Photo via Rebecca Noble, Reuters
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Following then-Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris’s loss in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, the Democratic Party has become rudderless. They lack any clear leadership, policy goals, or even ideology; the party has been internally consumed with litigating who is to blame for the U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Prominent Democratic leaders such as Harris and former U.S. Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama have been absent in retaliation. Harris has been busy making appearances at award shows, and Biden and Obama have been largely silent as Donald Trump routinely defies the orders of judges. They have also been silent while unconfirmed Trump Administration official and billionaire Elon Musk fires thousands of federal workers, cuts veterans’ benefits, and slashes aid to impoverished people around the globe without Congressional oversight through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Above all, Democratic voters want to see that their politicians care, and that they are willing to put up a fight against the demonstrable negative impact the Trump Administration is having on their lives. This was exemplified in a CNN poll that displayed the Democratic Party’s favorability has fallen to 29 percent, with only 63 percent of Democrats having a favorable view of their own party. Democrats also favor a more combative approach, with 57 percent saying Democrats should focus on working to stop the Republican agenda, up from 23 percent at the beginning of Trump’s first term.
With Republicans holding a majority in both chambers of Congress, it’s challenging for the Democrats to have a say in the legislative process. Democrats needed leverage when a Republican-backed temporary funding bill came for a vote prior to the deadline on March 14th.
Forcing a government shutdown would cause Republicans to negotiate with Democrats on, among other things, halting the Trump Administration’s brazen cutting of Congressionally-approved funds. After all but one Democrat were united in the House of Representatives in voting against the bill, a few Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, decided to rally enough votes to pass the bill, which Republicans could not have done without Democratic support.
Schumer argued a shutdown would hurt the country and that Trump would relish in the chaos a shutdown would cause; however it’s hard to imagine how much more Trump could possibly govern by executive fiat than he has already. Schumer could be waiting for Trump’s approval rating to drop even lower to extract concessions, but he never specified when he believes that will be. It is clear that in his defense statements, Schumer ignores the current fact that Democrats are even less popular than Trump—partially because they are willing to cave without a fight on partisan Republican spending bills.
One of the most telling comments Schumer made is that he believes the Republicans (GOP) will “go back to being the old Republican Party” when Trump leaves office. Whether one considers that the frontrunners for the 2028 GOP nomination are all ardent defenders of Trump, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, and his businessman son Donald Trump Jr., or that the party has successfully primaried or forced into retirement almost all of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after his deadly attempt to overturn election results in January 2021, this is a clear misjudgment. What Schumer sees as the formerly “respectable” Republican Party is gone, and it would behoove Democratic leaders to act like it.
While Republicans are refusing to face their own angry constituents by canceling town hall events around the country, three Democrats in particular have made headlines by going around party leadership and enforcing an affirmative agenda with tangible policy goals to the American people. Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Minnesota Governor and 2024 Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz have been holding rallies around the country, tapping into a deep angst among the American populace.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, the latter a potential primary threat to Schumer’s Senate seat in 2028, have traveled the country the past few weeks in their “Fight Oligarchy” tour, stating in the title what Democrats have been begging Schumer to do for weeks: fight. These rallies have been incredibly popular, with a rally in Denver, Colorado drawing approximately 34,000 supporters. During the tour, Sanders spoke out against a political system dominated by the billionaire class for the billionaire class, railed against attacks on Social Security and Medicare, and spoke on other pressing issues, such as healthcare, climate change, and income inequality.
Walz has taken a similar route, attacking Musk’s cuts to government services, speaking out against the dismantling of the Department of Education, and vowing to continue to fight the Trump Administration. Walz has also done something Harris has failed to do: take responsibility for their loss in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and propose solutions to improve. Harris’s silence is symptomatic of a broader hubris within the establishment of the Democratic Party.
A recent quote by Sanders exemplified the reasons for his continuous popularity among Democrats and moderates alike, stating, “You can’t sit back. You can’t wallow in despair. You’ve got to stand up, fight back, and get involved in every way that you can.” Voters are not a complete enigma. They want their politicians to stand for something, and they want to see that they care.
For Democrats, the choice between Schumer and Sanders is the difference between relegation to permanent minority status or the return to a governing majority that places the interests of its citizens above the well-connected and corporate elites.
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This article was edited by Isabel Adkins.
Catherine Topps 
Sarah Olivia Sullivan 
Sahir Sadat