I joined J Street’s “Word on the Street Live” to discuss last week’s elections and what’s next.
I talked about how important it is to understand that our elections are decided not by hard partisans, but by a group of people who are increasingly dissatisfied with the way the political system and economy has been delivering for them in their lives. In 9 of the last 10 midterm or presidential elections, the party that wins the last election loses the next one (at least one chamber of Congress or the White House). Young voters and Latino voters swung the most in 2024, and swung the most in the other direction this time, because neither was actually endorsing MAGA or Trump’s policies. And importantly, a different set of young and Latino voters decide to show up vs. stay home each time.
When asked about what 2028 might look like, I cautioned against viewing it in “normal politics” terms; we don’t know what kinds of authoritarian voter purges or opposition crackdowns are coming, for instance. But the most successful leaders of the Democratic Party are probably going to be people we don’t know about now. The way to change the Democratic Party is to have more Democrats who are different and aggressive in fighting for what people want. There’s not an example in American history of big change coming from existing party leadership; change happens when massive victories change who the party is. That was true when FDR came to power and when MAGA took over the Republicans.
