Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deepest, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
This was the chorus of a continuing skit on Hee Haw – a bunch of guys perpetually lamenting the state of their existence. It has become a political refrain for me. It seems to be 25 years of Democratic Party messaging in a nutshell.
Democrats need to change their song.
Sure, the 2024 election was disastrous. Sure, there is a very real chance the Republicans will not relinquish power even if they lose elections in the future. Sure, current efforts need to prioritize stopping or slowing the damage that will be done in the next two years – until at least one leg of the federal government can be taken back.
While there is a necessity to this, there is also a danger. The party has spent much of the past 25 years controlling the damage of bad elections. It is coming to define the party, the party’s message, and the party’s election strategies. Controlling the damage has come to define the party.
I attend a lot of neighborhood and county party meetings. Invariably, a parade of party officials and office holders enumerate the atrocious policy initiatives of the Republican party – cuts in education, health care, children’s services, etc.
What I don’t hear are details, or even sketches, of planned alternatives. The message is that we will restore funding to the status quo.
We need more than that. Most voters don’t want to simply restore the status quo – to make things like they were before. They may not have demanded cuts, but they aren’t demanding restoration, either. They want change. When we don’t give them visions of change that they can get their hands around, they stay home.
According to the Pew Research Center, only 37% of Americans aged 18 and over voted in all three elections from 2018 to 2022. These were split nearly even between Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning voters:
18.13% of Americans aged 18 and over voted in all three elections and were Democrat-leaners.
The comparable percentage for Republican-leaners was 18.5%.
Thirty percent of eligible Americans voted in none of these three elections Of these,
41% leaned Democrat (12.30% of the eligible population)
46% leaned Republican (13.80% of the eligible population)
13% were independent or registered to other parties (3.9% of the eligible population)
Of the remaining 30%
12% voted only in the presidential election of 2020.
The remaining 18% showed a pronounced swing from Democrat-leaning to Republican-leaning over the three election cycles.
So,
18.13% of American adults lean Democrat and voted in all three elections.
15.4 percent of American adults lean Democrat and voted in only one or two of the three elections.
12.3 percent of American adults lean Democrat and did not vote in any of the three elections.
In total 30 percent of voting-age citizens did not vote in any of the elections.
There is a huge latent pool of interested (Democrat-leaning) voters out there that are not regularly coming to the polls. It totals 27.7 percent of the total American electorate that has indicated an interest but is looking for a reason.
There is an additional 17.7 percent of the American electorate that is not Democrat-leaning but is clearly not seeing a compelling message anywhere (because they don’t vote).
So, 45.4 percent of the electorate is looking for or open to a reason to regularly vote Democrat.
This is a huge market opportunity, and political parties are, after all, marketing clubs. This potential voter pool is significantly larger than our current market share. Without a compelling message, however, we are caught with nothing to sell. This is a big opportunity, and we are wasting it.
In addition to this huge missed opportunity, there is also a big risk in not having a compelling vision of the future - the risk that our current market share will bleed away. It was noted above that the 30 % of the American electorate that voted in only one or two of the past three elections is moving away from the Democratic Party. It can be assumed that this movement includes Democrat-leaning voters. Their intermittency seems to indicate an interest but not a compelling reason.
Current evidence also indicates growing risks on the horizon. A February 19, 2025 Quinnipiac Poll indicates that the American public is more disappointed in congressional Democrats than they are with congressional Republicans. The approval-disapproval spreads are 21 to 68 percent and 40 to 52 percent, respectively.
This is bad, but the Democratic Party should be horrified by the in-party approval-disapproval spreads in congress. Republicans approve of their delegation with 79 percent approval and 10 percent disapproval. For Democrats, the in-party approval-disapproval spread is under water at a dismal 40 percent to 49 percent.
The overall picture is
Democrats are not appealing to (making a serious play for) a very large block of potential voters.
Democrats are apparently losing ground with their intermittent voters.
Democrats are not happy with what they are getting from their own congressional delegation
None of this can be solved without a compelling marketing message. “We aren’t them!” is not a compelling marketing message. Promising to roll back the damage is not a compelling market message.
Democrats are stuck in a reactive rut. They desperately need to articulate and sincerely push a proactive alternative.
This will be the subject of My Two Cents over the near future.