Change, challenge for national and state Democrats

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“I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat,” quipped Will Rogers.

The line might bring a smile to Ken Martin, who while campaigning to chair the Democratic National Committee pledged to be the “organizer-in-chief” of the beleaguered party. Indeed, the status of the Democrats lends itself more to humility than humor. Because the party is out of power and out of favor; Republicans, in a first, lead in party affiliation for the third straight year, according to Gallup. What’s worse is their worst-ever showing in a Quinnipiac poll: A 26-percentage point gap (gulf, really) in the party’s favorability rating, with a 31% approval/57% disapproval rating.

Martin, the longtime leader of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, will try to invert those numbers — and Will Rogers’ characterization — with a “build to win,” “build to expand” and “build to last” strategy, according to the DNC announcement of his election. This includes funding parties in every state, “going on offense everywhere, contesting every race,” and “planning, organizing, and implementing a 10-year strategy to align the infrastructure, partnerships, and people we need to win.”

Martin led the DFL for 14 years and acted on this ethos, helping the party win a governing trifecta (until an exacta of state Senate and House challenges paralyzed the 2025 Legislature). But he — and more pointedly, the party — doesn’t have the luxury of time to counter the Trump administration’s political and policy blitzkrieg.

“This is not the time to play rope-a-dope,” said Norman Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute.

Martin himself used a boxing metaphor to DNC delegates, saying that Democrats “were punched in the mouth” but that they’d “get off the mat and get back in this fight.”

Ornstein, a Minnesota native known for his scholarship on Congress, said the fight has to be taken “not just to the Republicans, but the country, over what’s happening.”

Which, he said, is unprecedented presidential (and in the case of Elon Musk, presidential aide) moves, including “illegally going into agencies and firing career civil servants, taking control of sensitive information from millions and millions of Americans, blowing up agencies and programs.”

So far, Ornstein said he’s yet to see congressional Democrats “stepping up to do what they need to do.” As for Martin and the party apparatus, “how much a role the DNC can play is still up in the air.”

What’s up in the airwaves and nearly every other media form is daunting for Democrats too, said Ornstein, explaining that “the Republicans have an extraordinarily broad and impressive public-relations machine, which is Fox [News], talk radio, and all kinds of social media and frankly, what we know to be the case, bolstered and enhanced by Russia and China and others, and by people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.”

Conversely, continued Ornstein, “there is no similar effort or infrastructure on the Democratic side, and what the DNC needs to do is to try and create its own ability to get messages out there.” (Ornstein didn’t mention MSNBC and other left-leaning outlets that haven’t proved as effective.)

Regardless, the main messenger is unlikely to be Martin, who told a candidate forum that “the DNC chair is just one spokesperson.”

And the message?

For national Democrats, “the real problem is they can’t figure out exactly what their message ought to be,” said Tim Lindberg, associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota Morris. “They’re losing some of these arguments to Republicans, not because Republicans have better solutions or policy choices or even the way they’re doing it, but just that they’re talking about it, in particular thinking about just the economic struggles that everyday people have.”

Or the way they’re not talking about it, according to a new New York Times poll showing how Americans rank priorities compared to how they perceive parties do.

The top five priorities for people personally were the economy, health care, immigration, taxes and crime. Perceptions of Republican Party priorities were relatively similar, at least compared to Democrats: Immigration, the economy, taxes, guns and abortion. Democratic Party priorities, however, looked like this, according to poll respondents: abortion, LGBTQ policy, climate change, the state of democracy and health care.

The party’s (and Martin’s) success doesn’t and shouldn’t depend on Democrats distancing themselves from these key issues and the people who depend on the party to project (and increasingly, protect) their values and rights. But to revive they’ll have to reconnect with constituencies who used to be their base — especially working-class voters.

People like, well, Will Rogers — an Oklahoma cowboy with Cherokee ancestry turned commentator, actor and, as he’s invariably described, “beloved humorist,” whose down-to-earth but worldly wisdom captivated the country in the 1920s and 1930s.

Election-day data suggests that a modern-day man of Rogers’ background would be less likely to proclaim he’s a Democrat (especially in Oklahoma, which went two-thirds for Trump in November). Martin’s message to delegates seemed to acknowledge the drift. “I don’t rub elbows with billionaires or Hollywood elites. I rub elbows with working people in union halls, on picket lines, at civil rights marches and at protests,” he told a candidate forum, adding, “that’s who we’re fighting for.”

The fight for Martin’s replacement comes amid challenges to the success that propelled him.

“The real open question I think the Democrats have to deal with for many years now in Minnesota but also looking forward to the national stage,” said Lindberg, “is what does your coalition look like going forward?”

For the DFL that coalition is ever more urban and suburban, where Democrats are ascendant. But the farmers and laborers long key to the party’s identity are increasingly identifying as Republicans. “They’ve lost a lot of those traditional working-class voters, they’ve lost a lot of those farmers.”

Rebuilding a broader-based party will take time nationally and in Minnesota. All the while Democrats must react in real time to events in Washington and St. Paul, including Republicans launching a recall effort against all House DFLers for boycotting the legislative session.

So as state and national Democrats get ready to recalibrate, they may want to keep this thought from Rogers in mind: “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”