The Democratic Party seems unprepared and uninspired. Internally, the party is more consumed with relitigating 2024 than with looking toward 2026 [theatlantic]

 https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/06/democratic-party-no-kings-protest/683216/

The Democratic Party Slides Into Irrelevance

Why aren’t these boom times for America’s opposition party?

By David A. Graham

This past weekend marked a high for opposition to Donald Trump, and another low for the opposition party.

From Chula Vista, California, to Portland, Maine, and from Bellingham, Washington, to Key Largo, Florida, Americans demonstrated against the president, in “No Kings” protests scheduled to coincide with Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The parade, desultory and poorly attended, set a striking contrast with the marchers, whom observers estimated to number in the millions. That would make Saturday’s protests some of the largest in American history. Three of the biggest sets of U.S. demonstrations have taken place while Trump has been president, an indication of intense grassroots opposition toward him and his vision for the Republican Party.

So these ought to be boom times for America’s other major party. But Democrats seemed almost entirely irrelevant last weekend. While many ordinary Americans engaged in the most kinetic kind of politics, the Democratic National Committee was splintering acrimoniously, and some of the party’s most prominent leaders were busy attending a glitzy Hamptons wedding that brought together two venerable, aging dynasties: the Soros family and the Clinton political machine. Although Democratic officials attended and spoke at many of Saturday’s rallies, the No Kings protests were not driven by the Democratic Party—which may have been one of the protests’ strengths.

Not every Democratic politician is missing in action. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who spent recent months clumsily attempting to moderate his image by inviting MAGA figures on his podcast, now finds himself as the nation’s foremost Trump foil. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz won praise for his handling of the response to the assassination of one state legislator and the wounding of another this past weekend. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have drawn huge crowds at rallies around the country.

As a whole, however, the Democratic Party seems unprepared and uninspired. Internally, the party is more consumed with relitigating 2024 than with looking toward 2026. It has no apparent leader: Barack Obama is apathetic, Joe Biden is obsolete, and Kamala Harris lost. The congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are hapless, declaring red lines that they have no evident means or intent of enforcing. (Did they not learn their lesson from Obama’s red-line follies?) That means de facto leadership falls to the DNC. The party elected a new chair, Minnesota’s Ken Martin, in February, but Martin has so far failed to inspire or unify the party.

Martin’s term has been most preoccupied with trying to manage David Hogg, the young gun-control activist who was elected DNC vice chair in February and then announced plans to spend millions backing primary challengers to sitting Democrats in safe seats. Challenging sitting officeholders isn’t bad per se—in fact, it’s often good for revitalizing politics—but for a top party official to be driving those seems to cut against the idea of a party organization.

Democratic leaders first tried to badger Hogg into giving up the plan, but he refused. Then they stumbled on a solution of sorts that got rid of Hogg but validated every stereotype of Democrats as obsessed with procedure, consumed by elaborate diversity rules, and generally incompetent. A woman who’d unsuccessfully run against Hogg for vice chair argued that the DNC had violated its own rules and unfairly benefited two male candidates. The DNC concluded that the challenge was correct; invalidated the election of Hogg and another vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta; and ordered a do-over. Hogg opted not to run in the new election. Problem solved!

Along the way, however, audio in which Martin whined about how it had all affected him was leaked to Politico. “I’ll be very honest with you,” he said. “The other night, I said to myself for the first time, I don’t know if I wanna do this anymore.” Addressing Hogg, he went on: “I don’t think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to. So it’s really frustrating.”

No doubt, this has been unpleasant for Martin, but it’s not encouraging that the guy Democrats chose to lead them as they take on a budding authoritarian is crumbling in the face of a 25-year-old activist with a relatively small war chest.

Then, on Sunday, reports surfaced that Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, had left the DNC; they complained that Martin was, in Weingarten’s words, “not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities.” Both had backed one of Martin’s challengers for chairperson, and Weingarten had supported Hogg; before resigning, they’d been kicked out of seats on the powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Weingarten is a lightning rod, and teachers unions are controversial among Democrats. But the DNC can hardly afford to lose the buy-in of major unions. Organized labor provides both funding and foot soldiers for Democratic candidates. This has long been true, but the situation is more fragile than ever, as Trump has made gains among union members and union leaders. In 2024, he was able to persuade both the Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters to forgo endorsements altogether. Forget enlarging the tent—the DNC appears to be in danger of shrinking it.

The good news for Democrats is that the midterms are more than a year away, and the 2028 election is more than three years away—an eternity in politics. Trump can’t figure out his position on even his signature issue of immigration, his administration is understaffed and underprepared, and public disapproval is strong; when he’s been in office, voters have rejected him and his allies at the ballot box. But if anyone can figure out how to fumble the situation, it’s the Democratic Party.