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It’s never been more clear that the Democratic Party—both activist and rank-and-file wings alike—is spoiling for a fight. The broad feistiness within the party exploded last week after Chuck Schumer helped Republicans pass a nakedly partisan spending plan over the objection of the majority of his fellow Democratic Senators. The moment is giving prominent Democrats their best chance yet to provide their own vision for dragging their party out of its current state of almost-total irrelevance.
The dynamic seems like it is coasting toward a satisfying release of pent-up pressure. It also may matter for naught.
The latest polls confirm this is a crisis moment for Democrats. Their brand is at an all-time low. Just 29% of all Americans have a positive view of the party, a 20-point swing from January 2021 when Trump was leaving office and Joe Biden was moving into the White House, according to polling released this week from CNN. Just 63% of Democrats hold positive views of their party.
But what’s most revealing is what the party faithful want to see out of its leaders. A whopping 57% of Democrats say their party needs to mainly work to block Republicans’ agenda, a shift from 23% of the same segment who wanted opposition to be the central goal during the first year of Trump’s term. To be clear, this is not 2017, and the current fight is taking on an entirely different shade of contempt. The Resistance may not be showing up like it did for Trump’s first term; that does not mean a more muscular opposition lacks a constituency.
There’s no reason to think that this give-’em-hell sentiment is temporary. Those CNN numbers are from a poll taken in the days before almost a dozen Senate Democrats, led by Schumer, helped Republicans avoid a government shutdown. The boiling debate over that fracturing vote is now driving the conversation over how Democrats should move forward. For the party’s leading voices—many of them hopefuls in the 2028 shadow presidential primary—their answer to the Schumer Rorschach test may take on outsized weight.
Take Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has been not-so-subtly making the pre-2028 rounds. On Tuesday, he stopped by the Center For American Progress for the first of that think tank’s sessions helping navigate the second Trump era. When given a chance to back up Schumer’s vote that kept the government’s lights on facing a midnight deadline at the end of last week, Pritzker took a pass.
“Look, he’s the elected Leader,” Pritzker said. “I disagree with what he did and vehemently so. But I also know that he has done good work as a Senate Leader in other ways.” It was artful evasion that might serve him well in town halls up in New Hampshire, where he is already a familiar face in the state that historically held the first-in-the-nation primary and where he will headline the state Democratic Party’s biggest fundraiser next month.
The counterpoint to Pritzker’s light touch on Schumer is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been merciless in her disapproval of Schumer’s decision. Even before Schumer made his alliance with the GOP spending plan official, she was having talks with fellow Democrats about putting in motion a primary challenge against her fellow New Yorker in 2028. Even centrist and middling Democrats were suddenly interested in what a Sen. AOC would look like.
Across the political spectrum, there was a sincere uneasiness about how Democrats were moving forward. Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland so far is alone in openly calling for Schumer to exit, but he is likely to find companions if things continue apace. Once the run-of-the-mill lawmakers’ consultants can show them polling to prove this isn’t a risky footing, expect plenty of others to follow.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, is working to broaden his base in ways that are either canny or clumsy; the verdict is still out. He urged Senate Democrats to shut the government down rather than give Republicans the win on a spending plan that made deep cuts, but also defended his recent chummy conversation with conservative insiders like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. “I think we all agreed after the last election that it’s important for Democrats to explore new and unique ways of talking to people,” Newsom told supporters by email. (Perhaps that stance is why, according to a new book, Trump was terrified to face the California Governor if he were to have replaced Biden on the ticket last year.)
For those liberals who’ve already unfollowed Newsom on Bluesky, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz may be more their speed. As Republicans are shutting down town halls to avoid angry constituents, Walz is backfilling with a tour of House districts with Republican incumbents. On the topic of Senate Democrats and shutting down the government, Walz recently put the issue to an Omaha audience, “I get the overwhelming feeling that the vast majority of people wish they would have voted no. Is that true?” The audience erupted with applause.
But Walz, who has proven to be a much better player when given a free hand to campaign as he sees best, stayed firmly in the lane of pragmatists. “Chuck understands and what folks understand is that a shutdown comes at a hell of a price,” Walz told the local NPR affiliate. That approach also came through during an earlier Walz stop in Des Moines, where he seemed to suggest the search for the party’s next leader is a pointless one. “There is not going to be a charismatic leader ride in and do this. It is going to be people coming out on a beautiful Friday afternoon, demanding change and holding people accountable.”
There is no shortage of others whose recent moves seem less focused on steering the party forward, and more about claiming their space on 2028 bingo cards. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore headlined a white-tie dinner with Washington insiders just this weekend, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week passed on a Senate run in Michigan, and no one is taking their eye off Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, or former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. Then there’s former Vice President Kamala Harris, the substitute for Biden late in the 2024 race who is telling everyone asking that she is likely to make a call on a 2028 race by the end of the summer.
All of this is feeding the still-in-the-womb 2028 background rumbling inside the opposition party that is sharply divided over just how much capital-O opposing needs to be done, and to what ends. Trump will remain a driving force for the foreseeable future. Unlike Republicans, who this week telegraphed that they were ready to stay the course for 2028 when they made Vice President J.D. Vance the Republican National Committee’s chief fundraiser, the Democrats do not have a unified understanding of how to handle the coming months, let alone the midterms or 2028. If they do not find a general map, their time in the wilderness will continue to be completely dictated by Trump and his allies. But as the internal bickering drags on, all weary voters are seeing is a party with no shortage of talk about fighting Trump, but without a steady notion of how to actually do it.
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