Politics

After a month of grieving, Democratic leaders are torn between anger and exhaustion

Published

2 years ago

December 7, 2024

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Exactly one month after losing to Donald Trump in every battleground on the map, Democratic Party leaders from across the country decamped to one of the states that rejected them and struggled to pull themselves out of their funk.

At a Hilton hotel outside of Phoenix, where Christmas carols piped into the lobby, state Democratic chairs gathered for their annual winter meeting. They weren’t frantic like they had been after Trump’s first stunning victory. They were exhausted. Even after Trump tapped the likes of Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to staff his government, they still weren’t ready to demonstrate in the streets or tune into liberal networks.

But they were inching toward the anger phase of the grieving cycle as they huddled in ballrooms and traded theories about what went wrong. They pointed fingers at what they cast as overpaid consultants, expressed despair that working-class voters of all stripes had abandoned them, and lamented that they had lectured voters instead of listening to them.

“We need to win back the House, not fund consultants who want to buy a new house!” said Ken Martin, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, in a speech to hundreds of attendants.

Waiting for pizza after hours of meetings, Judson Scanlon, political director of a PAC that produced “White Dudes for Harris” hats, fessed up to being one of the Democrats who has stopped watching BLN after Trump returned to power.

“Since 2016, all we’ve heard about is the crazy crap that this guy is doing when he’s president and when he’s not,” said Scanlon. “I’m fed up with that.”

This confab marked one of the first major gatherings of top Democrats since last month’s disastrous election. They had once hoped they would finally celebrate the end of the Trump era here. Instead, while the recriminations continued, they urged one another to put on a brave face despite losing the White House to a convicted felon and getting locked out of both chambers of Congress.

Liberal networks’ ratings have plummeted since Trump’s return to power, one of several signs that Democrats are in a kind of retreat as they try to get their bearings, poring through reams of data and hot takes in hopes of figuring out what led them to lose the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. Many progressives have left the social media platform X, and they aren’t planning the massive marches that took place after Trump first won.

“Why don’t you see the marches? Black women right now are tired. They are really, really tired,” said Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee who announced after Trump won that he wouldn’t run for reelection. “Many of them put everything they had into this race to see one of their own be elected president of the United States.”

Perhaps because they don’t have the energy for it, Democrats in Arizona also weren’t in the mood for the kind of drawn-out ideological battle they undertook after 2016.

That much was clear from the way that the four men running to lead the Democratic National Committee tried to persuade state party leaders to vote for them in next year’s election.

In speeches, none of the DNC chair hopefuls made the case that Democrats should undergo a sweeping shift in their worldview. Unlike in some progressive parts of the Democratic ecosystem, no one argued that Trump’s win proved that they need to adopt a bold, concrete promise like Medicare for All — or, from the other end of the party’s spectrum, that they must urgently move to the center on transgender issues.

In Arizona, Ken Martin fans sported “YES WE KEN!” buttons and he set up a makeshift war room dubbed the “Kenquarters.”

Instead, most sold themselves as competent managers and pitched technical solutions.

Martin, who heads the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said he helped pull Democrats in his state out of a slump after the 2010 midterm election that then-President Barack Obama famously called a “shellacking.” He argued that “our party doesn’t need to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt.”

He has entered the race as something of an early favorite, locking down about half of the endorsements needed to win. In Arizona, his fans sported “YES WE KEN!” buttons and he set up a makeshift war room dubbed the “Kenquarters.”

Like Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler told the crowd that he righted the ship in his state, where “we’ve been able to win seven out of the last 10 statewide elections.” He called for a “permanent campaign” with omnipresent national organizing.

When DNC chair candidates did call for change, they talked more about transforming tactics than overhauling ideology.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said in his speech that the party needs to do things differently to win. But, he said, “the good news is the change is really just a return to our true selves to be a party of working people all across America.”

And O’Malley, too, said that he was a “proven operational turnaround leader,” pointing out that President Joe Biden had trusted him to revamp the Social Security Administration when he tapped him as its commissioner.

James Skoufis, a little-known New York state senator representing a Trump-loving district, went the furthest in making the case for transforming the DNC. But he talked more about strategies than ideology, saying that he would go on Fox News and Joe Rogan’s podcast — a reference to Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to rebuff the show whose interview with Trump boasted 52 million views on YouTube.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said in his speech that the party needs to do things differently to win.

He also promised to end “sweetheart deals” and “contracts with vendors that have been ripping off the DNC for cycles.”

Some bigger-name Democrats who could shake up the DNC chair race, like U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel or Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, could still decide to run.

At times, some Democrats argued they needed to stay the course on cultural issues.

In a fiery speech, Harrison lambasted critics in his party who want to walk away from “identity politics.” Democrats began their meeting on Thursday with a “land acknowledgement,” a symbolic gesture that grants that the land a person is standing on previously belonged to Native Americans, which conservatives have derided as “woke.”

As Democrats tried to figure out a path forward, there was a quiet sense among some here that they wouldn’t be out of power for long. It was a stark contrast from people elsewhere in their party who are worried that a realignment could rob them of power for years. After all, these Democrats reasoned, Americans had voted for Trump before — and then quickly grew tired of him, as evidenced by the 2018 midterms and then again in the 2020 presidential election. They took comfort in the fact that voters this year supported liberal ballot initiatives and Democratic Senate candidates in states Trump won.

“Something had to work for Ruben Gallego to win a Senate seat right here against somebody who was a Trump sycophant in terms of Kari Lake,” said Harrison. “Those mixed results don’t say that this was a landslide. It doesn’t say it’s an existential crisis for the Democratic Party.”

Peggy Grove, vice chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said they have a “good chance” at winning the House in the midterms.

“Yesterday was the bitch day,” she said. “Today started the rebuilding.”

Politics

Gavin Newsom’s first 2028 test: This fall, in Nevada

Published

11 hours ago

September 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

LAS VEGAS — If California Gov. Gavin Newsom runs for president in 2028, next-door Nevada will be a crucial test. This fall’s governor’s race is offering a preview.

As GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo runs for reelection, he’s trying to pin high Nevada fuel prices — a majority of which is imported from California — on “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies.” He lambasts California as too expensive and too regulated. And he’s hammering his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, for accepting Newsom’s endorsement, betting that it will turn off Nevada swing voters.

“The contrast is simple: I’m fighting Gavin Newsom’s agenda and Aaron Ford is trying to import it into Nevada,” Lombardo said in a statement to Blue Light News.

This could be a test run for 2028, when Newsom may call upon Nevadans — one-fifth of whom were born in California — to deliver him a primary victory in the early-voting state, and possibly a presidential victory.

“They understand California costs more,” Donna West, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party’s senior caucus, said of Nevada’s California expats. “They also understand that California is the fourth-largest economy in the entire world, and that Gavin Newsom ran that as effectively as he possibly can.”

Newsom’s office declined to comment. A person close to the governor, granted anonymity to discuss the sentiment in his orbit, said they are “thrilled” Republicans are spending money to “plaster Newsom’s name across a key early state.”

“Republicans seem awfully concerned about an endorsement from someone who leads the 2028 Democratic field in Nevada by nearly 2-to-1,” the person said, pointing to a November 2025 Emerson poll of a hypothetical 2028 Democratic primary field.

Ford, for his part, shrugs off the attacks.

“Lombardo tries to cast blame elsewhere, but everyone knows that when the war started in February, that we saw our gas prices increase almost immediately,” Ford told Blue Light News after a recent town hall in Las Vegas. “People believe their own eyes, and they remember their experiences.”

The demonization of California is nothing new in Nevada politics: For years, Republicans have blasted their western neighbor as too expensive and too woke.

But the stakes are higher, and the connection more palpable, this year, as Newsom explores a presidential bid. He would likely need to perform very well in Nevada, now second on the Democratic calendar, to build early momentum toward the party nomination. And come November 2028, he’d need to fare well in Nevada again, this time among the state’s general electorate, a plurality of which are independents.

Newsom has stumped for Democrats across the country this cycle, and he blitzed through the South this week, including a swing through South Carolina, whose Democrats will vote first, right before Nevada, in 2028.

But Republicans are looking to weaponize Newsom’s Silver State swing in July, where Ford introduced him at a new Las Vegas field office as “the governor of the great state of California.”

“Our next president!” an audience member shouted, eliciting cheers.

The Lombardo-aligned Better Nevada PAC shared polling with Blue Light News in July showing Newsom’s favorability 20 points underwater in Nevada and losing a hypothetical 2028 head-to-head with Vice President JD Vance. Shortly thereafter, the PAC began an ad blitz tying Ford to the California governor.

Billboards touting Newsom’s endorsement of Ford, paid for by the PAC, now line highways across Nevada, and digital and streaming ads have run consistently since the visit. “Newsom and Ford: Shared vision. Shared values,” one ad says.

A person familiar with the PAC’s internal polling, granted anonymity to discuss private data, said it shows Newsom’s endorsement is now the second-most-known datapoint about the attorney general.

“Gavin Newsom is the singular most unpopular elected official in Nevada,” said Jeremy Hughes, a longtime Nevada GOP strategist running the Lombardo-aligned PAC. “Aaron Ford brought him into the state. … There’s no better way to help him out than to put up these signs and run ads, letting people know that he’s excited about being endorsed by Gavin Newsom.”

Republicans in the state have long blamed Californian expats for housing shortages and rising prices and connect their opponents to California liberals. A surge of ex-Californians leaving the state during the Covid-19 pandemic, some fleeing high taxes and cost of living, accelerated the trend.

Sam Brown, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, blasted the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom”; in 2018, GOP governor nominee Adam Laxalt lamented the “Californization” of Nevada, even as Californians bankrolled his campaign. During Lombardo’s first run for governor in 2022, he slammed incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak for taking his cues from Newsom: “Don’t let Steve Sisolak turn Nevada into California,” one post said. Republicans tied their opponents to Nancy Pelosi for decades.

Lombardo’s argument this time around is more focused. He notes that the vast majority of Nevada’s gasoline comes from California, and argues that California’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have caused fuel prices to soar. A gallon of gas in Nevada costs nearly $5, according to AAA, one of the highest prices in the nation.

“The policies coming from Gavin Newsom and California Democrats … don’t stop at their state line,” Lombardo said in a statement. “Nevada and other states import a significant portion of our fuel from California, so when Governor Newsom shuts down refineries and imposes regulations that reduce supply and increase costs, Nevada families feel the consequences at the pump.”

It’s a strategy that allows Lombardo — running in a difficult national environment for incumbent Republicans — to acknowledge voters’ economic pain without blaming President Donald Trump or his own party. Indeed, Lombardo shared an April column in the Nevada Independent that placed blame at the feet of both Newsom and Trump. (Lombardo, in his post, blamed only Newsom.)

Democrats don’t think voters will buy it. ‘“As far as gas prices, it’s so obviously increased since the war,” Rep. Dina Titus said. “People in Nevada aren’t stupid.”

Ford has his own millstone to saddle Lombardo with: the president. At a recent town hall in Las Vegas, he repeatedly blasted the “Lombardo-Trump economy” that is “making everything too expensive.”

“Voters absolutely tie the handling of the economy to Trump,” said Mike Noble, an independent Phoenix-based pollster who works in Nevada regularly. “Instead of blaming Trump, why not tie it to the boogeyman next door and blame California?”

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”