The Democratic Party Needs To Be Rebuilt

LA GRANGE, IL — I think I speak for many folks when I say, there is nothing more compelling than when someone or a group admits “Hey I didn’t listen, I screwed up, and I will fix it.” If Dem leaders acknowledged they stopped listening, humble themselves by getting out to all 50 states and start listening to folks’ real needs in context, everything would start getting better immediately. Dems are in a rebuilding period. This needs to be clearly embraced.

Instead, what many Dems are doing is saying we have to “tack to the middle or the right.” Nobody understands what the “middle” means. It's meaningless.

Politicians revere a mythological land called “The Middle” and they always want to “tack to the right or middle”. “That will fix everything,” they will say with vigor. These are the entirely false and extremely tiring ideas that got us to where we are today, defeated, and flailing in the wilderness. We must admit Democrats stopped asking folks what their real everyday problems are and what they want.

If you listen to both Republican and Independent pollsters, the number one reason folks without a strong affiliation to either party, voted for Trump, will say, “Nobody asked what I thought, they just told me what I wanted. That just made me think change was needed.”

In short, Democrats stopped understanding the everyday context of everyday Americans and let DC consultants guess, spend a great deal of money guessing some more and then shared those guesses as if they were accurate. Not to mention Democrats stopped going to all fifty states and visiting rural areas twenty years ago.

Let’s get real and see where we are.

January 2025 Gallup Poll:

- The percentage of U.S. adults who said they identify as Democrats fell to 27%, according to the survey of more than 12,000 U.S. adults in 2023, representing a drop from 30% in 2020, 31% in 2016 and a record 36% in 2008 and 1998.

- That low ties the percentage of Americans who identify as Republicans, at 27%, marking the first time since 2005 that the same number of U.S. adults identify with the two political parties.

- Republican identification fell slightly from 2022, when 28% of Americans considered themselves members of the GOP, though Republican identification has remained steady for nearly 15 years, hovering between 25% and 29% since the 2008 election.

- Independents, meanwhile, have continued to rise, tying a high of 43% last year, according to the Gallup telephone survey, over the 41% of adults that identified as independent in 2022.

- Separately, several immediate 2024 exit polls indicated only 22% of Trump voters were actually affiliated with Republicans.

Important to note: a full third of the folks who simply “lean” toward either party are easily motivated to switch gears and change party affiliation, in a nanosecond. The sense of and allegiance to a party in the US is very different fromtwenty years ago.

Why is this? In a word, context. Independent voters have a context basket of 3-5 items that usually have to do with their basic human needs such as shelter, food, safety, security, sense of community, emotional well-being and self-actualization/ability to achieve goals, all similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

This data has been replicated in many polls and the trend has been steady over the last 15 years. At the end of day, whether we like it or not, about 50-60% of all voters are actually independents or more accurately, they vote based on their context and everyday life in and around election time. I call them context voters.

How do Democrats attract context voters? Just like any new acquaintance, ask them questions. Get to know them. Understand them and stop telling them what they want and see. Ask them and then develop solutions.

Equally important, we need to start acting like the opposition party. We are no longer just resisting. We are opposing fully to save the country. Stop worrying if we are Democrats and some crazy-specific flavor within the 38 flavors of being a Democrat. Also, be clear-eyed there is no middle, there are only issues that folks care about. Stop being offensive and putting folks into buckets (moderate, centrist, conservative, traditional, progressive, neo-something, radical, far left, far right, to name a few) — all of these are silly, outdated , and offensive. Let voters identify by the issues in their context basket. And leave it there.

Examples, most voters do not believe in some diluted down, middle version of a specific issue. They either believe or don’t.

· People either are antichoice or pro-choice, not halfway

· People either believe in climate science or do not believe, not in the middle

· Folks either believe in equity and equality for all or do not, they do not assign belief at a 40-60% level

· Folks either believe in fair wages or do not

· People either believe billionaires are not paying their fair share or not

· People believe prices are high or not

· People believe government helps or not

The reason politicians came up with the idea of “centrist or moderate” voters and collectively placing them in the magical “Middle” is this allowed them to not address issues at all or just nibble at the edges. Their logic is: The “Middle” does not like it when all the sides fight, so I will just stay out and not address it.

To be clear, there are lots of perspectives on lots of issues, but none of those issues or perspectives or solutions are in the middle. There are merely challenges with different solutions. Everybody can have a wide variety of ideas about solutions, but they do not gravitate toward highly diluted solutions and think it is okay to only solve ten percent of any given problem. This is precisely what folks are sick of right now.

The laziness and inaccuracy of thinking independent voters with varying types of context baskets are “centrists” or “moderates” is fundamentally just a safety hatch for lazy politicians who do not want to get to know their constituents or just do nothing.

The question then becomes, how do we motivate context voters to vote for Democrats?

In the most basic of terms, visit all fifty states. Get to know rural and small city America. Stop thinking you know everything.

Critically important, do not throw immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ folks and folks with disabilities under the bus. They are NOT TO BLAME FOR THE DEM LOSS. We are all in this together, Team America.

Our rallying cries should be: “We will fight to solve your everyday problems, every day for everybody.” “Everybody in and nobody out.”

Do’s
· Apologize for not asking, hearing or understanding what was needed prior to this

· Start asking folks in all fifty states what their real problems are. Stop telling them what to think.

· Stop talking about policy. Share the problem and then, tell them what the solution is, clearly and plainly. Do not talk policy. PPlain-spokensolutions win every time.

· Understand you are re-building the party

· Concentrate on fairness and solving the problems based on what you learn

· Build the party from scratch with the knowledge you receive from a fifty-state tour

· Start offering a weekly Counter Report with a clear description of events as they are actually happening right now and their negative impacts, accompanied by real solutions that work from the Dems

Don’ts

· Don’t talk like a robot!

· Do not talk about constitutional law and quote the founding fathers

· Stop talking about saving Democracy and addressing the Economy. Replace with fairness for all and lowering prices. Talk about making life fairer, safer, more affordable, a stronger ability to build a good life. Use plain-spoken specifics.

· Stop blaming groups, cultures, individuals and various types of Democrats for your woes.

· Stop treating cultures, communities and ethnicities like monoliths. We are all people with everyday problems. Stereotyping is immoral and stupid. Concentrate on behaviors, attitudes and motivations, not old demographic categories that are outdated.

Democratic party: be a good marketer. Start with knowing your audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marie Newman is a lifelong resident of Chicago’s south suburbs and a former Democratic congresswoman. Marie’s new book, “A Life Made From Scratch: Lessons From a Controversial Congresswoman, Mompreneur and Unstoppable Political Activist” is a brutally honest and funny memoir of her rise to “controversial” congresswoman, mother of a transgender daughter, antibullying activist, and CEO, soon available on Barnes and Noble and bookshop.org.

This content originally appeared on Marie Newman Studio Substack.