As Zohran Mamdani builds an unlikely coalition of socialists and centrists, leading Democrats are out with a sweeping and brutal report on the party’s problems. According to a new report published in Semafor, a six-month survey of hundreds of thousands of voters has found that most voters view the party as “out of touch” — and that it is “growing only with self-described ‘white liberals’ while losing ground with other voters.”

This comes exactly 10 years after Donald Trump triggered a political realignment, and just one year after Democrats suffered their second defeat to him. Republicans now control both the House and the Senate and have built a rapidly expanding media ecosystem. Meanwhile, Democrats are struggling to decide whether to back Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo, and Maine populist Graham Platner over incumbent Janet Mills.

Welcome, a research group, went beyond polling voters for their positions on various policies and actually asked about their priorities. As Semafor reports, “Most voters, the group found, believe the party over-prioritizes issues like ‘protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans,’ and ‘fighting climate change’ while not caring about ‘securing the border’ or ‘lowering the rate of crime.’” This is arguably good news for Democrats because it’s mostly a prescription for turning the volume down on, say, climate change, rather than flip-flopping on it.

Mamdani is already blazing this trail to obvious success. He talks about climate, but in the context of affordability and much less than even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did after her meteoric ascent. He’s critical of the police, but doesn’t seem as interested in “defunding” them as he once was — nor is he posting about “queer liberation” anymore either.

Even in a recent Mamdani campaign video that foregrounds the identities of rabbis who support him, the spot immediately pivots to affordability and safety. “As New Yorkers we’re also just people who live here who don’t want to get priced out of this incredible city that we call home,” says one rabbi. “We know fellow Jews want to be able to afford housing, transportation, and childcare for their families too,” adds another.

That may or may not work but it’s clearly an effort to shift away from Peak Woke politics. Welcome sought to quantify this shift. “The report’s study of national Democratic Party platforms from 2012 to 2024,” writes Semafor, “found a surge in language about specific racial groups (up 828%), about ‘environmental justice’ (up 333%), and about LGBTQ rights (up 1044%). Mentions of ‘men’ fell by 63%, of ‘fathers’ by 100%, and ‘responsibility’ by 83%.” That is a stunning change.

Author Dave Weigel highlights early progressive disagreement with Welcome’s diagnosis, most of which treats the report as another elite effort to force-feed Democrats centrist politics in a populist era. And this is the challenge: Democrats need the populist Left’s economic instincts but without its cultural baggage. Much of that baggage, once used by centrists as a shield during the cancel-culture era, came in the form of buzzwords like equity and gender identity.

The formula is simple: centrists should move Left on economics, and Leftists should move toward the center on culture. “Center,” in this sense, doesn’t mean halfway between AOC and Ted Cruz — it means returning to the “live and let live” ethos of Barack Obama’s first term.

Self-identified socialists running outside deep-blue enclaves like New York City will, of course, need to run candidates with populist economic instincts that don’t terrify voters skeptical of self-identified socialists. Independent Senate hopeful Dan Osborn in Nebraska is about as close a model candidate for Democrats as you can imagine. But he’s one-of-a-kind for now, in no small part because the Left’s cultural politics pushed men like him away from Democrats altogether (which is why Osborn is running as an Independent).

Not one of the party’s potential 2028 presidential nominees, from Gavin Newsom to Pete Buttigieg to Kamala Harris to JB Pritzker, appears to have truly internalized what it would mean to make these changes. For all their appearances on popular podcasts, they’re mostly unchanged — except Buttigieg grew a beard and Newsom’s flip-flop on trans issues is half-baked and unconvincing. Elizabeth Warren, who perhaps comes closest to striking the right balance on populist economics, was the first candidate to refer to Hispanics as “Latinx” in the 2020 primary debates — were she to run again, Republicans would remind voters of her dated cultural politics constantly.

Mamdani may be able to have his cake and eat it too in NYC, where voters are further Left on cultural questions than Nebraska. But so long as Democrats can focus persuasively on affordability, it won’t matter if they’re in Lincoln or Brooklyn — they’ll be better off.

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Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

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