When Democrats Act Like… Democrats - 9/2/25
It is exactly three years until the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee begins their final sprint to the Election Day that will mark the end of the Donald Trump era. For many party stalwarts, that seems like a very, very long time from now.
Even while Trump’s poll numbers continue to deteriorate to historically low levels, his opponents’ path back to power still seems exceptionally daunting. The tiny Republican margin in Congress means that Democrats are well-positioned to reclaim a majority in at least one chamber, even given the GOP’s gerrymandering efforts in Texas, Florida, and other deep-red states. But as they count the days until the end of Trump’s second term, the White House looks to be excruciatingly far away.
Last week’s Democratic National Committee meeting was the latest example of the challenges that the party will face as it prepares for the next presidential campaign. Trump and his party are a target-rich environment, given voter dissatisfaction over the president’s performance on any number of issues. But the headlines that came out of the DNC gathering were not about inflation or tariffs, not about Medicaid or health care or education or taxes. There was no visible unified counter to Trump’s militarization of the nation’s cities or his increasingly unpopular immigration and deportation agenda.
Rather, the story that dominated the Democrats’ most visible gathering of the year was about the Gaza War, an issue that has deeply and painfully divided the party on ideological, demographic, and generational lines. A party committee debated two competing resolutions on the conflict, the more controversial of which called for a suspension of all military aid to the Jewish state and the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Efforts to make the resolution less harsh by limiting the arms prohibition to only offensive weapons, calling for a release of the remaining Israeli hostages, and emphasizing the need for a two-state solution that specifically mentioned Israel were unsuccessful.
Ultimately, the symbolic measure was defeated after a lengthy and emotional argument pitting the older party establishment against its younger grassroots activists. Beleaguered party leaders scrambled to pass a more subdued alternative, which combined the call for the hostages’ release and a two-state solution with an immediate ceasefire and increased humanitarian aid for Gaza. But after that compromise was passed, angry opponents confronted Democratic chair Ken Martin, who recognized that an extended and contentious floor debate was the last thing the party needed. So rather than risking a full-out brawl that would result in even more unhelpful news coverage and social media warfare, Martin actually withdrew his own resolution and instead said that he would appoint a task force to study the issue further.
The Democratic insurgency over the Middle East is not the party’s only internal rift: they face equally difficult disagreements on immigration, energy, crime, taxes, transgender issues, and any number of other issues. This is a somewhat predictable feature of the two-party system rather than a bug, and less than a year after losing the White House, it’s not surprising that various factions in the party have different ideas on how to proceed. These quarrels are rarely resolved until the party selects its nominee for the next election, so there is certainly no reason for Democratic partisans to panic.
But these party divides have gone unaddressed for an unusually long time. The lack of even an abbreviated primary campaign after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race last year meant that Democrats did not have the opportunity to address their disagreements before Kamala Harris became their nominee. But in the two previous campaigns, their hunger to defeat Trump in 2020 and their obligation to Hillary Clinton in 2016 artificially suppressed progressive uprisings. So it could be argued that the Democratic Party has not confronted its own unresolved issues since 2008. The fact that the next presidential election will mark a twenty-year gap since such a reconciliation suggests that the type of public reckoning that led to the Clinton and Obama presidencies is long overdue.
Trump recognizes the Democratic divisions, and ruthlessly preys on them even while publicly bragging of his intentions. There’s no way to predict where the next Democratic nominee will take their party—on Gaza or these other unresolved issues—or whether the next Republican nominee will be as effective as Trump at keeping the GOP unified. But the next three years of waiting won’t be easy for Democrats. Especially if they continue to work so hard to remind voters how divided they are.