Shane Goldmacher
Appearances
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
Well, I'm just excited to talk about baseball with Reid on the podcast. I mean, I think it breaks down to the question of is less more or is more more? And that is one that is really gripping Democrats, especially having watched Trump flood the zone in 2024. Yeah. in the media, right?
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
He was an omnipresence in the campaign trail in a way that a more cautious Kamala Harris picked her spots and often performed in those spots. And it wasn't quite enough. And so there are a lot of Democrats saying, get out there and respond to everything. And that is the Chris Murphy school of thought saying, it's not that all these fights are winners.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
In fact, some of them might not be winners, but the act of opposing is powerful. And Those two sides are just like pulling at each other each day. And because Trump is making so much news every day, the Democrats have a new opportunity to either respond or not.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
I'm not sure if it's going to be effective yet. But the big soul searching that the Democratic Party has been going through since the election is how did they lose ground among working class voters?
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
And so in Musk, they have a billionaire foil, as you heard Chris Murphy just say, and they can say, nobody voted for this guy, so we might be willing to give Trump some leeway, talking about those voters in the middle, but we're not giving this guy any leeway. And right now, the party is debating not just do you take on Elon Musk, but do you support particular programs that he's targeting?
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
USAID is something he said he wants to dismantle, unravel, get rid of, right? This has not been a kind of thing with broad popular support in the United States, but it is part of the kind of agenda the Democrats have. What do you do? Well, you pick the fight with Elon Musk instead of the defense of USAID.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
Let's tell you who the person they selected was to tell you why the answer is no. The person they picked is a guy named Ken Martin, who is the chair of the Minnesota State Democratic Party. And he has been in that position for years, and he won the national party chairmanship by coalition building inside the party. The party picked, in a choice of insiders, perhaps the most inside candidate.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
Now, he's promising some potential changes, but that is not what he ran on.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
I think the history has told us this. The ideas and people who look like they're popping out of this moment prove to be exactly not who ends up being that person. In 2004, the last time Democrats had really lost at this same level, there was a big discussion of should the party again move to the middle and find a moderate white candidate in the era of George W. Bush.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
But by 2008, it was a totally different candidate. It was Barack Obama who came about. I think it's too early to even have a sense of the kind of Democrat who is going to help them get out of the wilderness. But the person needs to inherit a party brand that isn't so broken that you can't run ahead of it enough to win.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
No, I don't. I think it's not central to the party's conversation. She will be, if she chooses to run again, one of multiple candidates. She might start ahead in the polls, but she is one of multiple at this point.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
The Democratic Party doesn't typically go back to the well again for a person who's lost before. The Republican Party has this long history of picking somebody who was a nominee or almost was the nominee. Democrats have traditionally won, and Joe Biden is the exception by finding a fresh face.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
Yeah, I mean, I think the question of how deep in the wilderness is the Democratic Party is one I asked a whole bunch of Democrats in the last couple of weeks.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
Yeah, I called basically as many people as I could to say, just how deep is this hole? And actually, the answer was really surprising to me, which is that there is not at all an agreement on the size of the hole that the Democratic Party finds itself in. And the reason is that, yes, they've lost the White House and the House and the Senate, and they're watching.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
All these things erode faster than imaginable. But they also have watched wipeout elections in their lifetime. In the 1980s, when Democratic Party won a single state in a presidential election, that this doesn't look like that. This is not, in fact, a wipeout of the Democratic Party.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
And so if you don't think the party is in as deep of a hole, you're not looking to make that kind of big systemic change. And I think that disagreement on just how screwed the party is is central to understand what they're going to do to get out of the hole, right? If you think that they're pretty close, then you're not going to make big changes.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
You're going to wait for Trump to overreach, and you're going to hope to pick up a few seats, and you get a foothold in the House of Representatives in 2026.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
I mean, I think Pat Ryan's putting his finger on this fundamental problem that's facing the party that's beyond Joe Biden. It's a structural problem about the Democratic brand, which is if you look at the House of Representatives, more Democrats need to win Trumpy districts to get a majority. And the same is true for the Senate.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
And so you need the brand to be such that you can win the majority by not having to run against the brand. Republicans hold a majority with basically no one. There are arguably two House Republicans who run against the national Republican brand. and they still have a majority, right?
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
There are a dozen Democrats who try to distance themselves from the national brand in the way that Pat Ryan is describing. The optimist case for Democrats around, okay, the hole's not that deep. The concern really is that That means the party's missing an opportunity for introspection.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
Somebody else said to me, one of the only advantages of losing is getting to think about how you reset and rebuild. And if you're not going to actually do that rethinking about what the party stands for, then you're unlikely to end up succeeding over the long haul.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
I think that's a big part of the conversation inside the party. It's a question of what do you emphasize? What do you put forward? If you are letting the party be defined in the views of an average voter as focused on those issues, it makes it harder to make an economic case. to those same voters, right? So the New York Times and Ipsos just did a poll. How do people view the Democratic Party?
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
How do people view the Republican Party? The top two issues that people have associated with the Democratic Party were abortion and LGBT rights. And Those are not in the top issues for what voters cared about overall. And the top issues for Republicans were around the economy and immigration, which were among the top issues for voters.
The Daily
Where Are the Democrats?
So Democrats are going to be supportive of diversity programs in general. The question is how much you emphasize that.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
They're saying that at their town halls, even in deep blue districts, voters are coming up upset and angry and wanting more, more fight, more action, more something. And the parallel... is really the first year of Barack Obama's first term.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
So Barack Obama wins... And the Democrats have then, just as the Republicans do now, complete control of the federal government.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
both chambers of commerce and the White House. And the Republican voters were almost immediately angry.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
They're angry at the scale of the defeat.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And then they're angry at the Obama agenda.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
Obama gets this massive stimulus package passed.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And they're angry at how much of the agenda he's enacting and how much Republicans are failing to stop it.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
You start to see this anger at public forums.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
Republicans shouting down Democratic lawmakers about their agenda.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And real activism. And you see this anger and activism expressed in Republican primaries all across the country. Mm-hmm.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
Where outsider, younger, and angrier candidates are suddenly winning.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
They're beating the old guard of the Republican Party in ways that the party just didn't expect. And this anger was changing the Republican Party from within. And one of the people elected in this changing of the guard of the Republican Party was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And if there's one moment that crystallizes the Tea Party's strategy during those years, it's what Ted Cruz did in the fall of 2013. Why? Senator from Texas. because this is when he pushed his Republican colleagues to shut down the federal government as a last-ditch effort to stop Obamacare.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And it was clear at the time that Ted Cruz had no path to victory here, that Barack Obama was not going to sign a measure to unwind his signature achievement. But the tactic, it was to fight, it was to fight, and it was to mobilize that anger and say, I am out here with you. I am willing to have this fight even if we can't win. And suddenly you see Democrats in the same place.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
This last week, they were talking about using the exact same tool, shutting down the federal government without necessarily an endgame, that the fight itself was worth having because if you didn't have the fight, you weren't actually speaking to where Democratic voters are.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
It's anything to avoid the current status quo. And to be clear, this energy and this dynamic was there before this shutdown fight. And this split inside the Democratic Party, it sort of begins generationally. It's the younger generation of Democratic officials who are expressing the greatest level of frustration.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
In the House of Representatives, there's a private text messaging chain among Democrats who've served for five terms or fewer. That means they've only served in the post-Trump era. The only Republican Party that they have seen is the changed post-Tea Party Republican Party.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And they want to change the Democratic Party from within. And they're looking to push out and defeat older Democrats in primaries, potentially, in open seats, and even on Capitol Hill. This actually began before Trump was sworn in, in these obscure races to be the top Democrat on various policy committees. There were three more senior Democrats at the end of last year who were all ousted.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
by younger lawmakers who said, we need a new face, a more engaged fighter, and they won. And Trump's arrival only accelerated that energy on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, where I'm already hearing about congressional primary challenges on a generational basis in multiple states across the country.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
I think this younger generation of Democrats share something else in common, which is that they are experiencing a dimming of the American dream, that it is harder to buy a house, that it is harder to pay for childcare, that they no longer believe that they or their children are going to have better lives. futures than their parents.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And they approach this with an urgency and a need to have a kind of agenda that is more proactive to solve those problems. They want to see the Democratic Party not just fight harder, but propose bigger solutions that meet the kind of frustrations that voters have the same anger at the system that helped bring about Donald Trump.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
They want to be able to tap into that anchor and say, we're not just for the status quo. We're not just defending institutions. We want to rebuild them, and we have a very specific plan and vision to do it. And frankly, they haven't unified behind one yet, right? We're talking about this... as a hypothetical. But there is the germs of we need bigger and bolder ideas.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And it really is a genuine open question inside the Democratic Party of which ideological wing will end up winning out to define what the party actually stands for.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
Yeah, the idea is, okay, Elon Musk and Donald Trump want to dismantle the Department of Education, right? So the Democratic Party doesn't just want to defend the Department of Education. They need a proactive plan for what the Department of Education will actually do for you, for your children.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
They want a plan that says, we're not just defending the Department of Education to exist because we're for the bureaucracy, but a plan for how to make that bureaucracy actually work for people.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
And in fact, after I wrote a story about this generational divide at the Democratic Party this week, the most common email I got from people was older readers saying, hey, wait a second, I'm pissed off too, right? And of course, there are old Democrats who have the same energy and there are young Democrats who are more cautious.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
But in general, it's this newer group of Democrats who would begin changing the party.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
But what we do see here is the possibility of an inflection point. This spending fight is likely to be long forgotten in a sea of future spending fights and big changes that Donald Trump is making. But for Democrats... who are already running or considering running in 2026.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
This does have the feeling of a potential moment where the party was galvanized to say, hey, the way the old guard of the party has been doing this, we don't want that anymore. Yes, Chuck Schumer might have been painted into a losing corner, but we wanted the fight anyway.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
Chuck Schumer might have made a decision that was strategic, that was protecting his party for worse outcomes in the short term or even the medium term. But that action could have long-term consequences for the way the Democratic Party behaves far into the future.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
Yeah, it's actually a question that I was down in Washington, D.C. this week asking Democratic lawmakers and Democratic officials even before this shutdown fight exploded. And the question I was asking is whether the Democratic Party is facing its own Tea Party moment.
The Daily
The Weekend Democrats Went to War — Against Each Other
For years and years, it's been the Republican voters who have been angry, and they've been angry at their own party, and they've been angry at the Democratic Party. And for the first time in many years, Democrats are describing that same kind of anger.