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Mod Squad
Kay W.
July 11, 2025
A number of prominent younger Democrats with records of winning tough races are forming a new group with big ambitions to remake their party’s image, recruit a new wave of candidates and challenge political orthodoxies they say are holding the party back.
Members of the initiative, Majority Democrats, have different theories about how the national party has blundered. Some believe a heavy reliance on abortion-rights messaging or anti-Trump sentiment has come at the expense of a stronger economic focus. Others say party leaders underestimate how much pandemic-era school closures or reflexive defenses of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election bid have eroded voters’ trust in Democrats.
But the roughly 30 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels who have so far signed on to the group broadly agree that the Democratic Party must better address the issues that feel most urgent in voters’ lives — the affordability crisis, for example — and that it must shed its image as the party of the status quo. Many of the group’s members have, at times, challenged the party’s establishment, something the organization embraces.
I know this feels very much like slightly new branding for the center Right side of the Party, but they insist it isn’t ideological, so I’m willing to give them that for now:
Last month, in New York City, the party’s establishment failed to stop a charismatic 33-year-old democratic socialist from winning the mayoral primary, though some still hope to block him in the general election.
“We are either a big tent or we’re not,” Mr. Pureval, the Cincinnati mayor, said. “You know how you lose elections? Turn on talented young candidates who are actually winning.”
Maybe the Right and Center of the Party are finally willing to accept that there is a Left side of the Party which should be included. We’ll see if they follow thru and become genuinely and sincerely “big tent” ideologically, or if it’s just another Center Right Dem group that opposes anyone to the Left of themselves.
Finally, These are fighting words and I admire them for having the courage to say it, because I think it’s true:
Mr. Ryan of New York said he still heard from voters about the party establishment’s insistence that Mr. Biden was well equipped to serve as the Democratic nominee, until a disastrous debate made clear to the country that he was not.
“He was not up to this essential task of beating” President Trump, Mr. Ryan said. “The fact that no one, or very few people, would call that out is at the heart of the break in trust between the people and the Democratic Party. Until we reckon with that, I think it just makes it that much harder to rebuild the trust.”
“A lot of people that did speak out,” he continued, “are now in this group.”
I heard over and over how voters thought Biden had lost a step and shouldn’t run for a second term. I heard it from older voters and younger voters, and I heard it WELL before the disastrous debate. It showed up in every single poll. I ignored it because Biden was a progressive economically, and I support that. I shouldn’t have ignored it. That was wishful thinking on my part. I was a full-fledged poll denier by the spring of ‘24. That’s a mistake.
I would also add that we are going to have to grapple with the fact that a large part of our base were absolutely fucking horrified by Gaza (for good reason!) and ignoring THAT and sneering that it was all “privileged college students” was delusional too. Opposition to Biden’s Gaza policy was wide and deep among Democrats. It shouldn’t have been dismissed as unimportant.
You can’t just ignore what voters are telling you over and over and insist they shut up and fall in line. It won’t work. It’s never worked for us. Joe Biden could have been the best President who ever lived - if he can’t get more than 80% of Democrats it doesn’t matter - he’ll lose. Is that “fair”? Well, no. But it is true and it has to be faced.
If you’re wondering where it went, I mistakenly deleted Mistermix’s co op post. I apologize.
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