Thursday Morning Politics: Democrats Respond
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Shane Goldmacher, national political correspondent for The New York Times covering the major developments, trends and forces shaping American politics, talks about the Democrats' ability to respond to the barrage of action by the new Trump administration and the national party's new leadership.
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Tiffany Hanssen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen filling in for Brian today. Coming up later in the show, we'll talk about why hospitals in New York City are reportedly canceling some appointments for transgender kids looking for gender-affirming care. New York's attorney General Letitia James issued a letter earlier this week warning hospitals that not providing this care could violate state law. Of course, executive orders from the Trump administration targeting gender-affirming care is certainly part of that story. We'll get to it later this hour with our healthcare reporter Caroline Lewis. Of course, we'd love to hear from you on that as well if you are affected by it.
Plus, a related issue, what does it mean that executive orders from required agencies like the CDC and the FDA and the National Institutes of Health are required to remove certain words referring to what the White House calls "gender ideology" from their website. As a guest, our epidemiologist will explain why consistent data and communication are vital to keep everyone healthy. She'll also share with us why what's happening at these federal health agencies is very concerning to public health experts. We'll wrap up today's show with your calls on insomnia, New York writer Adam Gopnik. Adam wrote about his own tendency to be up all night and what that has meant for his life.
First, this past weekend, the Democratic Party elected a new leader, Ken Martin of Minnesota. Martin has long been in the trenches of Democratic politics, starting out as an intern for the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, working his way up in Minnesota state politics and eventually through the ranks of the DNC. Martin moves into the position at a time when many would argue that the Democratic Party has been rocked back on its heels. Leaders are balancing the existential crisis brought on by the loss to President Trump with the real need to get back in the game to regain some of their seats in Congress in 2026.
Some, like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are going on the offensive. On Monday, Jeffries released a 10 point list outlining action steps. Others are taking a more wait-and-see approach, banking on what they see as the eventual backlash against Trump's actions and policies. Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent at the New York Times, has been tasked by the paper with covering the Democratic Party's effort to rebuild itself. He joins us now to talk about that. Hi, Shane.
Shane Goldmacher: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Tiffany Hanssen: Absolutely. Listeners, Shane and I would love you in this conversation as well. What is your perspective on this? Are you a Democrat with strong opinions about what specifically the party needs to do to move forward. Is it messaging? Is it method? Is it something else entirely? You can call and text us at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Shane, I want to get to Ken Martin in a little bit, but first I want to talk about the state of Democratic Party leadership more broadly. You wrote that at least for right now, the party is falling into two camps. Tell us what those two camps are. They're basically-- I'm going to answer the question for you. They're fired up people and there are the wait-and-see people, right?
Shane Goldmacher: Yes, I think that there's definitely people who are ready to take on a fight, and then there are people who are debating what fight to take on. The way I'm thinking about that part of the debate is really, do you think that less is more or more is more? Is it worth picking a fight on everything Trump is doing because he is doing so much, or do you wait and figure out things that are going to be more politically palatable and politically popular? Look, I think that the Democratic Party is now out of power. Republicans hold the White House, they hold the Senate, they hold the House of Representatives.
While the party is in the minority everywhere, there's this big debate among Democrats about, just how big of a hole is the party in? They are only a few seats short in the House of Representatives. In many regards, historically, they should be favored to take back the house in 2026, and yet the party seems really far from power in a lot of ways. The national conversation has moved away from the party.
Trump is enacting sweeping changes to the country that are anathema to many things that Democrats believe in. The answer to that question, which is how deep a hole are you in, is going to determine how big of changes the party is going to make. Do you make big, radical changes to win back the voters you've lost, or do you wait and make incremental changes and believe that that, in fact, that more cautious approach is the better way to take back power?
Tiffany Hanssen: I said in my introduction that this wait-and-see group, and I like this for the purposes of our conversation, talking about these two distinct groups, the people who are fired up, ready to go, and the people, as you mentioned, that are a little wait-and-see. Is it fair to characterize the wait-and-see group as people who are just looking for the fallout to come back and say, "We told you so."
Shane Goldmacher: I think that there's some of that for sure. Frankly, Hakeem Jeffries hasn't picked a category exactly yet in my view. He has been cautious in some regards. One of the things he's been saying, and he's again, the House Democratic leader, so one of the most powerful Democrats in the country, he's saying he doesn't want to swing at every pitch. That Trump is going to be throwing all this out there and he's going to wait for the moments where it can have an impact for the Democratic Party to respond. Again, he's the leader of this House Democratic caucus that is only three seats short of majority. He is the likeliest next Democrat to take back power next year. He is being also a little cautious. He's engaged in the fight, but the question is on what grounds does he want to fight?
Tiffany Hanssen: I wonder, to be fair to Jeffries, he's not swinging at every pitch, he says, because it's like a fire hose of executive orders. It's not that he's not interested. He's just interested in swinging at the pitches that really matter. We did get a text, Shane, this is about Jeffries, "The 10 step proposal is nothing. None of those will ever get into law because of the speaker of the House will not allow it. The Democrats must fight outside of the system and emphasize the illegality of what's going on. Once again, I'm afraid the Democrats are bringing a clothespin to a gunfight."
That's an interesting analogy. Let's talk-- Oh, and I should say, listeners, if you're interested in hearing from Jeffries himself, Brian did talk to him on Tuesday. You can go back and hear that conversation in the Brian Lehrer section part of our show on the website. For folks who aren't briefly here, Shane, for folks who aren't caught up-to-speed on those 10 points, let's just outline a few of the main ones. Can you?
Shane Goldmacher: I don't have the list directly in front of me. What I do know is that he has proposed an agenda for what House Democrats should do on messaging and as well as on policy, but as your listener points out, they don't have the power of policy. The House is a majoritarian institution. Hakeem Jeffries really has little power to affect change right now. Democrats in the Senate have far more power to stop things that Trump is doing.
What he's trying to outline at the beginning of this is a case for why Democrats should eventually be empowered again. Again, the conversation right now is not about what are Democrats standing for chiefly. It's what are you standing against? Because there is this fire hose of information coming out every day from Donald Trump. They are trying to figure out which fights to pick and where to make a stand.
Tiffany Hanssen: Jeffries did point out to your analogy there of not taking a swing at everything, he did leave quite a bit out of his 10 point list, like Panama, Marco Rubio's trip to Panama, taking control of the Panama Canal, buying Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, getting at that fire hose of executive orders and deciding what Democrats must confront. Part of what doing that means, I think, Shane, is understanding what the rank and file want their representatives to take on though, right?
Shane Goldmacher: Yes. I think you see the Democratic Party day by day finding places where they feel more comfortable, more confident and have greater traction. The opposition to Elon Musk, who has a small team of people taking ownership of vast swaths of information inside the federal government. Each day we find out new things about where his team is going and what information they're getting from the Treasury Department, from the personnel department.
This is a place where Democrats have rallied publicly outside in Washington DC in some of these buildings saying no one elected Elon Musk. That this is the richest person in the world who has massive government contracts on his own, having access to sensitive governmental information and data. This is a place that Democratic Party is comfortable opposing the billionaire class, a year after election where the party had lost some ground among working class voters.
The opposition to some of Trump's early moves to freeze grants that go to places all across the country. That's a place where the party has felt more comfortable fighting. There are places where the party has not appeared as comfortable. It's one of the things you teased coming later in your program, transgender care for youth. This is not an area where you see the Democratic Party pushing back as forcefully, and whether that's picking what pitches to swing at or whether that's the party modulating what its position positions will be, that's not quite clear yet. They are trying to find places where they feel there's a popular energy behind them in opposing Trump.
Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here, Shane. "They need," they, I assume Democrats, "They need to rebuild from the ground up. The namby-pamby moderate, please, everyone and no one tactic is not working and will not. They need to stand for something, not just against the big scary man." We're talking about these two groups as you laid them out, Shane, the take action folks versus the wait-and-see folks. I wonder if the take action folks are unified in what needs to be tackled. You talk about coming up with that list of issues that is important to the rank and file that Democrats think they can gain some support on. Are they unified in that thinking?
Shane Goldmacher: I think that there's no unifying thing at all for the Democratic Party at this point. It's a party that is fractured and undecided about what to fight on. Look, I think that it's important to look at where we are now and where we were eight years ago. Eight years ago, Donald Trump took power the first time and a massive resistance movement burbled up naturally. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in the streets opposing Donald Trump. The Democratic Party harnessed that energy and called it the resistance movement and was successful in winning back the House of representatives in the first midterms. Eventually, by 2020, they won the White House and the Senate.
That resistance movement, that idea that the unifying principle of the Democratic Party was opposing Donald Trump had seemed to be really successful, that Donald Trump was an unpopular figure and it had led the party back to power. Then in the four years that Biden was president, the party lost. They lost the House, they lost the Senate and they lost the White House. That idea of rallying around a resistance movement has really lost its luster with many leaders in the Democratic Party.
They've said, "It worked the first time, but today, eight years after the beginning of the resistance movement, it's hard to look at it as anything but a failure and that Donald Trump is back in power and has more power than he ever did." He has a more pliant Republican Congress. He has a more pliant set of courts. As the party is trying to figure out what to do next, I think that the fear among many is not to do the same thing they did before and get a short-term win that's followed by a longer term loss.
Tiffany Hanssen: Shane, I'm going to invite our listeners in here. Again, listeners, we'd love your perspective on this. If you're a Democrat with strong opinions about what needs to be done to move the party forward, we are at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Shane, let's bring Meredith into the conversation. Meredith is in Hastings-on-Hudson. Good morning.
Meredith: Good morning. I think the Democrats, we need to accept this undemocratic notion of cult of personality. I think America is showing time and time again this is what we want. We want this strong leader via Trump's nomination again and again. If you think back, the Democratic leaders that have been prominent in the last 20 years has been Obama or Clinton and they did have this strong personality that people believed in and stood behind. Maybe as Americans, unfortunately, we want to follow a leader as opposed to this democratic notion of being a group process. Maybe that scares people. We think it's socialism or communism. I guess I'm thinking can Democrats somehow find a leader that people can follow and believe in? Somehow in America we want that.
Tiffany Hanssen: Meredith, do you have any suggestions for who that might be?
Meredith: I don't. I racked my brain lately thinking, who could that be? we tried with Kamala, we tried with Hillary. I think they're strong, very strong people that I want to follow and lead, but how do we find that? I don't know who that person is. Who is that leader? I don't know whether to say the Democratic messiah, but who is that leader that can lead us? A strong leader like a Democratic Trump.
Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you, Meredith. Shane, to Meredith's point, first of all, is it a tactic that Democrats are likely to take, and two, do they have a pipeline problem?
Shane Goldmacher: First of all, I would divide that up, which is that the Democratic Party and both parties, frankly, have always been strongest when there is a strong leader. Trump has been in many ways not just a strong leader for Republicans, but a strong man style leader. I actually don't think that that appeals in the same way to Democratic voters. There are certain things that work with Republican voters and the base of the Republican Party that just aren't going to work with the base of the Democratic Party. There have been years of discussions of, why isn't there a Democratic version of Fox News?
I think the answer is that there's not an audience for it. The Democratic base doesn't want their information quite the same way that the Republican base wants their information. The second thing I would just say is that it's so hard now to foresee and to forecast who the solution would be, what it would look like. I'm reminded that after 2012, it was the Republicans who found themselves in the political wilderness. Barack Obama had just won two straight elections, and the Republican National Committee ordered up what they called it an autopsy of the Republican Party. It had a whole set of recommendations for what the party needed to do to move to the middle and win back the American people.
The centerpiece was that the party needed to change its position on immigration, become more inclusive, and not take such a hard line on immigration issues. Then Donald Trump comes along and does exactly the opposite and wins back the White House. In these early moments, it's so hard to forecast what the solution will be. Often, the people who are closest to it, the party insiders and the experts for The Republican Party 12 years ago, they got it 100% wrong in terms of what it was going to take for Republicans to win back the White House four years later.
Tiffany Hanssen: It's a cautionary tale?
Shane Goldmacher: Absolutely. I think you can go back further, too. 2004, the Democratic Party, after George W. Bush won reelection, was having the same moment. What do we do? How do we get from there? Many leaders in the Democratic Party at the moment said, "You know what we really are going to need? A white guy, moderate from the middle of the country who is just going to help us win those middle of the road voters." They recruited a bunch of those candidates, and they won in the 2006 midterms with them. The person who ultimately delivered the White House was Barack Obama, who nobody was talking about as the next figure to lead the party as a solution to the party's weaknesses in 2004.
Tiffany Hanssen: When Meredith talks about doing something that is a little bit outside of the "norm" for the Democratic Party, that in finding that personality, we've been hearing a little bit about that, like, "The Democrats need to do things that they aren't normally doing, that they're not normally associated with." For example, we have the budget bill expiring in March and some Democrats saying, "You know what? We should get tough on a government shutdown."
Shane Goldmacher: I think that there's tactical decisions like that. There's tactical decisions in the Senate. Do you try to blockade all of Trump's nominees? Do you try to slow down the process, which they are doing on some of them? Look, a lot of Democrats have voted for a lot of Trump's nominees so far. Marco Rubio is confirmed with every Democrat in the Senate. That's the old school of the Senate, which is that they know Marco Rubio. They think that he is qualified. There's a new school of thought on the left, and frankly, in different parts of the Democratic Party saying you need to fight on everything. There's not an answer yet. They're trying all of the above at this point and seeing what sticks.
Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here, Shane. "Why is it so difficult for the Democrats to take a principled stand? The reason AOC is so popular is because, agree or disagree with her, she has at least taken the principled stand." I think that you could call her stand principled if you agree with her. I'm thinking of, let's talk about John Fetter woman who took a principled stand in favor of confirming Pam Bondi as Attorney General. When do Democrats mean take your stand and when do they want you to not take your stand?
Shane Goldmacher: Everybody's principles are different. What AOC does successfully is communicate what she believes, why she believes it, and how it's informing her actions. If you were following closely how she's acting, she's explaining to those who are engaged as to why she's doing what she's doing. Fetterman, frankly, on the other side of the Democratic Party, and in some ways he's aligned with her on other issues, but on some, he's also taking what he is saying is a principled stand on Israel on a number of issues, on some of these confirmation fights, on bucking his party on the issue of immigration and whether people who are caught having done crimes in the United States after crossing the border illegally should be deported. He is taking what he says is his principled stand.
The challenge is, if you are a big party tent, you're going to have different people with different principles inside the tent, and you need them to vote most of the time together. People like Senator Fetterman and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez are most of the time going to vote together. The ones that you, of course, know best about are the ones when they disagree, because that tells you the limits and the boundaries of what being a Democrat is today. If you're a successful Democratic Party-- The thing is, the bigger your party, the more the disagreements are traditionally.
The concern, really, frankly, for Democrats is that Trump has the majority. They are currently the bigger party, and yet it's the Republican Party that in some ways is more unified behind Trump and not showing its own divisions and fissures. Typically, that's what happens when you do have the majority. It's concerning for Democrats that those fissures are being exposed even when you don't have enough seats to control the agenda.
Tiffany Hanssen: A complaint about the Democratic Party from those within it has long been, "Oh, the Democrats need to fall in love. They don't fall in line, and that the Republicans fall in line." If we hear the way some Republicans talk about President Trump, they fell in love. I guess I'd just like you to get at that, like, again, some of these complaints that we've been hearing from Democrats within the party, "We need to fall in line, not fall in love." Or, "Were the big tent party." On the flip side of that is, "We've gone too far down that road." I'm just curious how those slogans that we've heard about Democrats in years past are crumbling, essentially.
Shane Goldmacher: You can only fall in line if there's a leader to line up behind, and there's a vacuum right now. At the national level, the two biggest names are Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and they are battling inside the Congress for bills and legislation and pushing back on Trump's nominees. They're not necessarily setting a national agenda. You will not have a leader for a few years. That's what the wilderness is. It's not having a national elected leader.
Look, Trump has caused people to fall in love inside his party, but he's also imposed a discipline and forced them to fall in line. There are a number of Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in the House of Representatives when he left in 2001. Of the 10 House Republicans that voted to impeach him, he targeted all of those candidates and tried to beat them in their primaries and in some cases beyond, and 8 of those candidates are gone. 80% of the House Republicans, Liz Cheney, the biggest name who voted to impeach Donald Trump, he imposed a party discipline on them by getting them out of the party.
There are a couple more who are in the Senate who are now going to face the voters in 2026. Guess what? They're mostly falling in line. Bill Cassidy is a doctor from Louisiana, a senator, and he has expressed out loud really deep concerns about the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to HHS. Yet when pushes come to shove, he ended up voting for him in committee. There was a heavy lobbying campaign. The issue was if you're Bill Cassidy and you've already voted for Trump's impeachment, can you do anything else and not have the party come after you and defeat you in a primary? He already has a primary opponent next year. Yes, there's a big part of the Republican base that has fallen in love with Donald Trump, but what he's also done is impose this discipline and force anyone else who isn't in love to fall in line.
Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking with Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent at the New York Times who has been tasked by the paper with covering the Democratic Party's efforts effort to rebuild itself. We'll continue our conversation with Shane in just a bit. Listeners, of course, we'd love to have you in this conversation as well. You can text us, you can call us at 212-433-9692. Shane, after this quick break, I want to get to that wait-and-see group that we've been talking about. You're listening to the Brian Lair Show. Stay with us.
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Tiffany Hanssen: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen filling in for Brian. Today we are talking about the Democratic Party and as Shane Goldmacher has been tasked with the necessity, some would say, of the party to rebuild itself. Shane Goldmacher is a national political correspondent at the New York Times. Shane, I said I wanted to get you. You've divided the the Democratic Party somewhat handily into two groups, those folks who are ready to like, stand up and fight, those who are a little bit more wait-and-see. I do, Shane, want to bring a listener into the conversation right off the bat here. Rebecca in Cambridge. Good morning, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Hi. My thought is can't the Democrats just go back to the old "it's the economy, stupid," because that's what Trump is really sailing on right now. Principled leadership is great, but NAOMC is popular because of it, but not among swing voters. Swing voters and voter turnout are all that matters. Issues like the economy, as Bill Clinton understood, will motivate people.
When they see that inflation and their grocery bills and the gas prices are going up further under Trump than under Biden. If the Democrats could speak with one voice and just harp on this one issue and the other issue of foreign entanglements, the idea that there might be military interventions in Panama, Gaza, even Greenland. These things are ridiculous, and they're very disappointing to people who voted for Trump who would be the swing vote. I'm just talking about pragmatic issues.
Tiffany Hanssen: Rebecca, I want to get Shane's take on this about the economy, stupid. Shane, I wonder, wouldn't that fall in a little bit into this wait-and-see group? We're going to have to wait and see, give people six months under the Trump economy to come to their own conclusions about it before Democrats would be able to start using that as an issue to unite behind.
Shane Goldmacher: I think that there's no question that most Democrats right now would like to center the economy as the party's message, as a way to win back power, to focus on things like the price of eggs, which have gone up at the moment. Now, we are far, far from what the economy will look like in the midterms. If the economy looks better, then that may not, in fact, be the winning message.
I think the issue that the Democratic Party has today is that how it is perceived is almost preventing the party at times from making an economic argument. What I mean by that is actually revealed partly by some polling the New York Times just did this last month, which is asking voters, what do you think the Democratic Party's top priorities are on issues? The top two issues were abortion and LGBT rights. When you asked voters what the top issues were for the Republican Party, the top issues were immigration and the economy.
It was the Republican set of issues overall that mirrored far more closely what voters said were the most important issues to them. In other words, people are seeing Democrats in general as focused on things that are important to the Democratic Party, but not focused on things that matter to them. That issue is preventing the party from even talking about the economy because they don't have the trust of the electorate on those issues. It's really [unintelligible 00:29:10] on party grounds.
Tiffany Hanssen: That's the nut of it, though, right? If you don't have the trust of the people in the rank and file of your party, that right there is the big problem.
Shane Goldmacher: That's the argument that a Hakeem Jeffries might make about not swinging at every pitch. Only swinging at the pitches that are on the topics you want to talk about. If Trump is doing 10 things every day, do you want to fight about USAID? Do you want to fight about Elon Musk at the Treasury Department? Do you want to fight about an executive order about transgender sports? Which of these things do you want to pick?
There's only so much time on the evening news broadcast, there's only so much time on somebody's Instagram feed that they're swiping through that they might see a Democratic response. It's, do you pick the one issue you think is going to be most popular, or do you try to flood the zone in response to his flooding of the zone? I don't think there's a clear answer as what the party overall wants to do, let alone the congressional leadership.
Tiffany Hanssen: I'm wondering, we're hearing less of this right now among this group that falls into the wait-and-see category. We're ways away now from the election, so we're hearing less of this, but there was a bit of blame game happening initially. Biden should have dropped out sooner. Harris should have distanced herself from him more. Do you foresee any of that getting traction with rank and file Democrats?
Shane Goldmacher: We mentioned earlier that the Democratic National Committee, which is the official Democratic Party apparatus, just selected its new chairman, Ken Martin.
Tiffany Hanssen: I want to get to Ken. Yes.
Shane Goldmacher: I spoke with him with my colleague Reid Epstein right after his election, and we said, "What are you going to do?" He said he's going to order up an after action report. He doesn't want to call it an autopsy because he says, "The party's not dead. You do autopsies on dead things." He wants to call it a review. He doesn't want to talk about, should Joe Biden have run or not? He doesn't want to review that question.
He made the argument that that's about the past and not about the future. I understand that argument because, yes, there will not be a question of whether Joe Biden will be on the ballot the next time Democrats are running in a presidential race. The questions are, how deeply do you want to look at the mistakes of the past to guide the future? I think that's a big question. The choice of Ken Martin was really an interesting one.
The race to be the next party chairman was not necessarily about these big questions we're talking about, what should the Democratic Party stand for? It was a debate between Martin, who's really an insider's insider, a state party chairman who was the chair of the group of state party chairs, and he built a coalition to Elect him from that. He was running against, in part, a person who was another state party chair who had the backing of national Democrats, who wanted to shake up the party after that.
Tiffany Hanssen: In a neighboring state, right?
Shane Goldmacher: Yes. In the neighboring state of Wisconsin. Neither of these people were talking about massive sweeping change, but in the space that they were debating, Martin was the person who was less about upending what the party stands for and more talking about infrastructure, spending, emphasis on tactics than big picture, what should Democrats come to stand for in this country?
Tiffany Hanssen: Shane, thank you for teeing me up perfectly. We have a clip here from Ken Martin. He was elected, as we've been saying, as the chair of the DNC on February 1st. He was flanked, Shane, it's worth noting by progressive Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Let's hear what he has to say for himself.
Ken Martin: It's time for our party to do three things. First is to unite. We have to rebuild our coalition. We have to ignore the noise. We have to focus with intensity on the goal ahead, which is winning elections to improve people's lives. Second, we need to go on offense. Trump's first weeks have shown us that what happens when amateur hour meets demolition derby. At the same time, he's invited all these billionaires into the Oval Office to mine, extract and profit off of our government. This is our time right now. It's the people's government. It's not another resource for ultra elites to exploit. Lastly, and the third is we're going to take tonight to enjoy the moment and we're going to build new alliances, but then we're going to get to work.
Tiffany Hanssen: Shane, there's a lot in there and a lot of, [chuckles] and a lot of language that once you tease it out, you understand where he's headed. Let's start at the top there. He kept saying prior to this clip, and if you go back and you read and you listen to the entire clip and you watch what he did there on stage, he kept saying, "The fight is not in this room." Here he says the party should unite. Who is he referring to? Who's he trying to get, to your point before, to fall in line?
Shane Goldmacher: I think that the challenge is if you go deeper on all of the phrases he used, I don't think there was an answer to how to do them. "Ignore the noise." Well, what is the noise, and what are the things you should focus on? "Go on offense." Okay, but, on what topics? "Get to work and unite the party," but in what way and around what? Ken Martin is talking about building the party to be prepared, but he doesn't necessarily have an answer to those questions yet. It may not in fact be his job to have an answer to those questions, but that's where the party is debating over those questions. What is the noise? What are the things you should be on offense about, and what should you, in fact, be uniting around?
Tiffany Hanssen: Shane, let's bring Abel in Fort Greene into the conversation. Good morning, Abel.
Abel: Good morning. Thank you for having this conversation. I want to disagree with a couple of last callers who spoke. The first about wanting a Trump-like figure or a strong personality within the party, and the second, trying to reach out to swing voters. I don't think that focusing narrowly on a small set of economic issues is going to work, and I don't think that having a strong figure is going to really be-- it's not really compatible with the Democratic Party or the left in general. I think what we need is our strong moral arguments for trans rights or for economic justice, for racial justice, for Palestinian rights and the ability for them to live freely without the constant threat of genocide.
I think that if you focus on these issues and if you make these strong moral arguments, you're going to activate the base. You're going to get all of these 19 and 20-year-olds who spent the last like 6 to 12 months of the Biden administration just trying to protest for their rights and their right to live and getting beaten by cops on their college campuses to actually go out and not just vote, but volunteer and provide put energy into the party. When I hear figures like Kirsten Gillibrand talk about bipartisanship or Tom Suozzi talk about shoving trans children under the bus, it's really dispiriting. It's really demoralizing. I know that a lot of people in the Democratic base who are the lifeblood of the party and the lifeblood of the left really feel demoralized too.
Tiffany Hanssen: Abel, thanks for the call. Shane, I think Abel is reflecting some of what you saw in the polling that you mentioned from the Times, right?
Shane Goldmacher: Yes. I think he's talking about the issues that motivate the base of the Democratic Party and [crosstalk].
Tiffany Hanssen: But it didn't work, right?
Shane Goldmacher: Yes, but in general, the issues that he's describing aren't broadly popular with the American public. Now, that doesn't mean that parts of the party can't try to make changes to change public opinion. The question comes, do you want to try to change public opinion on those topics, which is a tough task, or do you want to meet voters where they are and find a place that's closer to where they are because you think that it's so valuable to have Democrats in power?
He mentioned Tom Suozzi as an example of somebody who is dispiriting him. Tom Suozzi is a candidate who was in Congress before, left, and came back and won back his seat that had been held by a Republican. His race, which is just in Long island nearby, was seen partly as a model for how to push back on Republican attacks on immigration. He's successful in a seat that Donald Trump had previously carried. The question becomes for Democrats, do you want Tom Suozzi, who has won a swing district, to be your model, or do you want somebody who you agree with 100% of the time to be your model, but that person may in fact lose those swing districts and empower Republicans?
Tiffany Hanssen: To that point, there were districts in New York, I'm thinking of districts in the Bronx, in Queens where Trump gained in historically Democratic areas. I would imagine that you are hearing about the need to address those gains, though, on the flip side, right?
Shane Goldmacher: Donald Trump had among the strongest performances for Republican in many years in Latino communities while talking about immigration and talking in ways that the Democratic Party had called racist for years and focusing on racial grievance and animus. This was who Donald Trump was. After that, he had the strongest showing in the Bronx for Republican in many years. He improved dramatically in Asian neighborhoods in Queens.
One of the reckonings that are happening inside the Democratic Party is how to talk about these issues of race as Trump is talking about DI and blaming it with no evidence for a plane collision over the Potomac River. How do Democrats push back on those issues at the same time as you've seen him make inroads among communities of color? For many years, the Democratic Party has believe it not only has the moral high ground on measures of diversity, but a political high ground. The political high ground, it's less clear today than it was a year ago after Trump's election.
Tiffany Hanssen: Shane, we have an interesting text here that says, "Trump's--" Oh, I just lost it. Oh, "Trump's policies are unpopular. Shane is actually wrong." Shane, I would argue that Trump's policies are unpopular with a certain sect of people, a certain group of people, a certain section of Democratic voters, but if you consider the fact that we're talking about how he made gains in those districts here in New York that were traditionally blue. He had the popular vote.
He has the support of a large portion of the middle of this country overwhelmingly. They are not unpopular. They are unpopular with a certain group of people. I guess what I'm wondering is, is that reflective of a myopic view of what the Democrats need to do at this point, and that is to address, as you've said, the issues that matter to the voters that maybe aren't in New York?
Shane Goldmacher: Look, there are certainly some of Trump's particular policies that are individually unpopular. If you were to take a poll and ask people, would you like the richest person on the planet who's an unelected billionaire to go in and be making changes and accessing people's personal information and payment structures? The answer is probably no. At the same time, Donald Trump has won and he has grown his vote share in three consecutive elections. He won one share of the vote in 2016. While he lost in 2020, he grew a greater percentage of the vote, and he won the popular vote for the first time in 2024.
Democrats had told themselves that Donald Trump was an aberration when he won in 2016, and it felt that that was true when he lost in 2020. His return shows that he is not, in fact, an aberration. That he is in line with the Republican Party and with a big swath of this country. The Democrats, why they're struggling is figuring out which of these issues to oppose him on. There are lots of parts of the Democratic agenda that are popular. If you took a poll, people would like to raise the minimum wage. In fact, they vote to raise the minimum wage in red states. People have been for legalization of marijuana.
There are a lot of parts of the Democratic agenda that people are for, but there's something about the Democratic brand today that is making the brand even less popular than some of its particular policies. That's what the party is going through right now, figuring out, how do they fix the brand Such that you can even talk about the policies? That people don't shut their ears and say, "Ugh, you're a Democrat. I don't even want to listen to you." There are many states in this country where the most viable candidates run statewide, they don't have a D next to their name. The Democratic Party basically ran an independent for Senate in Nebraska last cycle because they knew if they had a D next to their name, the person was all but guaranteed to lose.
Tiffany Hanssen: I want to ask you in the last minutes we have left here of your opinion, when we talk about economic, talking about the economy to voters, Trump has made some gains in talking about being for the working class and what the working class needs and making an economy that works for the working class. Yet on Inauguration Day, the first line of people behind him are the wealthiest people in the country, if not the world. This is a fantastic melding in a very strange way of I'm for the rich and I'm for the people who aren't so rich. I'm just curious your take on that and how, if at all, Democrats can talk about the economy in a way that circumvents his ability to hit it from every angle it would have seemed.
Shane Goldmacher: Democrats were really seeing opportunity in that Inauguration Day scene because it told you who he was prioritizing. He chose to put some of the world's wealthiest people on stage, and in some cases, in front of his actual cabinet. Yes, Donald Trump had made inroads with working class voters of color. He had already had pretty broad support among white working class voters.
For Democrats, this is an image that broke. People are aware that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos attended this inauguration. What Democrats are trying to figure out next is what to do with that information. Voters know that. Then how are you going to tell them what you're going to do for them? Trump, if you've seen anything, has a megaphone. He's going to repeat endlessly that this is going to be a golden age, that he's going to do more for people.
The Democratic Party is going to look at the coming tax fight, and the single biggest bill that's going to be fought over this year will be whether or what taxes are extended in the last tax cut package and try to make a message that says, "This final bill will be benefiting the rich and the people on that Inauguration Stage and not everyday Americans." That messaging fight, I think is going to be the most consequential one later this year for the Democratic Party for sure.
Tiffany Hanssen: We're early days, Shane, but I wonder how you're feeling about the Democratic Party's ability to pull it all together by 2026. There are, as you mentioned in your piece, these various factions. We haven't even gotten into the progressive wing of the party. We've really, for the purposes of our conversation, been talking about these folks that are ready to get to work versus the folks that are wanting to take a wait-and-see approach. I just wonder, given all of that consistent disorganization that we're seeing right now, some of it probably natural following an election loss, but do you see it all coming together in a really magical way at some point?
Shane Goldmacher: Look, if anything, we know that all political coalitions in American politics are impermanent. That the pendulum swings, and that in all likelihood, at some point, the Democratic Party will take back power. The nature of the Democratic coalition now is more likely voters are voting for Democrats, and it's those more likely voters that have voted in midterms historically and special elections. There was this small special election in Iowa in a fairly Trumpy area that Democrats picked up the seat because it's more educated. Upper class voters are increasingly a core base of the Democratic Party, and that gives the party benefits in the upcoming midterm elections.
Yes, I think it's quite possible the Democratic Party wins back some power next year. I think the longer term question is, can the party adjust, fix, heal its brand so that when it speaks about economic voters, that voters are willing to listen to the party's message and not tune them out because they think it's focused on other things? Can the party both mobilize the progressive base and the caller who's feeling dispirited and at the same time win over the swing voters that you need to actually win an election?
You need to do both at this point. You need the base to come out and you need to win over folks in the middle. The challenge is trying to do both at once. It so often can feel like a zero sum game. You move the party one direction in one way and you're losing some and you're gaining some. This is the challenge of what Ken Martin is talking about is, can you unify, means holding both ends of that coalition together. It's something that Trump just did successfully and Republicans have done successfully. The Democrats did it in 2020 in opposing Trump, but they haven't done it on their own proactive agenda and really since Barack Obama. Can the party come together behind someone or something to unite them? It's really an open question.
Tiffany Hanssen: Shane, we haven't even touched on the the cataclysmic reshaping of these individual parties, but we are we are going to have to leave it there. Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent at the New York Times. Shane, we appreciate your perspective this morning and for giving us so much time with us.
Shane Goldmacher: Thank you so much.
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