Veteran Democratic strategist Patti Solis Doyle said on Friday that her party is in dire straits, lacking leadership, a message and an agenda.
Republicans won the presidency, maintained control of the House and regained control of the Senate during the 2024 election. Solis Doyle, on the “Next Up with Mark Halperin” podcast, said it’s typical for the losing party to face backlash and argued Democrats are in an especially weak position as they lack a “real leader” due to former President Joe Biden’s political irrelevance.
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“I have never been happier not to be actually in it — in the middle of politics — than I am right now, because it sounds really depressing, what’s going on at the party,” Solis Doyle said. “I mean, overall, when you lose, the party that loses gets, as you know, as I know personally, attacked and criticized. And ‘you’re the stupidest people who have ever walked the planet,’ and ‘how could you have missed that?’ And that’s what’s happening with the Democrats right now. They’re getting attacked from all sides.”
“The other problem that they have is that there’s no real leader. If your party holds the White House, the leader of the party is the president. If your party doesn’t hold the White House, the leader of the party is the last president of that party,” she continued. “So right now, for us, that’s Joe Biden. But he has completely — he’s off the radar completely … So right now, we’re leaderless, we’re messageless, we’re agendaless. We don’t have any alternative ideas to the president’s and the Republicans’ right now. So I’m concerned to say the least.”
Over 60% of Democrats believe that their party requires new leaders, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Thursday suggests. The same poll found that only 30% of Republicans believe they need new leaders.
Moreover, just roughly one-third of Democrats said they felt “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” regarding the future of their own party, per a May poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
A May Puck/Echelon poll also found that likely voters largely viewed the Democratic Party as “liberal, weak, corrupt.” Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters most commonly perceived the party as “weak.”
Former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine echoed Solis Doyle’s concerns on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Wednesday.
“I think part of the problem is we don’t have an agenda right now. And, you know, winning campaigns focus on the real lives of real people with effective leaders and something positive to say,” Turrentine said. “And we have none of the above.”
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