Our friend Ruy Teixeira is back with another message for Democrats.  My guess is that they won’t like it.  It ain’t pretty, to say the least.  Teixeira is telling Democrats that Trump may be underwater in some polls, but they are more like 20,000 leagues under the sea (to remember Captain Nemo).

Here are the 4 points driving the party down:

1. Views of the Democratic Party. You’d think that as Trump runs into difficulties and sows chaos, voters would like Democrats more. They do not. Instead, Democrats’ favorability among voters is scraping the bottom. In a March CNN poll, favorability toward the Democratic Party clocked in at 29 percent, down ten points since right before the 2024 election and the lowest rating for the Democrats in the CNN poll since its inception in 1992. Trump’s job approval among working-class (non-college) respondents in the poll was 20 points higher than their favorability toward the Democratic Party. The working class does not appear to be warming to the Democrats.

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2. Identification with the Democratic Party. Nothing looms as large in driving political behavior than party identification: which party voters identify with or lean toward. Lately something astonishing has happened: Republicans have led in party identification for three straight years, which hasn’t happened in nearly a century. This trend shows no sign of abating in the aftermath of the election.

And the GOP is outregistering Democrats in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina. Indeed, over time, just four states—California, Colorado, Delaware and New York—have seen Democrats out registering Republicans compared to 22 states where Republicans have been gaining.

3. Leaving Democratic states. There’s no more meaningful vote than where you choose to live. And right now the trend is strongly against blue states and in favor of red states like Florida and Texas. This is implicitly a harsh judgement on Democratic governance.

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4. No Democrats where you need ‘em. Wherever you find dense concentrations of highly educated voters you’ll find plenty of Democrats. As for the rest of the country—not so much. This is a big, big problem, not just in presidential elections but critically in Senate elections where every state, no matter its education level, gets the same two Senators.

That’s a grim outlook.  As Teixeira points out, this is a party with image problems, governance issues driving people to other states, and too many liberals telling each other how smart they are.  It’s going to take a lot more than Trump bashing, burning Teslas, or woke Disney movies to turn this ship around.

In the meantime, AOC and Bernie will continue their “oligarchy” tour in front of people bused in to cheer for the message.

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Image: Free image, Pixabay license.