Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was supposed to be touring the country this week, signing and selling copies of his new book. Instead, the New York senator postponed the whole tour over “security concerns.” More specifically, the concern was that liberal activists, angry at his decision to acquiesce to Republicans’ recent government funding bill, were planning large protests at every event.
It’s undoubtedly embarrassing for Democrats that their leader in the Senate is ducking scenes of being called a coward by voters in his own party. But that the very fact that the party’s base is so livid at its leadership could be good news. Recent history tells us that that anger may be crucial if the Democrats are to come back from their current lowly position.
And that position is truly lowly. In new polls by NBC News and CNN, the Democratic Party has reached its lowest approval rating ever recorded: 27% and 29%, respectively. In both cases, these declines came about because many Democrats now say they disapprove of their own leadership.
Voters in the Democratic base are clearly hungry for representatives who will oppose Trump loudly and without embarrassment.
And why wouldn’t they? As Democratic voters watch in dismay while Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantle the federal government and explore new frontiers of authoritarianism, they see few encouraging signs from too many of their leaders. The three living Democratic ex-presidents haven’t been heard from since Trump took office. Former Vice President Kamala Harris has been mostly invisible. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose presidential ambitions are no secret, is chatting it up with far-right activists and commentators on his new podcast. And while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, unlike Schumer, kept his caucus together to oppose the recent funding bill, he has largely been ineffectual.
Anyone active on social media has seen a Democratic electorate enraged at Schumer and the other Senate Democrats who joined him in voting to advance the budget bill. In fairness to Schumer and these other senators, they argue that as bad as the bill was, a government shutdown would have done even more damage, especially since Trump and Musk could use the opportunity to eviscerate key agencies and shove thousands more government workers out the door. One might disagree with this view — and with Schumer’s messaging strategy — but it isn’t a crazy position to take.
Nevertheless, voters in the Democratic base are clearly hungry for representatives who will not only find the most pragmatic ways to counter Trump, but who will oppose him loudly and without embarrassment. That’s why figures such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) are commanding ever-larger followings as Democrats who seem to grasp the urgency of both the moment and their voters’ emotions.
That desire for fighting spirit is reflected in the polls. When NBC’s poll asked at the beginning of Trump’s first term whether Democratic voters wanted representatives who would “make compromises with President Trump to gain consensus on legislation” or “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington,” they favored compromise by a 59-33 margin. Today, the numbers have flipped: Democratic voters now favor fighting, 65-32.
Some Democrats in Congress would protest that without formal institutional power, there’s only so much they can do to thwart the president. That was the dilemma Republicans found themselves in during Barack Obama’s presidency. Even GOP voters considered Republican lawmakers feckless and weak, so they voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act an astonishing 70 times (depending on how you count).
A base that has decided it can’t rely on leadership will start organizing for itself. In the end, the repeal votes became a symbol of Republican impotence rather than resistance. Speaker of the House John Boehner was hounded from office in 2015 by tea party activists who considered him too weak to lead the fight against a president they despised. And Obama comfortably beat Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. But look what else happened. Republicans took back the House, then the Senate and eventually the White House. They won sweeping gains at the state level: Democrats lost a net of 948 seats in state legislatures while Obama was president, the most a party had lost since Herbert Hoover was president, and 19 states saw chambers flip to Republican control. How could that have happened while the national GOP looked so hapless? Ironically, the the national party’s poor standing may have helped spur its gains. That’s because an angry base is a motivated base, and a base that has decided it can’t rely on leadership will start organizing for itself. That appears to be exactly what is beginning to happen now. Grassroots Democrats are organizing protests. Bernie Sanders is drawing crowds to his “Stopping Oligarchy” tour. The progressive group Run For Something, which helps liberals run for state and local offices, says it has signed up almost as many prospective candidates just since Trump’s inauguration as it did in all of 2017 and 2018. And activists are advocating primary challenges against Democratic leaders, just as tea partiers did to Republican leaders a decade ago. That experience was uncomfortable for those running the party, but it showed that the party’s base was riled up and mad. And if some of Democrats’ anger is directed at their own leaders, that might be the most encouraging sign of a revival not just for the party’s institutions but its broader fortunes.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
