a different result than 2024.

But more pointedly, Sanders appears to be targeting Elissa Slotkin, the first-term U.S. Senator from Michigan who won her election last year even as Kamala Harris lost the state.

As Slotkin has begun to lay out her own vision for where the Democratic Party should go from here, she has leaned into a reform message with an eye toward getting back in touch with working-class—notably Midwestern in particular—voters, and in her case, that means picking a fight with the left.

Politico recently reported on her Democratic “war plan”:

In the first of a series of speeches about the Democratic Party’s path out of the wilderness, the Michigan senator said she will span everything from strategy to tactics and tone, acknowledging public perception of the party as “weak and woke” needs to change. She is urging Democrats to “fucking retake the flag” with appeals to voters’ sense of patriotism, to adopt “the goddamn Alpha energy” of Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell and to embrace an “airing out” of potential 2028 presidential candidates in a broadly contested primary.

And in a not-so-subtle rebuke of Sanders and AOC:

Democrats should stop using the term “oligarchy,” a phrase she said doesn’t resonate beyond coastal institutions, and just say that the party opposes “kings.” And to beat their weak and woke rap, Democrats should channel the “no-bullshit” energy of the Lions’ Campbell, she said, “A wonderfully sappy guy with his players,” but who is also “smart and tough and lovable.”

To which Sanders replied:

“The American people are not as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are,” an unusually pointed Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

“I think they understand very well, when the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy.”

Slotkin was intentional in picking such a public rhetorical fight with Sanders, casting herself as a middle road folksy alternative to the “coastal elite” caricature often weaponized against Sanders and AOC. And she is very much betting that the Democrats’ path to electoral success will run through the Midwest and will require winning back the working-class voters that helped deliver the White House to Donald Trump in 2024.

But such a reform message need not come from the political center. One progressive who wants to change how Democrats are governing in this moment is David Hogg, who ran and won an election to be Vice Chair of the DNC. He recently announced that his organization Leaders We Deserve would fund primaries against sitting Democrats in Congress.

Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. In an interview with POLITICO, Hogg said the group will not back primary challenges in battleground districts because “I want us to win the majority,” nor will it target members solely based on their age.

“We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg said. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.”

This is a no-no within the DNC, which often prioritizes the protection of incumbents over ideological purity, particularly in safe blue seats where they hope not to invest resources.

New DNC chair Ken Martin rebuked Hogg for using his platform as an officer within the party to also put his thumb on the scales in primaries, emphasizing that it is the voters who pick their representatives, not the party:

In a statement, Martin said that “in order to ensure we are as effective as possible at electing Democrats to office, it is the DNC’s longstanding position that primary voters — not the national party — determine their Democratic candidates for the general election.”

But Martin also issued an ultimatum to Hogg: Get out of the primary business or give up your Vice Chair seat at the DNC.

Hogg has made clear that he is willing to lose his DNC position over this fight. Supporters argue that Hogg is simply responding to an uprising of next generation Democrats that is already happening organically whether Martin likes it or not.

For example, per CNN:

In his bid to unseat Rep. Andre Carson, the 50-year-old Democrat who has represented Indiana’s 7th Congressional District since 2008, 34-year-old challenger George Hornedo has argued the Democratic Party isn’t working, nationally or locally.

Hornedo is part of a growing wave of young Democrats who have launched bids to shake up the party’s ranks by ousting incumbent House members in deep blue seats. They see voter frustrations with what they’ve described as Democrats’ ineffective response to President Donald Trump’s actions as a mandate to remake the party.

The examples span from California:

“It is about needing new energy in Congress to actually meet the moment where we are,” said 37-year-old Jake Rakov, who is challenging his former boss, 15-term Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California. “We just need people who are more active communicators, who can move the party into the 21st century and don’t operate like it’s 1996.”

To Illinois:

The 26-year-old social media star Kat Abughazaleh, who launched her run against Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky before reports the 80-year-old progressive planned to retire, said frustration with Democrats’ response to Trump is “probably what unites a lot of us” who are taking on House incumbents.

“We’re done with this administration and we don’t think that Democrats are doing enough,” she said. “We can’t be like Chuck Schumer and write a bunch of strongly-worded letters for a president who doesn’t like reading.”

These reformers in their own ways are urging Democrats to change the way they communicate, and importantly, the way they fight against the dire threat posed by Trump and the Republican Party.

So, Whose Path Is The Winning One?

Most members of the Democratic base would agree with elements of all three of these categories.

Democrats do need to expand their communication beyond the echo chambers of folks who already agree with them. They also need to communicate in a more authentic, less poll-tested way.

With his appearance on the Flagrant podcast, Pete Buttigieg set a model for others to emulate. Very few Democrats can do it as effectively as he can, of course. But hopefully, the success of that foray into the manosphere will inspire others to lower their threshold for risk and expand the base of people ingesting Democrats’ message as part of their media diet.

Additionally, Democrats do need to take on Trump and his MAGA minions head-on and not be afraid of their own shadow.

I’m reminded of what Nancy Pelosi told a fellow Democrat amid George W. Bush’s crusade to privatize Social Security back in 2005. When Pelosi was asked when Democrats would be offering their own alternative plan to reform Social Security, Pelosi reportedly responded “Never. Does never work for you?’ Democrats went on to retake the House the next year, elevating Pelosi to the Speakership. That is the Fighter energy we need right now.

And as for reforming the party, few would argue the Democratic Party doesn’t need new blood and a new winning strategy to take on this unprecedented threat of Trump 2.0. Current leadership has not yet demonstrated it is up to the task.

We need to walk the line between kicking a party already in the doghouse with the American people and asserting that Democrats are the only sane alternative to lead the country. That’s a tricky balancing act.

Dan Pfieffer summed up the challenge for Democratic leaders well in his recent Message Box post:

There is a hunger for courageous, authentic leadership. The public rewards those who speak clearly, loudly, and frequently about the dangers of Trump. This hunger explains the massive crowds coming out to see Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on their quest to “Fight the Oligarchy,” the online response to Senator Chris Murphy’s videos, and the masses who tuned in to watch Senator Cory Booker’s record filibuster last month.

The Democrats, laying back, over-reading the polls, or adhering to the “roll over and play dead” strategy, are missing the moment. Whether running for office in 2028 or playing a bigger role in the party, now is the time to step up and speak up. Those who don’t will pay a price.

As Democrats like Pritzker and Buttigieg appear to be signaling their intention to run in the 2028 presidential primary with stops in New Hampshire and Iowa, one thing is certain: there is a broader primary already underway, a primary of ideas about which path will deliver the Democratic Party electoral victories moving forward.

And that healthy competition is a good thing. Whichever vision—or combination of visions—wins in the Democratic marketplace of ideas will light the way forward for 2026 and 2028.

As Wes Moore intends to tell Democrats during a trip to the early primary state of South Carolina later this month, per CNN:

“In this moment, our job is not to simply go into hiding until there’s another election. The measure of our success will be how we choose to lead.”

In the end, all these Democrats share the same goals: retaking the gavel from Speaker Johnson next year, minimizing the harm Trump’s damaging agenda can have on the American people for the next 1355 days, and ensuring whoever in the GOP emerges as Trump’s heir in 2028 loses soundly.

On that path forward, we can all agree.