Republicans Must Take Advantage of This Opportunity
As President Trump is working with world leaders to end the war in Ukraine, the Democratic Party is facing a widespread crisis of its own making. Ray Ortlund and other anti-Trump Big Eva voices are supporting a party that’s in the midst of a political free-fall. Unpopular proposals and non-stop Trump Derangement Syndrome, along with a gerontocratic leadership class that’s being pushed leftward by its shrill base, are causing a major American political party to implode right before our eyes.
In a feature piece published on Wednesday, the New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher points out that the Democrats currently face a voter registration crisis. In the 30 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that track voter registration by party, the Democrats lost a total of 2.1 million voters between 2020 and 2024. Red, blue, or battleground states—it doesn’t matter. The accompanying graphic in Goldmacher’s exposé shows all blue down arrows for Democrats and mostly red up arrows for Republicans.
Meanwhile, the GOP has added 4.5 million voters over the last four years. And in 2024, more voters chose to be affiliated with Republicans than Democrats, which is the first time that’s happened since 2018. Even worse for the Democrats, as Steve Hayward has noted, a recent study from Tufts University found that if everyone in America voted in 2024, Trump’s margin of victory would have been even higher than it was.
While Ohio has already decisively flipped in favor of the Republicans and is now a deep red state, states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina look to be trending Republican as well. In the Keystone State, Goldmacher writes that “Democrats held a registration advantage of 517,310 among active voters there in November 2020, according to state records, but that edge dwindled to 53,303 voters this summer.”
The news gets even worse for Democrats. In 2017, they accounted for 34% of new voter registrations nationwide, while Republicans trailed far behind at 20%. Yet by 2024, the G.O.P. rose to 29%, while the Democrats fell by almost 8%.
Despite the rise of Hasan Piker, the Left’s so-called Joe Rogan with millions of followers on Twitch, Democrats are seeing the sharpest drops among men and younger voters. This portends possible long-term issues for the party, as Donald Trump made gains with both groups on his way to winning the 2024 election.
As director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, Michael Pruser has remarked, “I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this. There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”
This latest bad news for the Democrats comes on the heels of a Washington Post story earlier this month that shows that the base of the Democratic Party is increasingly dissatisfied with its leadership. A CNN survey found that a whopping 73% of Democratic voters think congressional Democrats are not doing enough to oppose the president. Additionally, just 39% of Democrats think their party leadership is doing a good job, a 15-point swing compared to 2017.
This comes as a Gallup poll indicates another finding that bodes ill for Democrats: a 31-point fall since 2017 in the number of Democrats who feel “extremely proud” or “very proud” to be American.
The 1619 Project was a clear signal of how Democrats feel about their country. In their view, America is good only insofar as it distances itself from its history and traditions. Historical progress from our founding is their measure of American greatness. The Left only seems to like America because of what it could be—not what it has been. Their Whiggish history of ever more inclusion sits atop a volcanic hatred of the people who have made up the American majority throughout our country’s history.
As the Democrats have moved sharply to the left in recent years, their party’s prospects have fallen. Issues like immigration and law and order are now trending heavily in Trump’s direction. While the president continues to stack up wins on 80-20 issues, the Democrats are tripling down on trans insanity, radical feminism, Trump hatred, and other matters that clearly repel more and more voters.
Democrats like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut claim to see the problems of “neoliberalism” and offer practical, “thoughtful” policies that can elevate the Democratic brand in an age of dislocation and alienation. But simply peruse his X account, which is littered with all the usual insults and barbs that the Left constantly hurls at Trump and his voters. There’s hardly any daylight between Murphy’s messaging and that of the alleged leaker of classified documents, California Senator Adam Schiff.
None of the foregoing, however, means that the Right can merely sit back and watch the Democrats flail.
Though his embarrassing social media strategy has been a confusing mix of cringe and a pale imitation of Trump’s own brand, California Governor Gavin Newsom remains a threat for the presidency in 2028 and beyond. He combines the Clintonian-like power of sincerely believing his own lies and the ability to shape-shift to suit the times. This is triangulation, 2025-style.
If Newsom enters the race in 2028, which is almost a certainty, he would be the strongest presidential candidate the Democrats have had since Barack Obama ran in 2012.
But he is not without his own weaknesses.
Newsom oversees a lawless regime in California that allows illegal immigrants to have driver’s licenses (over one million such licenses have been handed out since the program began in 2013). This program has become even more controversial in recent days as Harjinder Singh, an illegal alien who crossed the U.S. border from Mexico in 2018, was able to get a commercial driver’s license, along with a work permit from the Biden Administration. This led to the deaths of three Floridians when Singh attempted to complete an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike in an 18-wheeler.
Republicans also need to consider that the old guard Democrats are on the verge of leaving national politics. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is up by double digits in a hypothetical primary U.S. Senate race against Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. And Zohran Mamdani looks to be in a good position to beat former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral race. Mamdani already beat Cuomo in the June Democratic primary, crushing him 56-44.
Though Trump is doing his best FDR impression to ensure that the Democratic Party remains a toxic brand, the Democrats won’t be in the political wilderness forever (and likely nowhere near as long as the Republicans were after being repeatedly bludgeoned by Roosevelt in successive elections). Plus, the GOP remains at a disadvantage regarding voter registration since, as Shane Goldmacher points out in his New York Times piece, blue states like California allow registration by party while red states like Texas do not.
The Democrats do, however, look to be in trouble for the 2026 midterm elections, especially should the Ukraine War end close to election day or if Trump achieves another key political victory that demoralizes the Democratic base. Race to the White House, an election forecasting and polling outlet founded by a Democrat, simulates the midterms 50,000 times every day. The model currently gives Republicans a nearly 65% chance of keeping a majority in the Senate.
A true American Golden Age could be ushered in sometime in the next decades—but it will take successive wins by the GOP at the national and state levels, electing many more representatives and senators who understand what the times demand, and implementing policies that will preserve American sovereignty and safeguard our historic traditions and practices. From looking at the people and policies the Democrats are currently backing, they are making Trump and the GOP’s job that much easier.
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