Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The New Democratic Divides -The American Prospect
Back in the good old days of Democratic discord—say, four months ago—the party seemed divided along one primary fault line: those who criticized the prominence it gave to social and cultural issues, and those who didn’t. Today, the divisions are many and varied, though a number are a good deal less stark than their proponents and opponents contend.
Among the current causes for divisions are tariffs, economic populism (a hardy perennial), abundance and regulation, age of elected officials, and how far elected officials should go in resisting President Trump’s rush to autocracy. On the other hand, it’s clear that Democrats generally understand that some of the cultural issues with which they’ve been identified, many of which were prevalent chiefly on campuses and in corporate handbooks, were and remain surefire Election Day losers.
They ranged from pronoun alteration (though the number of Democrats who actually used the “new” pronouns while campaigning on the stump was minuscule) to the one particular in transgender rights that struck most Americans across the ideological spectrum as unfair: trans girls in sports, from middle school through college on up. (The actual presence of such people has been microscopic; the state of Michigan counted two out of the 170,000 high schoolers engaged in school sports, but that proved to be no obstacle to the Republican, Fox, and social media propagandists, who flipped out anyway.)
These issues aren’t going away, however, since the Trump war on DEI is primarily a war on the rights of traditionally subordinated racial minorities, Blacks in particular, as well as women. Democrats can’t and won’t submit to these attacks, directed as they are at the party’s core constituencies, core beliefs, and core legislative achievements. That however, raises the question of how Democrats can win back some of the white voters—most particularly, white working-class voters—whose support they need to win elections. Which turns the discussion to economic policy, economic populism in particular.
Among the current causes for divisions are tariffs, economic populism (a hardy perennial), abundance and regulation, age of elected officials, and how far elected officials should go in resisting President Trump’s rush to autocracy. On the other hand, it’s clear that Democrats generally understand that some of the cultural issues with which they’ve been identified, many of which were prevalent chiefly on campuses and in corporate handbooks, were and remain surefire Election Day losers.
They ranged from pronoun alteration (though the number of Democrats who actually used the “new” pronouns while campaigning on the stump was minuscule) to the one particular in transgender rights that struck most Americans across the ideological spectrum as unfair: trans girls in sports, from middle school through college on up. (The actual presence of such people has been microscopic; the state of Michigan counted two out of the 170,000 high schoolers engaged in school sports, but that proved to be no obstacle to the Republican, Fox, and social media propagandists, who flipped out anyway.)
These issues aren’t going away, however, since the Trump war on DEI is primarily a war on the rights of traditionally subordinated racial minorities, Blacks in particular, as well as women. Democrats can’t and won’t submit to these attacks, directed as they are at the party’s core constituencies, core beliefs, and core legislative achievements. That however, raises the question of how Democrats can win back some of the white voters—most particularly, white working-class voters—whose support they need to win elections. Which turns the discussion to economic policy, economic populism in particular.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-04-21-new-democratic-divides/