If the recent raft of 100-day opinion polls showing President Donald Trump’s sagging approval rating contains one ray of hope for him, it lies in the fact that he remains far more popular than many of his prominent Democratic Party opponents.
The polls that have shown the President’s approval rating sinking to the low 40 per cent range – the worst 100-day performance by any US leader since Gerald Ford in 1974 – also show Democrats in Congress with even lower degrees of public confidence in their governing capacities.
Just 27 per cent of voters say they approve of the Democratic Party’s leaders in Congress, according to the findings of a CNN poll conducted by SSRS earlier last week. The personal approval ratings of the highest-profile Democrats on Capitol Hill have also fallen to record lows. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, has an approval rating of only 17 per cent, just below the 20 per cent approval rating proffered by the public on his analogue in the House of Representatives, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Donald Trump has the worst 100-day performance by any US leader since Gerald Ford (Photo: Reuters)Democrats are suffering because most of their supporters deem the party’s response to Trump insufficient, and not commensurate with the threat he poses to the country’s future. After spending the best part of 2024 insisting that “democracy is on the ballot”, and that the US system of government could not survive a second Trump administration, for the most part Democrats have licked their wounds and sat on their hands in the months since the President’s victory.
That is partly deliberate, with many Democrats heeding the advice of veteran party strategist James Carville. In February, he urged the party to engage in what he conceded was “the most daring political manoeuvre” in its history. Writing in the New York Times, he advised Democrats to “roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us”.
The dangers of heeding that advice are now plain to see. A growing number of voters tell pollsters that the party is failing in its civic duty to identify a path out of Trump’s America, to corral public protests, and to demonstrably lead the way.
Asked recently what he had done to prevent Trump from harassing the country’s universities, law firms and other storied institutions, Schumer told CNN he had sent the White House “a very strong letter asking eight very strong questions”. The party’s supporters lambasted his actions as insufficient on social media. Jon Stewart, the comedian and political commentator who hosts The Daily Show responded by urging Democrats to “stop f—ing trotting Schumer out there every time Trump traverses into the unreal. He’s not good at this”.
Some younger Democrats have had enough, and are taking early steps that could lead to a generational shift in the party’s leadership and also its policy positions. Prime among them is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 35-year-old left-wing firebrand from New York, known ubiquitously as “AOC”. Together with Senator Bernie Sanders, the old socialist warhorse from Vermont, she has campaigned before packed crowds in several Republican states, insisting that the party needs to connect with disaffected voters who backed Trump last November and whose support is now in play.
David Hogg, a 25-year-old activist who now serves as a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, has amassed a $20m (£15m) warchest to oust some of the party’s serving members of Congress by bankrolling younger candidates to challenge them in upcoming primary contests. His group, Leaders We Deserve, has sparked fury among veteran Democrats – Carville included – by arguing the party must confront a “culture of seniority politics” and “make room for a new generation”.
Cory Booker addresses the Senate. He broke the record for the longest continuous speech (Photo: Senate Television via AP)In a video webcast hosted by political journalist Tara Palmeri, Carville this week accused Hogg of “jackassery of the highest level”. He accused Hogg of wasting money that could be better spent targeting Republicans, and complained that “there’s no nuance to it, it’s flat-out wrong”.
But the party is in a pickle. Former Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is watching her own support sinking in polling about possible Democratic party standard bearers for the 2028 election. She now enjoys the favour of only 28 per cent of Democrats, a five per cent drop in just one month. While she remains the most popular choice in a hypothetical race against other possible runners-and-riders, it is far from evident that she will win the competitive presidential primary contest that Democrats will hold in 2027.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey may be the new presidential aspirant to watch. His record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor last month held the Trump administration to account for many of its excesses, but he also apologised to Americans for the “terrible mistakes” Democrats have made since inauguration day.
As Harris’s numbers tumbled, Booker’s support soared among likely voters in the party’s still-distant primaries. But his actions proved beyond doubt that the party is craving leadership, and its supporters are rewarding Democrats with the courage to act, rather than wait for Carville’s vision of a crumbling Trump administration to deliver them America on a plate.
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