Yesterday Politico published the results of some focus groups that were held shortly after the election by a progressive group called Navigator Research. What they found was a Democratic brand in deep trouble. The focus groups were made up of voters who previously voted for Democrats but either didn't vote at all this year or jumped parties and voted for Trump. They said they felt Democrats were too weak and too woke.

When asked to compare the Democratic Party to an animal, one participant compared the party to an ostrich because “they’ve got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they’re failing.” Another likened them to koalas, who “are complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need.” Democrats, another said, are “not a friend of the working class anymore.”...

“I think what the Democratic elites and their politicians believe is often very different from what the average Democratic voter is,” said a Georgia man who voted for Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2024. “The elites that run the Democratic Party — I think they’re way too obsessed with appealing to these very far-left social progressivism that’s very popular on college campuses.”...

Several participants also raised the transgender attack ad that the Trump campaign deployed against Harris, which showed a 2019 clip of her expressing support for gender affirming surgery for state prison inmates. The ad’s tagline included: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”...

One woman from Georgia who didn’t vote in 2024 said that she didn’t agree with Harris’ “thinking that it’s okay for children to change their body parts.”

Some progressives have been eager to deny that the Trump ad on gender had an impact, saying wokeness wasn't a top issue for most voters. That's true but there is evidence the ad was effective at moving people to the right and may have been lingering in many voters minds even if it didn't rival the economy or immigration as a top issue.

As for the perception of weakness, it's just a guess but I suspect that came from nearly a year of Joe Biden as the frontrunner. Voters were not enthusiastic about him and yet, until he verbally collapsed in the first debate, Democrats kept telling us he was fine. Unfortunately for Demos, voters weren't enthusiastic about Harris either.

Participants described her as “inauthentic,” “very dishonest” and “did not seem competent.”...

Yeah, that about sums up Harris. Today the NY Times published an interview with three election observers who came to a very similar conclusion about the Democratic Party. Lis Smith is a Democratic communications strategist.

Lis Smith: The Democratic brand is in the toilet. Many of the Democrats who succeeded this cycle — our best over-performers in House races, for instance — are people who ran against the Democratic Party brand. Trump tore down the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but he also expanded his vote the most in our bluest and most urban areas.

Bruni: “The toilet”? Yikes, Lis, that’s severe. Do you really think it’s that bad?

Smith: When the best way to win as a candidate is to run against your own party, it’s that bad. Our candidates down ballot are good. It’s what the “D” next to their name means (the status quo) that people don’t like.

And one of the main reasons the brand is in the toilet is wokeness. Tim Ryan is a former Democratic Rep. from Ohio.

Ryan: The sign outside HQ now should say “Beware: Entering an Echo Chamber.” I said move to Youngstown, but it could be Pittsburgh or Cleveland or Toledo or Detroit or Milwaukee. But I am dead serious that it should not be in Washington or anywhere on the coasts. We need to send a bold signal that we are committed to reconnecting to people out in the real world.

Smith: I agree with Tim that our party has fallen victim to its echo chamber. If I were going to make a requirement of anyone working at the Democratic National Committee or on a presidential campaign, it would first be that they have at least one cycle of experience on a campaign in a red-swing area. You’re less likely to use terms like “justice-involved individuals” and embrace policies like the Green New Deal if you’ve spent a day or two talking to people who aren’t 100 percent down-the-line progressives like you.

You can sort of sum up the two candidates Democrats presented this year, Biden and Kamala, as weak and woke. There's more to it than that of course but that's the shorthand for what turned off a lot of former Democratic voters this cycle. If Democrats want to climb out of the abyss by 2026, they are going to need to step away from the Bluesky echo chamber and find some candidates who can talk to normal people.