Earlier this month, The Washington Post’s Dan Balz detailed in short order the structural issues facing the Democratic Party. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but with the return of Donald J. Trump to the White House, these can’t be dismissed as a one-off thing. Democrats struggle with working class voters and those without college educations.
The 2020 mirage has been shattered: there aren’t enough snobby, wealthy, and college-educated whites to win national elections. Abortion isn’t enough to win. And kicking back and relying on suburban women to save the day was also a fool’s errand. Balz was forthright about how Democrats face immense issues trying to rebrand the party, and if they have a good midterm election, it’s not enough.
Balz spoke at a forum hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics on February 5, where the topic was Trump’s return to power. The reporter noted how Trump had flipped the script on Democrats, literally, regarding demographics. He also gave a lay of the land, which did not bode well for Democrats in down ticket races, especially in the U.S. Senate. That environment for 2026 was made worse by Sens. Tina Brown (D-MN) and Gary Peters (D-MI) announcing that they were not running.
Democrats are concerned that they cannot win in enough states to maintain a viable electoral future:
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) February 26, 2025
Dan Balz: "Donald Trump has won 25 states in the past three elections in those 25 states.
The Republicans have 22 governors, 24 state legislatures, and all 50 senators.
The… pic.twitter.com/54DZ577vMU
Donald Trump has won 25 states in the past three elections in those 25 states. The Republicans have 22 governors, 24 state legislatures, and all 50 senators. The Democrats have a problem winning in enough places to be able to really be a majority party, and particularly to have consistent hopes of winning the Senate. Two other things, we know that the college non-college split in the country is in many ways the basic fault line now. About 40 percent, maybe slightly less of the voting age population has college degrees. Kamala Harris got about 55 or 56 percent of that vote. The rest of the population, without college degrees, Trump got 56 percent of that vote. That is a problem that the Democrats haven’t solved.
He later expounded how Trump won the working and middle class household vote, the bread and butter of the Democratic Party’s base. Balz added that a Republican winning the demographic whose income is below $50,000, which Trump did, is probably a first since the Clinton era. In contrast, Kamala Harris is the first Democrat to win those making six figures or more. Again, white dudes matter, rural voters matter, and the working class matters. It’s why no one cares what Democrats are saying. It’s not resonating because most voters don’t view them as serious people. They have no message; when they cobble something together, it’s niche and illiberal. Democrats are now the party of the snobs, the elite, the rich, and the entitled.
Trump has transformed the GOP into a working-class, multiracial party. Yes, the ‘woke’ Left has become so insane that even non-white working class voters are starting to flee the Democrats.
Balz added that Democrats will need to have a challenging debate like the ones they had in the Reagan era on how to win again, and a good midterm year in 2026, if that happens, doesn’t get them where they need to be.
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