When Democrats Turn Up the Volume - 3/31/25

Just over two months into Donald Trump’s presidency, an exceedingly harsh critic leveled this brutal attack against the party that lost the White House to him last November:

“Because your party’s getting your ass kicked. Because the Democratic Party brand is toxic. Because people don’t think you make any damn sense. They think you make noise. They don’t think you support them… They don’t think you have their values. They think you’re elite. You talk down to people. You talk past people. They think you just think you’re smarter than other people, that you’re so judgmental and full of yourselves.” 

Actually, this quote is not quite accurate. While the sentiment is both legitimate and heartfelt, identifying the true source of the rebuke will require a slight change of the pronouns used in the preceding paragraph—from “you” to “we,” from “your” to “our,” from second person to first-person plural. That’s because the attack came from within the Democratic Party, from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has emerged as one of his party’s most scathing critics as he attempts to redirect its path forward.

Newsom was attempting to explain why he has begun hosting a podcast that provides a platform for conservative voices and how engaging in conversations with the likes of Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon could help his party reach voters who had abandoned them. Newsom has faced withering condemnation from his fellow Democrats, but the governor sees these discussions as a necessary step toward his party’s comeback (and therefore presumably to his own election in 2028). In recent years, Newsom has emerged as one of the most aggressive Democratic surrogates in mounting the attack against Trump and the GOP, but now he is targeting his fire at those on his own side of the aisle.

And he’s not the only one. A progressive primary challenger to 80-year-old incumbent Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) by the name of Kat Abughazaleh released an announcement video last week that was just as angry—and decidedly more scatological. Consider the following two excerpts from her opening salvo:

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling our country piece by piece. So I say it’s time to drop the excuses and grow an f---ing spine.”

And:

“We’re focusing on meeting constituent needs with one simple rule: what if we didn’t suck?”

This is not Franklin Delano Roosevelt or even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But both Newsom and Abughazaleh are capturing the fury and the frustration of grassroots Democrats in a way that the party’s Washington leadership has not. Just two weeks ago, I wrote about how similar levels of scorn had been directed at Senate leader Chuck Schumer for what many progressives felt was a capitulation to Trump on the federal budget. But perhaps remembering that simply replacing an aging party mainstay did not lead to a sudden turnaround or magical victory in the 2024 preselection, rebellious Democrats have expanded their broadsides beyond just Schumer to the entire establishment infrastructure that protected Joe Biden, yearns for Barack Obama, and is still playing by the pre-Trump rules that dominated Washington until 2017.

But just as hope is not a strategy, neither is anger. Last summer, when Kamala Harris replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, the Democrats experimented with what they called the politics of joy. (You may remember “brat summer” and Harris’ tribute to coconut trees.) But such delight did not resonate with voters worrying about inflation, Ukraine, and the border. So this emotional effort has a harder edge.

Newsom’s strategy seems to be about reaching out to culturally conservative swing voters. Abughazaleh’s approach is much more about motivating the party’s progressive base. The common denominator is rage, both toward Trump but also the inadequacies of their own party.

Democrats will need to accomplish both objectives to win in 2028, and there are ample substantive differences that the two wings of the party must resolve. (Newsom’s opposition to transgender athletes competing in women’s athletic competition and progressives’ allergy to enhanced border security, just to name two.) They could harness all this unfocused energy toward a unified agenda and message that unites left and center. Or they become a left-leaning MAGA. Either way, the politics of fulmination are a first step. Let’s see what comes next.