The Party That Woke Broke
29th March 2025
Democrats have been wallowing in the despair of last November’s elections for months, unable—or maybe unwilling—to crawl out of the pit of public opinion they find themselves in. “It’s hard to win if you don’t know why you lost,” Axios’ Alex Thompson observed. But it’s even harder, some would say, if you know and do nothing about it.
To most people, the solution to the party’s problems is simple. After a year of losing ground with virtually every demographic—men, black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, young people, Independents, suburban moms—the polling all points to Democrats being completely out of step with everyday voters. So why not just abandon the extremism Americans rejected? For the party of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the answer is much more complicated.
The crisis facing Democrats isn’t about their identity; they have one. The crisis is that they can’t moderate their ideology—or embrace it—without severe consequences. As National Review’s Rich Lowry put it, “The reason Joe Biden won in 2020 is he didn’t seem like a progressive, and one reason that his party lost in 2024 is that he governed like one.” For Democrats, ideological extremism is their kryptonite and their lifeblood. It’s what excites the base and repels the populace. In other words, it’s a recipe for long-term political disaster.