The David Hogg affair, Zohran Mamdani’s win, and the future of the Democratic coalition

David Austin Walsh in the Boston Review:

The Democratic Party is in crisis, and it goes far beyond the stereotypical “Dems in Disarray” headlines. The party’s popularity numbers are abysmal: a March poll by NBC News found that only 27 percent of registered voters have positive views of the Democrats, the lowest since the poll began in 1990. Other polls have found that the approval rating of congressional Democrats is underwater among Democratic voters, with only around a third expressing satisfaction with the Democrats’ performance on Capitol Hill. (Nearly 80 percent of Republicans, by contrast, approve of the congressional GOP.) Even big donors are beginning to tighten their purse-strings.

A good illustration of the depths of the crisis: on Saturday, June 14, an estimated 5 million people around the country participated in the anti-Trump “No Kings” protests. It was one of the largest protests in American history, mobilizing between 1 and 2 percent of the entire U.S. population in the streets. There is clearly a groundswell of anti-MAGA political energy across the country, and yet the most recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 53 percent of Democrats disapprove of how the Democratic Party is doing in Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s approval rating, in particular, is hovering around 17 percent—and given Schumer’s vocal support for Israel’s strikes on Iran, that number is likely only to plummet more.

And then there’s Zohran Mamdani.

More here.

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.