Bad numbers, good trouble, and the American dream

Democrats are frustrated with the future and their party -- so who'll fix this mess?

In today’s letter, we look at some new dire polling numbers for congressional Democrats, ask what’s really behind that loss of confidence, and talk about where actual political leadership comes from (and why the most important numbers may not be the ones reported by the polls).

When we talked yesterday with American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, she talked about why the goal of American politics needs to be the creation of a “society where people feel like they are not only entitled to the American dream, but they can get access to the American dream.”

While Weingarten started from the premise that the Democratic Party needed to do a much better job of “aggressively meet[ing] the needs of the people who voted for Trump because of their want for the American dream” — and it’s difficult to argue with that point — some new data out this week suggests that Democrats have a lot of work to do among their own ranks, and face a considerable challenge competing with the somehow apparently very convincing story the Republicans are telling.

This week’s Quinnipiac poll asks about the attainability of the American dream, and the responses demonstrate just how stark the division among Americans is when it comes to visualizing the future:

Among Democrats, 78 percent think the American dream is not attainable, while 15 percent think it is alive and well.

Among independents, 51 percent think the American dream is not attainable, while 41 percent think it is alive and well.

Among Republicans, 18 percent think the American dream is not attainable, while 79 percent think it is alive and well.

Those are bleak figures, and the fact that Americans are more or less diametrically opposed based purely on partisan affiliation looks like a real sign of divided times.

But is that what’s really going on?

Now, public opinion is very changeable, Republicans have typically reported higher levels of belief in the idea, and as recently as last year there was evidence that Democratic confidence in the existence of the American dream and its attainability was on the upswing. That is to say, these measurements of sentiment pretty closely track who’s in the White House (just take a look at this historical chart of Democrats’ feelings about whether the overall direction of the country is moving in the right direction and how it maps onto which party controls congress and the White House), and might not be all that dependable as a picture of long term trends.

Certainly, these polls reveal some extreme partisan distinctions — the divisions now are nearly as stark as they were in the darkest early days of the pandemic. And they’re not restricted to negativity about congressional representation: YouGov polling from last month painted a dire portrait of division between majorities of Democrats who envision a country in overall decline facing a bleak future and Republicans who, well, see far brighter prospects ahead.

Compounding the problem right now may be the fact that Democrats don’t seem to feel they’ve been electing people who can fix the problems they see and get the county on the right track — they have remarkably little faith in their own elected representatives: according to Quinnipiac’s polling, only 39 percent of Democrats approve of the job congressional Democrats are doing. We’ve talked in this newsletter about how undefended people feel by elected Democrats — and these numbers seem to tell that story.

Are we looking at a Democratic electorate caught in an inescapable pit of despair, giving up on the people who they’re depending on to get them out of this mess? Or are people, like politicians or anybody with media training (which might be everyone these days), just answering the question they wish had been asked? And maybe that’s just a question about how much they like or dislike the president.

But the other thing the numbers suggest is something Anat Shenker-Osorio has talked to us about quite a bit: the importance of social proof, that people do the things they think people like them do. That’s why somebody (and it can be anybody and everybody) needs to get started, and why things catch on, from fads to political movements. It’s also why looking for elected politicians to make the first move doesn’t make sense:

Imagine if the Montgomery bus boycott folks were like, I know, here's an idea. Let's ask the Democrats if they would pretty please end this whole completely unjust, horrifying segregation thing.

It’s the people who must do the leading, that is to say, and generate the interest that gets other people along for the ride, and in turn leading others. And that’s what moves political leadership, ultimately — so long as they listen (as New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been), or realize eventually that listening is the only option. And as political scientist Erica Chenoweth has argued, if enough people start turning out on a regular basis, that can change the political direction of a country.

“What drags Democrats along,” Shenker-Osorio says, “is ordinary people showing that they disagree.”

That people are losing confidence in partisan leadership — or that they only have it when their particular party is comfortably in power — might just mean that people are catching on to how misguided it is to think about leadership as top-down to begin with.

That’s why record numbers of people turned out to oppose Donald Trump in the No Kings actions last month. And that’s why people are out in the streets today across the United States, making good trouble in memory of civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis, and in the hope of a better America for tomorrow.

And maybe those are the numbers that actually matter.

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Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images