Six months after their defeat by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, the Democratic Party and its national leadership are still mostly confused, shellshocked and lack a coherent strategy or direction.
Donald Trump’s first 100 days in power have been what he promised. Acting as the country’s first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator, Trump and his administration have shattered basic norms about democracy, the rule of law, civil rights, the Constitution and the basic idea that the president should be a steward for and protector of the nation. Trump imagines himself, like a king or emperor, as the literal embodiment of the State. This is antithetical to America’s centuries-long experiment in democracy and the principles of the Founding.
In a recent interview with MSNBC, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat issued the following warning about America’s collapse into Trumpism and neofascism: “Honestly, the speed at which this is happening and the kind of concentrated push to do this, it doesn’t have any parallel in situations where leaders came to power through elections….If you look at the early Putin or the early Orban or Erdogan, they didn’t move at this speed. This resembles more after there’s been a coup.”
Ultimately, Donald Trump’s return to power was not preordained. It was a choice. Tens of millions of Americans elected Donald Trump for a second time. They did so with full knowledge of the wreckage Trump left in his wake after his first term in office and what he would do if put back in power. In so many ways, the American people unleashed this disaster upon themselves.
The Democratic Party spent over $1 billion to lose the 2024 election, among the most important in American history. By almost every significant measure, Trump should have been a weak candidate and easily defeated. Instead, Trump and his forces consistently outmaneuvered and outsmarted the Democrats. The party failed when the country needed it the most.
“I was in charge and he won,” former President Joe Biden said during an in-person interview on “The View” last Thursday. “I take responsibility.” But Biden still believes that he would have won the 2024 election and that Trump’s victory “wasn’t a slam dunk.”
So where do the Democrats go from here?
I recently spoke with Mark Mellman, one of the leading pollsters and political consultants in the United States. Mellman is the president of The Mellman Group, a consultancy that has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. He has also served as a pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for more than 30 years. Mellman has been a consultant to CBS News for over two decades and a presidential debate analyst for PBS and The Wall Street Journal.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Mellman shares his insights about why the Democrats failed so spectacularly in the 2024 election, how the party should respond as Trump tightens his grip on power and why Trump’s popularity and MAGA base of support may be much weaker than a superficial reading of the polls suggests. Mellman also shares his thoughts about the Democratic Party’s weak brand and messaging, how it can be improved, and if the Democrats should follow James Carville’s advice to be passive and let Trump self-destruct.
How are you feeling? How are you making sense of Trump’s return to power and what he has unleashed?
“Trump’s baseline is about 47%. He is now polling lower than that baseline.”
I’m feeling a combination of depression, anger and motivation. Obviously, it’s depressing to see the United States lurch towards authoritarianism. I never thought I’d see such a thing. But here it is, plain as day and I’m angry about it. However, as depressing as it is to see Trump and his minions try to destroy our democracy and our economy, at the same time, it is very motivating. It impels me to get out there and do what I can to prevent the United States from sliding even farther into authoritarianism and also to deal with the problems that made such a dire situation possible. I spend most of my time now trying to fight these battles. I am also helping my clients and others to do the same. So, that’s the positive side, that’s the motivation, that’s the kick in the pants to move things forward. The depression hits when I look at the news each day and see what new terrible things the Trump administration has done.
America’s democracy is collapsing in real time. As political scientists, historians, and other experts have been warning, very loudly, the United States has succumbed to authoritarianism. The form and permanence of it are yet to be determined. Was the American system always so weak and rotted from within that it would be brought down in less than 100 days by Trump and his forces?
First of all, the institutions are really important. But one of the things that we seem to have forgotten is that the people that we place in our political and social institutions are also very important, and their willingness to abide by the norms and mores of a democratic society is absolutely critical to the proper functioning of that democratic society. We have a president who does not respect those mores, who doesn’t respect the guardrails, and, in fact, who sees himself as being some kind of authoritarian leader or king. The American political system was not built for someone like Donald Trump, given his many apparent intellectual, psychological and moral impairments. The system was built for people who respect it. We’ve had good presidents and we’ve had bad presidents. We’ve had good senators and bad senators; good members of Congress and bad members of Congress. But almost all of these leaders have respected the institutions and the norms of democratic governance. Donald Trump’s utter disregard for democracy renders him a unique figure in American history.
I was no fan of Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon. But for all of their testing of the norms and institutions, neither of them would have done the things that Donald Trump has (repeatedly) done. Today’s Republican Party and “conservative” movement are now fully Trumpified.
I wrote a column for The Hill recently called “The Strange Suicide of American Conservatism.” American conservatism was, for a long time, Burkean in nature. Conservatives opposed major social or political changes. They wanted to keep the status quo; to keep what was before. In general, conservatives wanted to safeguard what they viewed as the tried-and-true ways of the past. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is a radical revolutionary. The Republican Party helped him, allowed him and enabled him to overthrow and destroy American conservatism. I’m not a conservative. I’ve never been a conservative. But we desperately need a real conservative party in this country. We don’t need a radical, right-wing, revolutionary, authoritarian party. That’s what today’s Republican Party has become by following Donald Trump.
Reagan and Nixon were not my favorites, that is for sure. But both of those men were conservatives. Yes, they stretched the limits of the law for their own ends, but they did not seek to overthrow America’s democratic system. That is what makes Trump unique.
The American mainstream news media as an institution (and especially the centrists) and the responsible political class are desperately holding on to a model of American politics and society that mostly consists of convenient and self-serving fantasies and myths about American politics and the American public. What are some of the big myths that you see as having brought America to the Age of Trump and this democracy crisis?
We have a president in the form of Donald Trump who is dedicated to overthrowing the American system of government. We have never had that before in this country. Trump and his MAGA movement are shattering all of the myths — and norms — about American democracy, government, and society that have been defining features of the country for nearly 250 years. It starts with that. Period.
But you point to some false folk theories of democracy. For example, some would like to believe that voters consider all the issue positions put forward by candidates, weigh the importance of each, and make a rational calculation about which candidate best represents their positions and then vote accordingly. Such notions give rise to talk about “mandates,” but they don’t in any way describe how people actually make voting decisions.
The median voter theory as developed by Hoteling and others has also informed a lot of thinking about politics. Oversimplifying, it suggests that voters array themselves along a single ideological spectrum from very liberal to very conservative. While some states and districts are a bit more to the right and others a bit more to the left, the theory argues that most voters, most of the time, cluster toward the middle and elections move candidates to the center, where the votes are. While this may have been true once-upon-a-time, today, gerrymandering and people’s choices about where to live (Democrats in denser cities, Republicans in more sparsely populated areas) means fewer states and districts are truly competitive between the parties.
I’m old enough to remember when we had four Democratic senators from the Dakotas — I’m proud some were my clients — but that’s impossible to imagine today.
The result is that Republican members of Congress tend to be more worried about a primary challenge from the far right than about a Democratic challenger from the center, while Democrats tend to worry more about challenges from the far left. Candidates are not, pushed to the center, rather, they are pulled to the extremes.
Trump has been president for over 130 days. What is the chorus of public opinion telling us now?
As a whole, the American people are very clear about their feelings toward Donald Trump and his administration. They don’t like the way Trump is performing in office. They don’t like Trump’s policies, and they want him to change. Trump’s approval rating is net negative. Moreover, Trump’s approval rating is more negative at this point in his term than that of any president in the history of polling.
It’s not just Trump’s overall approval rating that is horrible, but voters are distraught about his performance across the entire range of issues, including his former strengths like the economy and immigration. Trump receives net negative performance ratings on those issues as well. Trump is battling judges and the courts; the American people do not like it. Over 60% say Trump needs to do what federal judges tell him to do. Over 60% side with Harvard University against Trump’s efforts to bully and take over universities and colleges. However, Trump’s unpopularity is not really impacting the political terrain of the country in a big way yet because Republicans have insulated themselves as a result of gerrymandering and the way the public is so polarized and sorted. Independent voters have turned dramatically against Trump, but the Republicans remain in Trump’s corner. Unfortunately, America’s political system is flawed in that the Republicans can, for now, just ignore the public outcry against Donald Trump and his policies and behavior.
What do we know empirically about Donald Trump’s base of support? It is consistently at about 47 percent. Trump’s MAGA people and other followers are wedded to him. It appears that he can do no wrong or anything that will force them away from him. What is the data telling us now?
I’m not sure that Trump’s base of support is that rock solid and guaranteed. For example, Trump’s baseline is about 47%. He is now polling lower than that baseline. Trump is now at about 44% approval on average and lower in a number of polls. 6% of people who voted for Trump are now telling pollsters that they made a mistake. Granted, that is not a huge number. But it does show that Trump’s base is not guaranteed to stay with him, especially as the tariffs and other economic consequences start to hit home. He will likely lose more support. Trump’s bad behavior and other extreme positions, and just meanness will also likely push more American voters away from him.
In the 2024 election, one of the key difference makers was the support Trump received from Americans who don’t pay close attention to politics. A person does not have to follow politics closely to know that Trump is creating problems for the economy, for example. The news is saturated with this bad news. For those who are politically disengaged, walking through the store and seeing the prices of basic goods and services makes it even clearer that Trump is responsible for trashing the economy. Trump’s tariffs will likely have a big impact on how voters respond to Trump and the Republicans.
The way through the Age of Trump and this disaster is forward, and seeing clearly and without blindfolds or blinders. Part of going forward necessitates making sense of how we as a country got to this nadir. To that point, what do we now see more clearly in hindsight about the 2024 election?
Trump’s statements to the contrary notwithstanding, 2024 was a very close election by normal standards. Trump did not win in a landslide. He narrowly won the popular vote. He won the swing states. But you know he brags about that all the time, and certainly it’s true, he did win the swing states. But those swing states were all pretty close. And the swing states usually move as a group. In recent times, no candidate has won fewer than seven swing states, the number Trump won. So that’s quite typical, not some unique achievement on Trump’s part. I do not think that it was foreordained that Trump was going to win. I’m on the record saying that it was a 50-50 election. If a Democrat went to bed that Monday night before Election Day feeling more hopeful than worried, then they did not really understand what 50-50 means.
Trump’s success can be greatly attributed to the power of the MAGA brand. Moreover, I would suggest that MAGA is one of the strongest brands in modern marketing. You can stop a random person on the street and they will be able to tell you what MAGA means — even if it is just “Donald Trump.” What does it mean to be a Democrat? What is their brand? Because at present, the Democrats certainly do not have a winning one.
The Democrats definitely have a branding problem. The number of people who have a very negative impression of the Democratic Party makes that clear. Your brand is what people say about your product when you are not looking — and the American people are certainly very negative about the Democrats. They’re negative about Republicans, too, but they’re even more negative about Democrats.
To make matters worse for the Democrats, the polls show that the public is trending in the wrong direction over time and is now more negative towards the party than they used to be. You can see this in specific responses to open-ended questions as well. For decades, when people were asked what they liked about the Democratic Party, the number one factor was that the Democratic Party was for the average person. At present, the key association the public has with the Democrats is that they are for marginalized groups. There’s nothing wrong with supporting marginalized groups. All Americans should have equal rights and freedoms. But the realpolitik is that by definition, marginalized groups are not the majority. If the public sees your party as primarily defending a minority of the population, then it is going to be very hard to craft a winning majority vote.
As for “MAGA”, whatever that may mean for a given voter, there’s no question the Republicans have a much clearer brand than the Democrats currently do. The Democrats’ brand right now is quite negative.
In a series of interviews, as well as essays in The New York Times, James Carville has suggested that the Democrats just need to get out of the way and let Trump and the Republicans fail. The Democrats can then swoop in and exploit that opening. Your thoughts?
I’ve known James since the mid-1980s, and he is usually right. I think that what James is suggesting here can be a good strategy when your opponent is destroying themselves. But I think in this particular case, that it is suboptimal because it leads Democratic Party voters to be angry with and attack their own party and its leadership. This anger could well cause the Democrats to elevate more radical leaders. In my opinion, that is not going to help the branding problem that the party is having.
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Trump and the Republicans have given the Democrats an opening. Their failed and failing policies have created possibilities that the Democrats can and must exploit. The American people are increasingly willing to listen to what the Democrats have to say. But the Democrats have to have something meaningful to communicate when the American people are so eager to hear us. We can’t just be silent. The Democrats also need to have message discipline and to grab the public’s attention in good and positive ways, and not show off our internal battles. We have to make sure that we’re grabbing attention in good and positive ways, not in negative ways; not suggest the Democrats’ storyline is about internal battles. Showing off internal battles, be they ideological, personal, or otherwise, doesn’t do anything to help the party. In fact, it turns the public off from the Democrats.
What should the Democrats do going forward?
The Democrats need to 1) recognize people’s economic pain points and 2) then offer ideas that connect directly with those pain points. People have to understand how and why the Democrats’ policies will actually help them.
The Democrats also need a messaging strategy that embeds our policies in a larger context where we are showing the American people that we care about them. Democrats need to speak directly, authentically, and sincerely to the American people. Emulating the rhetoric of the Harvard Faculty Club is not going to win people over. Too often, Democrats are not speaking in clear and direct ways to the American people, and even worse, too many Democratic leaders and spokespeople sound condescending and even hostile to the needs, concerns, and worries of average Americans.
As I interpret the polls, the conclusion I have come to — and it is an unpopular one in some circles — is that the American people dislike the Democratic Party even more than they do Donald Trump. Do you agree with that reading of the polls and other data? If so, what would you advise the Democrats to do?
There is no question that you’re correct on this. The problems run deep, and we Democrats need to repair our brand image in very substantial ways. The polls and other data are clear: the public is hostile to the Democrats.
However, one of the most powerful indicators of the public mood is the congressional vote. There, recent polls show that the Democrats are leading in the generic congressional vote.
Elections tend to be referendums on the incumbents. 2026 is going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and the GOP. Trump’s performance could improve by then. That is always a possibility. But Trump could also be doing much worse than he is at present. We don’t know what will happen. Yes, the Democrats need to work on their brand, and they have much to improve upon. But even allowing for that shortcoming, there are now more Americans who are planning to vote for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican candidate in 2026.
In these conversations about Trump’s return to power and the worsening disaster, there is the common thread of “well, the midterms will be here in 2026 and then the Democrats can get back Congress and stop lots of this! And then there is the 2028 election!” Given all that Trump and his administration and agents have been doing, publicly, from voter nullification and voter suppression, to weakening the Federal Election Commission, using the courts to keep Democrats from taking office when they win elections, trying to cut off the Democratic Party from fundraising, removing protections intended to stop foreign interference, etc. why would a person even reasonably assume that there will be “free and fair” elections in 2026 and beyond?
It’s the triumph of hope. I can’t, and I don’t, know whether we’re going to have free and fair elections in 2026. But the work that we as Democrats are going to do to win those elections is similar to the type of work we are going to do to ensure that we even have free and fair elections in this country in 2026 and beyond. I’m not throwing up my hands, giving up, and saying let’s not do anything because we’re not going to have elections. That is not an option. Trump is an authoritarian. He has repeatedly demonstrated that. But the Democrats and all Americans must still do the work of democracy if we are to have any chance of preserving it.
In these many post-mortems about the 2024 election and how the Democrats are now out of power in Washington, the “consultant class” is often cited as the main reason. You are a leading Democratic Party consultant and pollster. On a human level, how does it feel to be so villainized? What pushback, if any, would you offer against that narrative?
Honestly, most of the races I was directly involved in in 2024 were winners. But there’s no question that mistakes were made. But those mistakes were not made just by the consultant class. Politicians are free to reject the advice given to them by their consultants. Clients have the freedom to do what they want. Donald Trump doesn’t always do what his consultants tell him to do, that’s for sure. And the truth is, some of the people who are complaining about the Democratic Party’s “consultant class” are the same people who are also somewhat responsible for the bad situation we’re in as a country and party.
Where do we go from here?
We fight the battle. We’re not going to get a third and a fourth and a fifth chance here. So, we have to think hard about what we’re doing, and then once we figure it out, we have to fight even harder. We see people doing that already. There are people and organizations that have stood up to Trump and rallied the Democratic Party’s base and other pro-democracy Americans. There are people doing that hard work in other ways as well. It is going to be a long battle, but the American people are finally getting their footing, and I hope it will grow in momentum and be sustained.
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