BREITBART — “Woke,” “weak,” and “out of touch” are the buzz words that describe Democrats in what has become a nonstop decline of the party’s popularity, according to a poll reported by the Hill.
The survey, conducted between May and June by a Democrat super PAC called Unite the Country, showed the party’s “credibility” with voters has declined even further since the 2024 election.
According to the Hill’s reading of the poll the party continues to lose favor with “Hispanic men” and “working class voters,” and has “approval ratings sitting below 35 percent across those demographics.”
Also, enthusiasm within the party continues to decline following 2024, the poll revealed.
The poll was conducted with voters in 21 battleground counties across 10 battleground states, according to the Hill’s coverage.
Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, a senior adviser to the super PAC, told the political website:
This is the reality of the perception of us as a party, and until we accept that, it’s going to be hard to move forward. There’s a perception out there, outside of Democratic elites, and it’s taken hold in not just the MAGA crowd but people that should be with us. Democrats need to realize that in order to improve and get better to not only win in 2028 but to win in 2030 and 2032 and beyond.
Breitbart News reported as far back as January that Democrats have been ruminating on ways to counter their decline in support that became evident when Donald Trump won every swing state and won the presidency.
The Hill agreed, writing:
Democrats have been searching for a way out of the wilderness since their devastating loss in November, when they not only lost the presidency once again to President Trump but also the House and Senate. Since then, party officials have conducted a number of postmortems — including polls, focus groups and strategy sessions — as part of the party’s rebuilding effort.
Despite those efforts, many Democrat politicians continue to spout positions unpopular with centrists on taxes, crime, immigration, and transgenderism — the very issues that swept Donald Trump into office.
Throw into the mix the perceived coverup of President Joe Biden’s mental decline while in office and, as Breitbart News reported, the infighting in party ranks, and it is easy to see why political observers say the decline is not hard to track.
The summer hasn’t done much to break the heat that Democrats are feeling from voters. The party of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is about as popular as a rush-hour traffic jam, according to the latest surveys. Unfortunately for Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), time hasn’t helped the dismal approval ratings — nor, most Americans would point out, has the party’s supposed “self-reflection.”
In the eight months since Election night, Democrats have spent countless hours and dollars on meetings, strategy sessions, focus groups, and autopsy reports only to turn around and ignore the lessons they teach. “Woke,” “weak,” and “out of touch” was how one survey described the party that paid for the poll. With the GOP eating into the once-impressive margins that Democrats enjoyed with Hispanics, the working class, and white men, Schumer and company are looking at a pretty dismal approval rating — just 35% across those key demographics.
Equally as frustrating, there’s little to no hope in the base that things will change. Asked how optimistic they are about the future of the party, dejected Democrats have all but resigned to their fate in the political wilderness. Only 35% think things will turn around in the future — an almost 20-point drop from the 57% last July. Much to Jeffries’s and Schumer’s displeasure, congressional Democrats are taking a severe beating in the polls. A late June YouGov/Economist survey found a sharp drop in Americans’ approval of their House and Senate members: a -32 favorability rating, compared to -15 when Donald Trump took office in January.
And while insiders are quick to call these results “striking,” they’re just as quick to dismiss them. “Americans have a pretty sour view of everyone in Washington right now,” Democrat pollster Matt McDermott rationalized. But, he rightly pointed out, “It’s important to note that the favorability of the opposition party has never been a reliable barometer for midterm results. Voters don’t need to like the ‘out’ party to vote for change — they just need to be fed up with the incumbents,” he observed. “I see parallels in the current climate. Trump’s presidency (or second presidency, in this case) has mobilized a lot of anger and opposition.”
Republicans might be tempted to cheer the opposition’s fall from grace or draw premature conclusions about how this could impact the 2026 elections — but they shouldn’t. The reality is, Donald Trump will always be more unpopular in the Democratic base than Democrats themselves — and he, not Jeffries or Schumer — is what will motivate them to turn out in the midterms. To think that the base’s exasperation with the Left will keep them home is to underestimate their general hatred for the president. Once Trump is gone, the party will have a real crisis on its hands. Without the president to drive the protest vote, Americans will be forced to evaluate Democrats on what they actually stand for. And that’s where the party’s tenuous hold unravels.
“Part of the problem for Democrats is that there is little consensus about what exactly the party stands for in concrete policy terms,” David Walsh vents in the Boston Review. Or maybe the problem is that people do know what the Democrats stand for — radical gender ideology, open borders, DEI, abortion until birth, the “global intifada,” and general lawlessness — and reject it on its face. That, more than anything, is what’s given rise to a quiet countermovement in the Democratic Party, a growing determination to give voice to the marginalized — but more broadly appealing — centrists in the base.
Fed up with the off-putting narrative driving the Democrats’ messaging, the party’s “middle” is hosting events like WelcomeFest to bridge the gap that voters see between Jeffries’s Squad and the average American. “In the wake of their 2024 loss,” Jeremiah Johnson writes in The Dispatch, “a significant portion of Democratic leadership seems to believe that what the party really needs is to change the messaging. They need more aggressive PR, better catchphrases, more viral stunts. They need to go on more podcasts!” Sure, he agrees, a better messaging strategy might help. “But the core thing that held Democrats back in 2024 wasn’t PR strategy. It was the party’s beliefs and policies. If Democrats want to win the kind of large and durable majorities that will allow them to really govern, they’re going to have to rethink those policies.”
He’s referring, of course, to the party’s insistence on clinging to fringe views that reject everything from the sanctity of girls’ sports to parental rights in education, legal immigration, and empowering law enforcement. “Democrats,” Johnson agrees, “continue to deviate from public opinion — afraid to denounce the 20 end of an 80/20 issue in the polls for fear of offending an interest group.” And, he continues, “Democrats do themselves no favors by not loudly condemning the excesses of wokeness, which are real.”
There’s a way to thread that needle, Johnson argues. “They can get visibly tougher on illegal immigration while still advocating for more legal pathways and the fair treatment of immigrants. They can focus on the LGBT rights that matter like non-discrimination in the workplace, non-discrimination in housing, and access to health care — rather than dying on dubious and unpopular niche issues like trans athletes in women’s sports. They can loudly denounce the excesses of DEI (such as mandatory diversity statements for technical STEM research) while preserving diversity and inclusion ideas that still make sense (such as honoring civil rights heroes like Jackie Robinson),” he reiterates. “They can advocate for intelligent police reforms while still taking a hard stance against public disorder, crime, and anti-social behavior.”
And yet, every time a Democrat attempts to moderate their stance, they’re later rolled, repentant, or ostracized. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) tested the waters on girls’ sports, suggesting it wasn’t fair for America’s daughters to lose titles and positions to men, only to retreat once the party’s woke overlords and fundraisers get their hooks in.
Or take Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.), the hoodie-wearing castoff who’s staked out a rational position on Israel, Iran, ICE, and immigration, and who’s become, in CNN’s words, “isolated” for agreeing with most voters. While he’s tried to embrace a practical view on some of the Democrats’ biggest messaging liabilities, his effort rarely goes unpunished. Even now, the party’s growing frustration with his independent thinking is helping to fuel a bitter primary race in Pennsylvania, where Fetterman’s overall approval is still a +4 positive at 41%. Ironically, Republicans, who’ve grown to appreciate his ability to break with the Left, give him even higher marks: 45% approval. “My values haven’t changed,” the senator wanted people to know recently. “But I think in some cases, I think our party’s values have changed.” Instead of seeing Fetterman as a senator who can help Democrats reach voters, he’s become a pariah.
Even Fetterman’s suggestion that the party at least sound more civil while pushing these outlandish agendas was ignored. “I think their primary currency was shaming and scolding and talking down to people and telling them ‘Hey, I know better than you, or you’re dopes, or you’re a bro, or you’re ignorant or, how can you be this dumb? I can’t imagine it. And then, by the way, they’re fascists. How can you vote for that?’” Fetterman asked.
“I know and I love people that voted for Trump, and they’re not fascist. They don’t support insurrection and those things. And if you go to an extreme, and you become a boutique kind of proposition, then you’re going to lose the argument. And we have done that,” he lamented about Democrats.
FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter could only shake his head at the party’s refusal to adapt to the cultural and political winds. “The problem is much deeper than a facelift on their advertising and an update to their talking points,” he told The Washington Stand. “The Democratic Party’s base wants their leaders in Congress to double down on opposing President Trump and the Republican Congress wherever they can. This places the Democratic Party in a desperate position,” he warned. “They can try to stanch the bleeding among key demographics by moderating in some places and risk their base turning on them — or they can lean into the anger of their base and watch their numbers continue to decline among men and working-class voters.”
At the end of the day, it’s their choice. “To win votes, you can’t have wildly different views from the public,” Johnson underscored. “That’s a lesson Democrats seem to have forgotten.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2025-07-16 09:27:492025-07-18 06:55:26‘Woke,’ ‘Weak,’ and ‘Out of Touch’: The Crisis of the Democratic Brand
The first few weeks of Biden’s presidency has seen the rollback of several Trump-era policies that put pressure on China. But while Chinese leaders may feel relieved, the United States has received nothing in return for the gradual easing of tensions.
President Biden consistently refers to China as a “competitor.” This language is quite a bit softer than former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s labeling of the Chinese Communist Party as “the central threat of our times.” Gordon Chang notes that it is difficult to compete when we know our competitor is cheating. When President Biden talks about competing with China on technological advancements, “That sounds fine, but China steals somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 billion worth of U.S. IP each year,” Chang said on Washington Watch. China’s persistent theft of intellectual property makes it impossible to compete fairly with.
Several of President Biden’s early executive orders have directly benefitted China, while exposing Americans to risk. Chang cites several concerning examples. “President Trump, with an executive order, barred China from supplying equipment to our electricity grid. In other words, that prevents China from committing sabotage. And that’s not a theoretical concern when it comes to the grid. Yet Biden, in an executive order, repealed that Trump era protection.”
President Biden has also failed to take the spread of Chinese propaganda on America’s college campuses seriously. There are around 60 Confucius Institutes still operating in American colleges, and though they purport to simply teach Chinese language and culture, they are not to be taken lightly. Chang points out that Confucius Institutes are “run by the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which is this part of the Communist Party which tries to subvert foreign countries. So really what we’ve got here is propaganda on our campuses.” The U.S. does not develop propaganda programs in Chinese colleges, so why should we let them do so here?
The day before the Trump administration left office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took perhaps the administration’s most significance stand against China by officially calling the Chinese’s government abuses of Uyghur Muslims genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken initially affirmed Pompeo’s finding that the Chinese government was committing genocide in Xinjiang. However, we have yet to see the administration indicate it has plans to do anything about it. Chang says, “when you talk about genocide, we’ve got to remember that the U.S. is a party to the Genocide Convention of 1948, which requires every country to stop genocide. And I don’t hear any of that language from the Biden team so far.”
Genocides always loom large in history. If the administration does not consider China’s genocide to be a priority now, future history texts books will ask why. In America’s dealings with China, history will remember how the Biden administration reacted to China’s heinous human rights abuses.
Ultimately, the threat that China poses to the free world makes it more than a competitor. As the world’s second most powerful country, China has been flexing its diplomatic and political muscles at the United Nations and the World Health Organization to the detriment of democratic societies. The Chinese government is guilty of an ongoing genocide of a religious and ethnic minority. Not to mention China’s imprisonment of political dissidents, crackdown on churches, and mass surveillance of its people.
As China grows more powerful, it has the capacity to compel others to do what it wants. That is worrying not because China is a competitor, but because the Chinese government has no respect for democracy, rule of law, or basic human rights. Smaller countries with less resources struggle to stand up to China. If the United States does not lead the way in doing so, no one will.
COLUMN BY
Arielle Del Turco
Assistant Director of the Center for Religious Liberty
Arielle Del Turco serves as Assistant Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, where she is responsible for international religious freedom policy and advocacy efforts. Through research and analysis of international religious freedom matters, she helps craft effective policy solutions along with coordinating FRC’s advocacy on this issue. Arielle’s work has appeared in the USA Today, National Review, Jerusalem Post, Washington Examiner, CBN News, The Federalist, The National Interest, Christian Post, The American Conservative, Daily Signal, and Townhall. She has conducted a number of media interviews on international religious freedom, and has herself interviewed key advocates and victims of persecution. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Politics and History from Regent University, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in International Relations.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2021-02-13 09:00:412021-10-07 20:33:44VIDEO: Is Biden Going Soft on China?
