Inside the Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, to a party at a pivotal crossroads. 33-year-old progressive Zohran Mamdani stunned the Democratic establishment this week after securing a historic victory in New York City’s mayoral primaries. In a new piece for The Atlantic, journalist David Graham argues that party leaders are failing to keep pace with the moment as he explains to Michel Martin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks Christiane. David Graham, thanks so much for talking with us.

DAVID GRAHAM, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: My pleasure.

MARTIN: So, a lot of people will re remember, maybe they even attended one of those big No Kings marches, protests that happened, you know, all over the country on June 14th. And if you were thinking about it or maybe part of the coverage or you attended yourself, you might have thought, where were the Democrats? And it turns out that a lot of them were at a very fancy wedding in the Hamptons. It kind of led to a piece that you wrote for The Atlantic saying, and it’s a tough title, I’m just going to say it, “The Democratic Party Slides Into Irrelevance.” That’s kind of tough. So, what makes you say that?

GRAHAM: I think it was a few things. I mean, one, you had these huge protests, some of the largest protests in American history with millions of people out, showing opposition to the Trump administration. And although there were elected Democrats involved, this is something that was organized by outside groups and by grassroots groups. And the Democratic Party itself was kind of on the sidelines. In fact, while this was going on, they were, as you say, attending the wedding of Alex Soros, whose father is a major Democratic donor, or they were also having splintering of the Democratic National Committee as longtime members were resigning.

MARTIN: So, is the issue that they went to this wedding or is the issue that they really did not have a big role in these massive anti-Trump protests?

GRAHAM: I think it’s more the latter. It’s an unfortunate confluence for them. And it is maybe symbolism more than anything that they weren’t skipping. I don’t think that Democratic involvement necessarily would’ve helped. I mean, what we see is there is robust opposition to the Trump administration, it’s just not coming from Democrats. You know, we have Democratic leaders in Congress who seem a little bit unsure on the message. And we’ve had, you know, Hakeem Jeffries saying he doesn’t know what they can do. We don’t see a national party leader. You know, Joe Biden is off the scene. Kamala Harris is considering a run for governor of California. Barack Obama has spoken occasionally recently, but is not a very visible presence. So, it’s a party that doesn’t seem to have a clear leader and doesn’t have a clear agenda. even as opposing Trump is something that I think is very popular.

MARTIN: So, tell me about that. I mean, is it unusual for the party out of power to have a visible agenda or a visible leader, or is this just normal, if I can use that word?

GRAHAM: I think some of these are the normal result of losing an election. A party that is lost is going to want to find out what happened. It’s going to have to sort of go over those things again. And what’s striking to me is that as they’ve been trying to do that, they are still re-litigating the 2024 election. And they’re also dealing with internal party turmoil. You might expect the Democratic National Committee to sort of step up and fill that void in the absence of another leader. And instead, you see them, you know, arguing over whether David Hogg, the 25-year-old anti-gun activist, can be a vice chair or should leave, whether he’s going to lead primary challenges. And what the role of the committee chair, Ken Martin, should be. I think it’s true that although you can have a lot of opposition, you can see a widespread grassroots movement, it’s hard to turn that into national success if you don’t have a party apparatus that works well. You know, Democrats say that even as there have been these disagreements, they’re raising money, they’re preparing a 50-state strategy, you know, they’re getting back on track, is what they say. But you know, we haven’t seen a lot of the concrete signs of that. And what we have seen is a lot of infighting.

MARTIN: What are some of the other data points that suggest to you that the Democratic Party is not just sort of floundering, but they’re irrelevant? What’s your evidence that the Democratic Party is irrelevant except other than the fact that they don’t hold either party of Congress and they don’t hold the White House, which means they have a harder time getting the attention of the public?

GRAHAM: I think that is a major problem for them. And you know, you see that in the debate, for example, over the so-called one big, beautiful bill, where Democrats, you know, had a bid to sort of try to so slow things down in the House and were unsuccessful. In the Senate, they’re rather — they’re entirely on the sidelines and don’t have a whole lot of role to play at this moment. But you also don’t see much of a clear message from Democrats other than this isn’t something that’s good. There’s a — you know, you see Democrats succeeding at the state level. I think that’s true. But you don’t see a clear message from the National Party. Another example of this is on Iran. I think it’s very hard to understand what the Democratic Party’s message on the bombings on — in Iran is. Some of them say that there should be congressional authorization of force. Some of them are opposed. But overall, there’s no party message, even as you see a robust debate going on inside the Republican Party over whether strikes on Iran with the right choice.

MARTIN: You know, a couple members of the House said this is unconstitutional. And the president, as he does, immediately called him names and threatened to, you know, run a primary, an opponent against him. Really, is it — do you really call that a robust debate or is it really more a robust debate among in the base as opposed to the Republican Party?

GRAHAM: I think it’s hard to draw lines between the base and between their, the conservative media establishment more importantly, and the party. Because you have these factions inside the conservative media, basically a Fox News faction and an ex-Fox News faction led by Tucker Carlson debating these things. And when you see the influence that those people have on the administration and on members of Congress, I think that constitutes a debate inside the party.

MARTIN: So, let’s talk a little bit more about your piece. One of the data points that you cite is the fact that the party apparatus was in so much turmoil over David Hogg. Just say a little bit more about who he is and what all the adjective was about.

GRAHAM: Yes. So, David Hogg is an activist. He famously was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when the shooting occurred there, and he’s become a major activist. And he ran for vice chair of the party at the beginning of this year and won. And then, shortly thereafter, announced that he was going to be running primary challenges to Democratic incumbents, which is a highly unusual thing for a leading party officer to do. Ken Martin, the chair has, you know, tried to dissuade him from that, and argue that wasn’t something he should do. And ultimately, what’s happened is Hogg was removed from his post over a challenge over whether he had been elected according to the rules of the party correctly, and he declined to run again. So, he’s now gone. But in the meantime, he has taken up a lot of time and a lot of energy. And in a leaked recording, Ken Martin said he felt like David Hogg’s, sort of, distractions had made it very difficult for him to lead the party and made him question whether he wanted to stay as the chair.

MARTIN: It was a big deal because, why? What reason that showed that they were so in turmoil over David Hogg and what else? What other conclusion did you draw from that whole, you know, episode?

GRAHAM: So, I think there’s two things. One is it’s a bad sign if a party that is trying to take on a figure as powerful as Trump with as powerful an apparatus as him is having a hard time negotiating what to do with the 25- year-old activist with a relatively small amount of money behind him. That doesn’t suggest a party that’s able to decide quickly, to move decisively, and to plan. But also, the fallout from that has been a little bit concerning. So, we saw the resignations from the committee of Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, who’s the leader of another powerful union. And these are people who’ve been important in the party for a long time. And they’re leaving and criticizing Ken Martin. And this is a time when the Democratic Party has already been losing labor support, not only among union voters, but also among union leaders. We saw the Teamsters, for example, decline to endorse in the last election, which was seen as a major victory for Donald Trump. So, if Democrats are losing labor leaders at this moment that’s a problem for them electorally and it’s also a problem in terms of the coffers for the campaign and in terms of the sort of feet on the ground, boots on the ground for running a campaign when it comes around to 2026 and to 2028.

MARTIN: What is your sort of bottom-line analysis of what ails the Democratic Party? Because, you know, John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania, argues that Democrats have become too precious. You know, that they — you know, they’ll fight with people over whether you drank a single use plastic water bottle at a public event, and then they fight among themselves over kind of rulesly (ph) things and that they’re kind of losing the plot. But other people feel that that’s — you know, that these rules matter, that trying to fight out these issues is kind of a symbol of what the party stands for. What do you think?

GRAHAM: I think in some ways we’re just seeing a long running identity crisis. And after the 2016 election, Democrats could say that it was a fluke, and after 2020 they could tell themselves that, in fact, Trump was clearly a fluke and that things were back the way they were. The 2024 election made it very hard for them to believe that anymore, and they don’t know yet what they might look like on the other side. I mean, I think on some level, Fetterman is right, there is a preciousness to the party and it’s not necessarily about the issues themselves, but about the way they’re expressed. You don’t see leaders who seem able or ready to take bold stances and to simply be interesting. And it’s very hard when the leader of the opposite party is somebody who more than anything, is very good at grabbing attention. It’s hard to be relevant when you can’t get attention, and that’s where Democrats seem to be right now.

MARTIN: So, here’s — the question I have for you is, could it also be true that the Republican Party is also irrelevant, because the main character here is Donald Trump and the party follows his lead, and that the real issue is figuring out how to deal with him?

GRAHAM: I think that’s exactly right. The Republican Party was sort of identity crisis of its own before Trump entered the scene. He fills that vacuum for now, but he will not be there always. And I don’t think the Republican Party has a good sense of what it will be in a post-Trump moment. We know some of the people who want to be there, but really, they’ve been just coasting on Trump’s popularity. And overall, we’ve seen decades in which the two-party committees have become less and less powerful. So, in that way, what we’re seeing now from Democrats and from the Republicans is the kind of the culmination of a long running process.

MARTIN: Is this a problem? I mean, the, you know, the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties, right? They’re an organizing principle. They’re an organizing principle that, you know, arose when – well, there used to be more political parties, more major political parties than there are now. I guess what’s replaced them then? I guess would it be media organizations, ideologically driven media organizations? What, what’s replaced them?

GRAHAM: I think part of it is those ideological media organizations, but the other part is candidates who have a lot more power. People like Trump who are driven by personality, but also more extreme candidates. When you have a party committee, it tries, tends to drive people towards the most electable candidates or who they think is electable, which tends to be more moderate candidates. But in an ecosystem where it’s ideological media and no strong party organization, it’s very easy for a figure like, say Marjorie Taylor Greene to get a lot of money from grassroots donor and to grab a lot of power. And I think we can see that in the sort of extremity of, and polarization in both parties. A good party apparatus can help maintain that. And in the absence of that, we have more polarization, more partisanship and more of this affect partisanship where people are driven by opposition to the other party, but not really by any kind of organization around a clear identity or a clear agenda.

MARTIN: So, what reaction did you get to your piece? I’m sort of dying to know because it can’t have landed — it can’t have been — well, it can’t have been like, wow, I’m so glad somebody wrote that. Like, so what were some of the things that you heard, especially from perhaps some of the people who were in that piece?

GRAHAM: Yes. I mean, you know, what the Democratic Party said is, look, we understand that we are trying to reorganize here. We think that the David Hogg thing has been a distraction, but we have good fundraising. We’re getting on track. We’re building for the next election. Basically, wait and see, we’re going to be there. I also heard from a lot of people complaining that they — you know, they feel like they are organized. They’re doing things on the ground. They’re making things happen at their local party level. And I think that’s true. And what I told them is, that is all important. That’s especially important for midterm elections, but you cannot win a national election without a national party.

MARTIN: And so, who’s — who are they looking to then? Is it the governors? They’ve got a handful of governors that are impressing people, like the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Maryland, I guess, Wes Moore. And I guess Gavin Newsom, the two-term governor of California. Can’t run again. He’s term limited, I guess. Is that about it? Is that the slate?

GRAHAM: I think there’s a lot of excitement about Pete Buttigieg from some quarters too. And then the same hesitations about him that we have seen in the past that he’s too young or he doesn’t have a clear political base or he is too polished. You know, a lot of these are questions that I think can only be answered by a primary. And there are clearly a lot of candidates who are not ready to put their name in, but are making all the steps you would take if you were going to run for president.

MARTIN: I was wondering if your piece provoked people to rethink again or to re-litigate the whole Biden-Harris dynamic, because there are people who fault Joe Biden very much for not stepping off the scene sooner, not giving Kamala Harris an opportunity to kind of get herself in a better position. But other people look at that and say, no, really what they needed to have was a primary. They needed to have a real primary so that people could kind of fight it out, sharpen their messages, and really kind of galvanize, galvanize the public

GRAHAM: Yeah, I have heard a lot of that. And as you say, I think it’s never gone away. I mean, I think that’s symptomatically part of the problem. In some ways there is an accountability issue. A lot of people in democratic politics vouched for Joe Biden and then quickly changed their mind after that first debate when it became clear he could no longer do the job. But in some ways it’s, it’s a bit of an irrelevant question. I mean, I can’t imagine a situation where the Democrats are running an 80 something year old candidate in the same way. And so while that accountability is important, trying to understand what happened in the election has a limited utility because it’s a one-off election. The question is what they’re going to do in 2026 or 2028.

MARTIN: You said it’s easier — you said that it’s easier to diagnose the problem than to solve it, but based on what you’ve seen and based on your reporting, what are some of the key steps you think the Democrats need to take?

GRAHAM: I think Democrats need to take risks. They need to take positions that are interesting. They seem very cautious. And I think there’s a real focus on a moderate versus left question. And I’m not sure that’s necessarily the most relevant way to think about it. It’s more important to take a position that’s going to be interesting, that’s going to be against the establishment, whatever that is, and they can grab attention. And we saw this, for example, in Cory Booker’s filibuster on the Senate floor. That wasn’t a particularly moderate or leftist statement, but it was something that grabbed a lot of attention because it was interesting and it was somebody standing up. That’s just not something we’ve seen from a lot of his peers.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, where, as we are speaking now, you know, the Middle East is very much in play. there’s a lot of skepticism in the American public right now about, you know, further American involvement, especially from a military sort of robust military presence kind of standpoint. So does this offer an opportunity for Democrats to say something to sort of articulate what a lot of Americans think anyway? Or does it further make them irrelevant?

GRAHAM: I think that’s a choice for them. I mean, foreign policy is unlikely to be the deciding factor in any election, but it is a chance, like any number of these moments for them to take a position. And as you say, this is something that’s unpopular on both sides of the aisle. It, you know, Democrats are concerned, some of them, like Ro Khanna had been saying that party has been seen as the party of war. This is a chance for them to distance themselves from this, to criticize Trump for overreach, and to establish themselves as a real alternative. But so far I don’t see the party as a whole doing that, even though there are individual voices who have been speaking up.

MARTIN: And what about on immigration? Do Democrats have a coherent message here and is that an opportunity or is it yet another sidelined yet again, because they don’t — the president controls this apparatus?

GRAHAM: I think it is an opportunity and it’s a twofold opportunity. Democrats are still so shell-shocked by the last election. And they’re — you know, they believe that they lost on immigration, and that’s true. But I don’t think that means they can’t say anything on immigration or it doesn’t mean they have to embrace the president’s positions in immigration. And what we see is that polling shows there’s overreach by the Trump administration. People are in favor of closing the borders, but they’re not in favor of the kind of invasive enforcement we’ve seen. They’re not in favor of sending the National Guard or the Marines to Los Angeles. This is not what they believe they voted for, and it’s not what they like. So, Democrats can speak out against that. And as so we’ve seen in the case, for example, if Kilmar Abrego Garcia, if there are violations to the Constitution and violations of court orders, that’s not only a matter of politics, that’s a matter of what’s right. And Democrats, if they want to show their authentic, should stand up for that and say something about it. So, there is a double opportunity there, but you can see them still very nervous about taking anything that might be seen as getting on the wrong side of the American public.

MARTIN: Any sleeper opportunities that we haven’t mentioned? Is there anything that we haven’t talked about so far that you think offers an opportunity for Democrats that we should keep an eye out for?

GRAHAM: Well, I think the bad news for Democrats is they have a hard time driving the news cycle. And so, it’s hard to know where things are going. But anything that happens — as we’ve seen from the No Kings protests, there is a robust opposition to Trump. Trump will make new things happen. He does this, you know, every few days. And each time he does something, there’s a danger, it’s unpopular, and a chance for Democrats to strike an identity.

MARTIN: David Graham, thank you so much for speaking with us.

GRAHAM: Thank you.