Growing pains

Kay W.
May 21, 2025

Josh Marshall identified what he sees as the fundamental split in the Dem Party:

It is true that Democrats need to create room for candidates to depart from party orthodoxies in parts of the country dominated by Republicans. But the big and overwhelming issue that Democrats face right now has very little to do with this. The overriding problem Democrats have today is a general belief that they’re not effective at fighting for what they believe in or what the country needs to be protected from. There’s a related, but secondary issue that they worry that Dems are most focused on issues that are obscure or not connected to the lives of the great majority of people struggling to make ends meet. That lack of fight is shattering for self-identified Democrats as well as highly damaging for genuine independents and low-information voters who genuinely flip from party to party from election to election. That is overwhelmingly the challenge Democrats have right now.

Mistermix weighed in here, generally agreeing with Marshall.

What I see here locally is a little different. I have written about the coalition that is forming where I live. Roughly, it breaks down to what we in Ohio call “party people” - Democrats who actually belong to the party, hold local positions, attend meetings, etc. and the various groups who have joined us in opposition to Trump: Indivisible, a labor-backed group called “Deeds”, a group called “No Kings” along with two younger unaffiliated moms who seem to be there only because they have children with disabilities and they are worried about programs and funding. That’s a fine reason to be there, btw. Welcome, moms!

Monday evening I attended the official Dem Party group. It was the usual local Democrats plus various people from the other groups. It wasn’t easy to integrate the newbies, partly because the newbies have all kinds of complaints about the D Party and also aren’t actually Democrats. We had housekeeping to do; elect a new chair, budget discussions, whether or not to rent a booth at the county fair in September, etc. Our new allies were impatient with this and wanted to get right to planning for a June 14th protest. They are taking action because they believe this is a 4 alarm fire for democracy. They don’t want to hear my thoughts on fair booth rental.

A small disagreement but one that I think goes to the split I see, and it’s between people who think the D Party needs major reform and new ideas and people who are essentially protecting the status quo in the Party. I think you can probably tell by that extremely biased description which group I’m in - I’m in the old guard but I agree with our new local allies- major reforms are overdue.

If you are a person who thinks we just need to tweak messaging and work harder on turnout and everything will be fine in a couple of cycles once Trump is gone then you and I are very far apart. I think we in this country are in a very, very bad place and we in the opposition need to take our organizations apart, look at what’s worth keeping and what’s missing, and make something new out of the parts. We also need new members. A lot of new members.

That’s a bigger lift, and a bigger split, than just “fighters v non fighters”. We’re not going back to business as usual after this- not any of us and not even if we really, really want to.

And with that happy thought - open thread!

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