President Donald Trump already is busting through constitutional, legal, normative, moral and commonsense barricades. His second term could once again lead America into recession, chaos and ridicule. But Democrats hoping to regain congressional majorities in 2026 and the White House in 2028 should be careful: Voters are deeply frustrated with the status quo, so it is by no means clear his record will doom Republicans in future elections.
Indeed, Trump’s multifront attacks mean Democrats cannot bet the future of the country on Trump driving voters back into their arms. They must not fail to address their present weaknesses, chief among which is that too many voters see the party as repellent, elitist and out of touch.
Too many ordinary people living in most parts of America now find the Democratic brand broadly unappealing.
Unfortunately, that’s what the new party leadership seems to be doing. At the Democratic National Committee’s winter meetings this past weekend, there was almost no acknowledgement of the depth of the political hole the party finds itself occupying. Instead, attendees heard that a little tweak in messaging here and a new podcast or two there can fix the problem.
That, to put it mildly, is a fantasy. As a new paper by two veteran Democrats published by our organization, Third Way, makes clear, too many ordinary people living in most parts of America now find the Democratic brand broadly unappealing.
While the 2024 election loss was not a landslide at every level, all the other indicators are blinking red. Democrats are now at or near all-time lows in public approval in recent Quinnipiac, CNN and Gallup surveys. The party was uncompetitive in states and congressional districts that do not have outsize proportions of college-educated voters. And Kamala Harris performed worse in the middle of the country — the 31 states that do not touch an ocean — than any Democrat since 1988. This is a party deeply disconnected not just from rural communities but from married people, men, and, increasingly, working-class nonwhite voters, who were once considered the Democratic base.
It’s going to take courage to fix these problems, beginning with discarding some old habits. In our recent memo to future 2028 presidential candidates, we called on them to reconnect to regular people by cutting the cord with the far-left interest groups that dominate many Democratic spaces. Specifically, that means rejecting the pledges and far-left positions those group demand for their endorsements — proposals that are often indefensible and unexplainable in a general election.
In the memo, we outlined a simple test for a damaging far-left idea: “could you see saying this at a town hall of swing voters in a battleground state—and getting hearty applause? If not, save your candidacy and decline their demands.”
These ideas are deeply unpopular even with most of the voters the far-left groups purport to represent.
The Harris 2024 campaign is Exhibit A on why rejecting the pledges is necessary. In the weeks between Joe Biden’s withdrawal and her debate with Trump, she ran a strong campaign and drew even in the polls. But it’s now clear she was doomed from the start by politically fraught stances she took to appeal to the interest groups active in the 2020 Democratic primary. The Trump campaign obviously thought so, investing heavily in ads unearthing clips of her from 2019 to persuade voters she was “dangerously liberal.” And that strategy worked: In our post-election poll of voters in presidential battleground states, the No. 1 word used to describe the vice president was “liberal,” and when asked which party was more “extreme,” voters picked Democrats.
The irony is these positions — decriminalizing the border, instituting “Medicare for All,” abolishing student loan debt, banning fracking, and more — were all losers even in the 2020 primary. Biden won the nomination, and ultimately the White House, by rejecting these positions and running as a normal, relatable guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania. That’s because these ideas are deeply unpopular even with most of the voters the far-left groups purport to represent. No, the Black population of Minneapolis did not want to “defund the police.” No, Latinos on the border did not want to decriminalize unauthorized crossings. The groups don’t speak for those voters; they speak for themselves. That means those interest group pledges and questionnaires are traps. No sane politician competing in purple America would ever run on them to win. But to get endorsements, money and some grassroots support — and to avoid being yelled at by activists at events and online — candidates hold their noses, sign on and pray no one notices. Hundreds of millions in attack ads later, they regret it. Some may be starting to notice. At a Democratic primary debate in the New Jersey governor’s race this weekend, candidates Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Rep. Josh Gottheimer declined to raise their hands when asked to pledge to across-the-board protection for immigrants, regardless of whether they had been convicted of violent crimes. They realized, as their opponents did not but every Democratic candidate should, that by rejecting such pledges, they can reconnect with the vast majority of voters who are uninterested in purity or litmus tests. Democratic candidates should never again fall prey to the siren song of far-left groups who claim, without evidence, to speak for our coalition and offer a path to the nomination. In fact, if what happened in the 2019 primary recurs, Democrats might as well save themselves billions of dollars and months of work and just sit out the next election.
Jon Cohen
Jon Cowan is president of Third Way, a center-left national think tank and advocacy organization.
Lanae Erickson
Lanae Erickson is senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at Third Way, a center-left national think tank and advocacy organization. 
