Democrats need a “Come to Jesus” moment, but refuse to do so.
Normally, after a significant electoral defeat, the national party that lost conducts a soul-searching analysis of what went wrong and why. So far, Democrats refuse to do this.
Consequently, Democrats face three extraordinary problems that if not faced head-on will make their attempt at a political comeback in the 2026 mid-term elections very difficult: (1) they need a frank and honest assessment of why they lost to President Donald Trump, (2) they need to agree on what their message is going forward, and (3) they need to find the right messenger.
The common refrains among Democrats about why they lost last November are that Vice President Kamala Harris did not have enough time to win the election with only 107 days to campaign and that voters refused to accept a woman, much less a minority woman, as President because voters were racists.
This type of thinking is dangerous because neither excuse would have been true if the Vice President had done a relatively decent job and had worked to reach out to Americans on issues that they genuinely cared about.
A post-election review is incumbent, but who is to lead such an effort? No one is speaking about this because to do so is to recognize that the election was fettered away by being only against Donald Trump and not about what the Democrats would do if elected to fix the previous four years problems and move the country forward.
Until Democrats face this task with dedication and fervor, their fight to capture the electorate will be feeble and misplaced.
Which brings us to the second issue that confronts Democrats, which is messaging.
Unfortunately, for the Democrats, the Radical Far Left still holds the high ground in the intraparty fight over whether to keep going in the direction that cost them the last election or move more to the center to appeal to a wider share of voters.
Ivory tower academicians, Hollywood elites, and ultra-progressive Democratic elected officials do not believe in their heart of hearts that their message was their problem, they believe that it just was not articulated well enough by the word salad Vice President. And because they will not have a real look in the mirror, they will continue to accept this false premise.
As in all national elections, the “Economy Stupid” is the primary issue that voters were concerned about. After Biden induced-inflation, and then the idiotic, laughable, Bidenconomics concept that the economy was good despite what voters felt every day at the kitchen table, and finally the inability of President Joe Biden or VP Harris to acknowledge the reality and promise a solution that would turn things around, voters were left with the only alternative – to elect a President in Donald Trump who had enjoyed a much better economy during his term in office.
To exacerbate matters, the second top issue was immigration, a national security issue that the Democrats had fumbled from the very beginning. Their relentless campaign of helping illegal immigrants, foreign criminals, anyone, and everyone from around the world, including cartel members and their drug mules, into our country eventually wore down Americans who traditionally are welcoming of immigrants who helped to make America what it is now.
Giving this critical issue portfolio to Harris was a gift so long as she actually visited the southern border, did something to stem the tide, vet the foreigners, and curtail drug smuggling. But that ran counter to what the Radical Far Left wanted as they believed that these people would ultimately become future voters aligned with progressive Democratic values. By the time Harris became the presidential nominee last summer, her assignment became an anchor around her neck, and she woefully refused to realize it.
Messaging was key and Trump used the airwaves, voluminous campaign events and speeches, almost daily interviews, and frank talk that Americans were willing to accept even as they might not like the messenger, to drive home issues that mattered to them.
Expensive electric vehicles, unnecessarily high gas prices because Biden-Harris refused to drill, baby drill, wokeness that incentivized racial divisions (just like when President Barrack Obama was in office), making voters pay for college graduate loans they did not incur, exhibiting habitual ineptness in federal disaster recovery efforts, forcing voters to pay for transgender operations of prepubescent youths, criminals and military enlistees, allowing fantasy-laden people to declare that men and women declarations were heresy, naively backing illegal immigrant criminals who commit heinous crimes, and condemning all Republicans as being Nazis, racists, and imbeciles when that was roughly half of the voters in America, doomed Dem’s.
These cultural battles while an imperative for Radical Far Left Democrats, were eschewed by average voters who cared more about the cost of food, reaching for the American dream of home ownership, helping their children to leave the nest with an opportunity to thrive, and not worry about walking around the neighborhood without getting assaulted, raped, or murdered.
At the rate that Democrats are going, it does not appear that they are going to change their message because the Radical Far Left remain the most vocal supporters of the losing message. Fealty to the counter-culture is way more important than victory as their zeal is unbounded, and unburdened.
If Democrats can not settle on the correct messaging, then at least they need to have a messenger that can articulate some message that strikes a responsive chord with the average American voter.
To date, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, and Jasmine Crockett, individually or even collectively, do not help their laboring cause of having the right messenger. Each of them articulates the same losing message that voters rejected in the last election, but with a flair.
The Fight Oligarchy Tour is a double loser. First, it only encourages the Radical Far Left, which is without question the philosophical core of the Democratic party, albeit only a small percentage of even Democratic voters.
Second, it refuses to acknowledge that each Party has its own Oligarchy. Replacing the Republican Oligarchy with the Democratic Oligarchy of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, JB Pritzker, and Gavin Newsome, who helped raise and spend $1.5B in just 15 weeks, is not, in the long run, a winning argument with the average voter, who, in most cases, wishes a pox on both parties.
Recent national polling has the Democrats registering historical lows in the 20th percentile, once occupied by Republicans. Over the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, the needle for Democrats is barely moving, and it will continue to flounder until an appropriate centrist Democrat grabs the helm.
Who might that be?
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is one, and the other is Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. You could even add Sen. John Fetterman, though he is already being pummeled because of his support for Israel. The chances of them being accepted by the Radical Far Left is “De minimise.”
Yet the Democrats are still alive and fighting because of their co-conspirators in the Main Stream Media (MSM), who on a daily basis, convincingly slant the news for the diminishing number of people who watch their channels.
Just a couple of weeks ago, NBC and CBS push-polled Americans into believing that President Trump is not popular. Their only problem was that once politicos researched their crosstabs, they quickly realized that in both polls, the networks purposely undercounted the number of Trump supporters, which significantly skewed the poll numbers.
To compound their relentless assault on American viewers, the MSM has, according to the Media Research Center, reported negatively about the first 100 days of President Trump’s new term a whopping 92.2% of the time. In Biden’s single term, he garnered 59% positive news stories in the identical time frame. This is why the MSM is becoming more irrelevant: Americans are not as dumb as the High Lords of the MSM think they are.
To add insult to injury, now former President Biden is “coming out” with Jill and this is causing additional problems that the Democrats do not need, especially now. Some Democratic strategists realize that this hurts the Democratic brand at a time when Harris is, as is her style, staying quiet and doing nothing but attending publicity fluff events.
Harris did not lose because Americans would not vote for a woman, she lost because she was an empty vessel. There is nothing behind the fake smile and pantsuits, which is probably why she may get elected Governor of California.
With only 15 months until primary elections happen, Democrats keep digging themselves a deeper hole, and no one, including the MSM, is helping them to understand that they need instead a complete rehabilitation.
They need to go someplace, conduct a conclave, and have an honest discussion of what the future looks like, what messages the Republicans hold dear that are resonating, and then how best they can co-opt them. Perhaps former President Bill Clinton can help them understand how to accomplish that because he was the last Democratic president to do that effectively.
And then they have to find a leader who can speak the truth about their Party and its obvious shortcomings, and deliver hope, not joy, to the American people that there is a rational Democratic alternative to the status quo.
Barney Bishop III, is a former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, and the former CEO of Associated Industries of Florida (AIF), known as “The Voice of Florida Business.” He currently is the CEO of Barney Bishop Consulting LLC in Tallahassee and has since become a happy registered Republican voter. He can be reached at [email protected]
