MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated with their party's leadership, which is struggling to oppose President Trump's agenda. This all spilled out into the open during last week's spending fight in Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to block a GOP spending plan that left Democrats out of the negotiation process. That whole episode surfaced concerns about Democratic strategy, or lack thereof. For more on that, we have NPR's senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hi there.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, great to be with you.
KELLY: To cut to the chase, where do Democrats go from here?
MONTANARO: Well, I mean, first of all, you know, it's not totally unusual for the out party to not have a specific leader or to struggle in figuring out, you know, what the best strategy is while being in the minority and trying to find their way back to the majority and out in the political wilderness. You know, who knows what'll happen four years from now. I mean, nobody really thought that when Obama got into office, the next Republican president would be Donald Trump, but here we are.
And - but before we even get to 2028, you know, more pressingly for Democrats politically, it's important for them to try and be united to try and take back at least the House in next year's midterm elections, which are lower-turnout affairs than presidential elections. And you need that activism. You know, the Senate is more out of reach given the seats that are up for grabs there.
KELLY: You mentioned lower-turnout affairs - stay there for a second - and this idea of needing to turn out the base. Do you have a sense of how people are viewing the response Democrats have had to Trump at this point?
MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, there've been a host of polls out in recent days showing Democrats with historically low favorability ratings, and they were all taken before that shutdown back and forth that happened. You know, these polls really reflect the frustrations of rank-and-file Democrats. For example, in the latest CNN poll, which had Democrats at just 29% favorability, independents were at 19% approval of the Democratic Party. That's pretty bad (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah.
MONTANARO: But when it came to Republicans, it was about the same - 20% among independents, so basically the same thing. The issue has been Democratic respondents in these surveys. Sixty-three percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents had a favorable opinion of their party. That's pretty low compared to what it generally is across other - you know, across other polling that we've seen. A slim majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents think leadership is taking the party in the wrong direction. And what direction is it that they want? Well, they don't want Democrats in Congress to work with Republicans. Almost 6 in 10 said that - a huge switch from when Trump was first in office. So lots of frustration from Democratic voters who want to see their party show more fight.
KELLY: Well - and I'm still mulling, Domenico, something you said there - that these polls, these really bad polls for Democrats, those were from before the funding bill dust-up. So those numbers, they could get even worse.
MONTANARO: Certainly could, I mean, at least temporarily. And again, though, the party is going to need to figure out how to get on the same page to be able to make inroads in next year's elections. And we saw some of that attempted over the weekend with, you know, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries meeting up. Jeffries sort of trying to take the temperature down after saying that they disagreed on the approach to shutdown but that they agree on the issues going forward. And Schumer is certainly facing a lot of backlash from rank-and-file Democrats, even canceling a scheduled book tour for, quote, "security reasons."
KELLY: What about outside of Congress, away from Capitol Hill? Who else might emerge as the heir apparent, a party leader?
MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, it's hard to say now, but there are a ton of potential names and people who are trying to emerge as the one to lead the party. People like Elissa Slotkin, the senator from Michigan who gave that response to Trump's joint address to Congress; Gavin Newsom, the California governor who, you know, has started a new podcast, controversially with the base, spoken to right-wing people with ties to Trump like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman; and Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont, are on a town hall tour together. And even people like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is weighing a 2028 presidential run. And I bet you there's going to be a whole lot more people who get into the mix.
And look, you know, so much of what we hear about is this fissure within the Democratic Party about progressives versus moderates. But what's overlooked sometimes is who can best make the argument for Democratic - big D - values? And that's going to be the real challenge.
KELLY: NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thanks, Domenico.
MONTANARO: You're so welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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