Is there a rift within the Democratic Party?

What do Democratic voters want? In Minnesota this week, it was a progressive candidate. In Wisconsin, it was a centrist candidate. We will unpack a very real divide in the Democratic party that feels like it could carry all the way to 2028. [MUSIC] It is the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liesen, Senior National Political Correspondent. So Mara, I gotta admit, I feel like every Democratic primary, this entire year, I have come away more confused about how Democratic voters feel. Tuesday was a great example of it. Wisconsin, they don't want a progressive. Minnesota, the neighboring state, they do want a progressive. What are you making of all this? Well, what I make about this is that it's not black and white. Each race has its own characteristics. In Michigan, you did have a progressive versus a more, you could say, pragmatic, centrist candidate, except for there was also the issue of candidate quality. The progressive just happened to be super charismatic and the moderate, pragmatic candidate wasn't. My biggest takeaway is that Democrats might talk about affordability, but what they care about is electability. And that is the decision they're making. And this is not new. It's why Bernie Sanders was never the nominee of the Democratic Party for president. I mean, Democratic voters, I think, in the end are very practical. And also in swing states, and this is where the big experiment in the Democratic Party gets really, really interesting. We're not talking about deep blue districts in New York City, where it almost doesn't matter who wins the primary, because they're going to win the general. We're talking about swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan. And the big experiment there is can more left-wing progressive candidates win in places that aren't deep blue. And just to give you an example in Wisconsin, which was the closest swing state in 2024, the person who won the gubernatorial primary for the Democrats, David Crowley. What he did is he assembled a coalition that looked a lot more like the general election electorate in Wisconsin than the Democratic primary electorate. In other words, he got African-American voters. He got older, wider, less educated voters. The progressive candidates tend to win with a coalition of college educated white young people. And they're just not enough of them to win in these swing states. So the Democrats have to figure out which direction they want to go. But I think this week they told us that they're practical. They want candidates who can win a general election. A lot of these candidates just had more infrastructure and more endorsements from the progressive left. They had a lot more going in. One of them was Abdul Al-Sayed. He's the Michigan Senate Democratic nominee. And there's, of course, the slate of progressive candidates for Congress in New York. They got, first of all, endorsements from the big progressive candidates. We all know, like Bernie Sanders. And I just saw, like in Wisconsin, there wasn't as one many endorsements too. It didn't seem as organized. There just wasn't as much work being done to get her elected in comparison to some of these other candidates. And I don't know how much of that is because more urban centers just have more money and more organized. That race wasn't really getting a lot of national attention until somewhat recently. I don't know what the mix is there. But I do think it is a testament to just how important it is to have the sort of basics of good political campaigns, which is momentum. But we also have to remember that in Wisconsin, Francesca Hang, who was the more progressive candidate, was campaigning in a way that people thought was a very effective way. In other words, she had lots of volunteers. They knocked on doors all over the state. She was doing the kind of grassroots work, even though, as you say, she didn't have a super sophisticated campaign infrastructure. But she was doing the things that we thought, based on our experience in other campaigns, would help her. But her opponent, David Crowley, the more centralized candidate endorsed by the governor. You could say he was the establishment candidate. He's a county executive. But he managed to convince the Democratic voters in Wisconsin that he was the more electable candidate. I mean, can I just ask big picture, Mara? The Wisconsin one is so interesting. But the margin in that race was just a couple thousand votes. It was incredibly close. Does that change, I guess, how much we can take away from how Democrats broadly are feeling in this moment? If this was so close to being a 50/50 race? Well, same with Michigan. That was very close. Both races were much closer than the public polling suggested. We don't know about the internal polls from these candidates. But I think it says Democrats are deeply divided, but a win is a win. And it would have made a huge difference if the progressive in the Wisconsin governor's primary Francesca Hong had won. Because in that state, which was the closest swing state in the 2024 election, the stakes are very high. Because the Republican candidate Tom Tiffany is somebody who has voted against the certification of the 2020 election. And he is the Republican nominee. So now Democrats feel more confident. They think they have a better chance of holding on to that seat. Democratic voters also have gone through a bunch of losses recently. And so they're thinking like it would be nice to win one once in a while. So they also have that tension in their minds. And you're seeing this sort of play out in the electorate and how they're thinking of these primaries. Although we can get into it. But I don't think the what is electable is as clear right now because we are in a very unique sort of moment. Well, we're going to learn what's electable very soon. And that's what this grand experiment is about. But one way someone put it is Democratic voters want to nominate the most electable candidate. They just don't want the Democratic establishment to tell them who that is. Yeah. I mean, I want to dig into that a little bit more. I guess when we talk about this concept of electability, what are the characteristics that you guys are seeing are common characteristics that are coming out of these primaries? Well, I would just say primary candidates who can assemble a coalition that looks more like a general election electorate. Because that's the only way they're going to win a general election. That's the key. If they can show that they can win all the parts of the Democratic base, black voters, young voters, college educated voters, non-college educated voters, that's really the key. That's the big test for Al Sayed in Michigan. He didn't do well among black voters. And in Michigan, they are the core of the Democratic party. I mean, what about from a policy perspective? Are we learning anything about the specific policies that Democratic voters want their candidates support from these primaries? The policies that both the left and the center support are probably the main ones for Democrats. And those are economic issues. Putting higher taxes on billionaires, making it easier to afford housing, healthcare, education. Where I think the debate is about the cultural issues, abolishing ICE, perhaps you in the past, supported defunding the police. Israel. Those are the issues that divide Democrats. But I think there's a pretty broad consensus about the affordability issues. Yeah, even on some issues like Medicare for all, for example. I mean, 10 years ago, this would have not been quite as unifying in the Democratic Party. But whether it's exactly Medicare for all, I do think Democrats are in agreement that tackling rising healthcare prices is something that their voters writ large want. And obviously most voters want to. I mean, this is something we hear time and time again from swing voters, Maro, which is the cost of the basics of healthcare, the cost of the basics of anything right now is just like extremely out of reach for people. And I guess any sort of help is something that I think most candidates sort of agree on. Even if they don't agree on some of like abolish ICE and stuff like that. That's right. Voters say over and over again, we're not poor, we're broke. They're middle-class people, but they feel broke and they can't afford the things that keep you in the middle class, like housing education healthcare. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to see these specific policies over the last 10 years. Like you mentioned, Ashley, this Medicare for all that felt super fringe when it was brought up a few years ago. But now does feel squarely within the sort of democratic mainstream, I mean, the democratic nominee for Senate in Minnesota, the progressive candidate, Peggy Flanagan, was pushing a Medicare for all platform, whereas her opponent Angie Craig was pushing a little bit more of a tweak to the current system, a sort of public option. And you know, Flanagan won pretty decisively in that race. And so I think it is interesting to see, I think there's been this argument over the last few years. Like is the Democratic Party moving more left? I feel like when you look at something like that, this sort of universal acceptance of something like Medicare for all, it does feel like, and at least on some of these issues, like healthcare, the party is definitely moving leftward on some issues. Let's just say one thing about the Minnesota race. That shows you how all politics are local, and each contest is different. Flanagan was the more progressive candidate, she's the lieutenant governor. Her opponent, Angie Craig, had voted for what was seen by Democrats as a kind of anti-immigrant bill in Congress, and Flanagan was able to use that against her. I guess it's also not entirely surprising that as the Republican Party does make a rightward shift, like the pendulum swings, right? The Democrats are also moving left. This is how polarization works. This is how our politics have been working for a while now. That is not super surprising. Also, income inequality in the past several years has gotten worse. Most people are feeling poorer than they've ever felt, even though in the past several years, since the pandemic, wages have gone up a little bit, although they've stagnated now. I will say most people we hear from feel poor than they have ever felt, and wealthy people have gotten wealthier. It is not surprising that. the electorate is making a little bit of a leftward shift. And I should say primarily the Democratic electorate. - I want to hypothetically play out a scenario where Democrats are able to win the House and even potentially the Senate, how do you think this sort of inner party divide on just how progressive the Democratic Party should be? Could play out, should Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress? I mean, will this impact their ability to govern, you think? - It's easier to be in the minority. You, I think Democrats will coalesce. Assuming they only take the House, which I think is the more likely scenario, I think they will coalesce around a whole bunch of bills, messaging bills, they can't pass them because the Senate won't pass them and Trump won't sign them. But I think they will coalesce around a lot of bills that tell the public in preparation for 2028, what Democrats stand for. Whether it's lower drug prices or an easier way to buy a house or finance a college education. So I think you'll see that. I don't think you're gonna see the big kind of splits inter-nessing splits happen when a party has the ability to govern but has a very, very thin majority. That's what you see in the Republican Party in the House now. - We can take a quick break and we're gonna hear more about how voters are taking in all of this in just a moment. And we're back. Amara, think ahead to this November. I'm curious as we see more and more progressive candidates win in these primaries. How do you think some of these, whether it's progressive ideas or whether it's, ideas explicitly linked to democratic socialism? How do you think those things will play or could play in the general election? - Well, first of all, let's just start with the basic fact that the people you appeal to in a primary are different than the people you appeal to once you become the nominee. This week I talked to Ben Wickler who is the former Democratic Party State Chair and Wisconsin, now he's an advisor to the party and he described the difference between those two electorates. - You're looking at the maybe a quarter of the electorate that's gonna vote in the primary for your party and you're trying to figure out how to have the larger half of that. In this general election, the key question is not how to get Democrats to split in your direction. It's how do you reach people who are fed up with politics in general? Swing voters and non-voters tend to be people who don't think about politics all day. If they did think about politics, they'd already know who they were voting for. - So the point is you have to figure out what people care about and I think Democrats have come to a consensus on that, which is that general election voters care about affordability, they care about economic issues. And in swing states, that's with progressive candidates who are nominated are gonna have to talk about. Now in New York City, it doesn't really matter. In a deep blue district where we have seen progressive candidates nominated, they could practically do anything and they would still be elected these districts are so blue. - You guys are the people I wanna be talking to if we're gonna be talking about swing voters, right? I mean, you've been hearing from these sort of voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and President Trump in 2024. Have you heard anything from those conversations that you've been listening to all year that give you insight in how they are reading or could read some of these progressive or socialist ideas? - Well, we got a pretty good look at what this would sound like, what hearing, you know, the term socialist or whatever or hearing from more left-wing or progressive candidates, how this sort of lands with swing voters. We heard from 12 voters in Nevada this week. This is part of the swing voter project. It is a partnership that NPR has with Mezzanine Farm Engages and Market Researcher Group Nelson Recruiting. We basically hear from swing voters, these the voters that you mentioned that voted for both Biden and Trump in the last couple of election cycles. This group had a mix of a political affiliations. It was six independence for Republicans and two Democrats so a decent mix there. And what we ask them, you know, like if you hear of a candidate who is labeled as a socialist, would you dismiss them? Do you automatically think negatively of them? Let's hear from one voter her name was Melody and by the way, we are not using less names. It was part of the agreement with the participants. It pushes towards, you know, communism a little bit, but they're at least looking at ways to make sure everybody's taken care of, make sure everybody's equal. And so they're trying to find a solution. I wouldn't immediately think that of someone I would want to talk a little bit more about it with them. I mean, again, to me, they're at least trying to think of a solution where everybody's rights and everybody has food, everybody's a house, everybody has a job. They're at least looking for something like that for everyone. - Not everyone was able to come up with like policies that they think socialists have in comparison to, you know, sort of garden variety Democrats, but 10 out of 12 voters said they will not outright dismiss a candidate who was labeled a socialist, which I found very interesting. - Yeah, not only did, where they remarkably open-minded towards socialism and every one of them voted for Trump in 2024, but the other thing that this focus group answered, and this is why we do it every month, is we wanted to know what they thought socialism was, and the way they talked about it, it was just like social democracy. In other words, a more robust social safety net. They wanted more benefits from social security. So voters have a kind of a general idea that socialism is something that's supposed to help ordinary people. And that was pretty striking. - I mean, Ashley, I feel like a lot of the centrist candidates this year have been kind of running on this idea that they are more inherently electable by this population, by the sort of independent voter, the voter who is not a diehard Democrat. This is sort of making me doubt that, no? - Yeah, I mean, the argument is that just the term socialist on its face would be something that would turn off independent, unaffiliated, or more centrist voters, that this is something they wouldn't be open to. And then look, at a point in time, terms like socialist were very fringe. You know, I don't know if this is something that has changed with Bernie Sanders running for president in a couple of cycles and winning in a place like Nevada. I should be clear. I think it's worth noting like Nevada. Democratic voters were very supportive of Bernie Sanders. It was a key win for him in 2020. You know, and I think what this shows is the argument that socialism, the word itself, a candidate being labeled that is enough to turn off some of these swing or independent or centrist voters is just not that clear that that is true for all of these voters. And again, we say this a lot on this podcast, but this was a group of 12 voters. This is not a scientific poll. But at least for some of these independence swing voters who a lot of them were low information voters aren't paying super close attention to politics. They did not completely wave off the socialist brand. - And that's why you hear Donald Trump calling Democrats Communist because he knows that socialism doesn't pack the negative punch that it used to. - Well, dig into this a little bit more. Is there anything I guess about the current political moment that makes these people be a little bit more open to the idea of socialism, I guess? - Yeah, it's economic pressure, which is not surprising. I mean, I talked to Rich Tao. He moderated these focus groups. He's the president of Engages. He calls it the any port in the storm theory of economic relief, which is that, you know, there may have been a point in time where people wanted the markets, you know, private business to solve their economic problems. But that hasn't worked, right? And so they think, well, we will take government intervention if it comes and they seem to be more open to it than I've heard in politics in a while. And it makes a lot of sense because now there's been prolonged economic stress. People have been pessimistic about the economy for now a couple of different presidencies. And yeah, I think folks are more open to change wherever it comes. - Do these people talk specifically about the sort of economic anxiety or the level of economic stress they have? - Sure, we ask this every focus group. And their anxiety level goes up month to month as we go from one battleground state to another. They're much more anxious about their own economic situation and they're much more pessimistic about the economy in the future. - Yeah, seven of these 12 voters told us that they're actually like taking on more debt now than they were before Trump took office again. Like their economic situation is not getting worse, but it could be in a bad situation for a long time. Actually, one of those voters who said that they're taking on more debt recently is Marianne. - Whereas I used to pay cash for groceries, sometimes I put it on credit cards 'cause the price has just gone up so much in certain areas and also my son lives with me. My son has worked on the stroke for 22 years and he can't make ends meet. So I have to make the ends meet for him. - And I should say Marianne who voted for Trump said in these focus groups that she is never voting for a Republican as long as she lives. She is that frustrated with the state of the economy. - This is somebody who voted for President Trump in 2024 and says they are not gonna vote for another Republican? - Yes, ever again, yeah, that's what she said. - One of the big questions that we want these focus groups to answer as we listen to voters, but one battleground state after another is when they are so soured on the incumbent and on President Trump and angry about the economy, does that mean they are willing to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections? And so far, we are not finding that. In other words, the Democrats are held in just as low a steam as a party. And maybe that will change when we get into the fall, but so far that hasn't happened. So their sour on the whole system, they're particularly angry at Republicans, but they haven't been pushed around the corner yet to saying I'm gonna vote for a Democrat. - All right, well, we can leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks, I cover voting. - I'm Ashley Lopez, I cover politics. - And I'm Mara Liason, senior naturalist. political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast.