'Not Sanders, not AOC': Who should lead the Democrats next?

Read time: 4 minutes

In brief:

• Doug Sosnik says Trump's 2024 victory was largely a repudiation of Biden and Democrats rather than enthusiasm for Trump, with Republicans becoming the working-class party while Democrats are increasingly viewed as controlled by elites.
• Michigan, a key swing state that had voted Democratic since 1992 until Trump's 2016 win, flipped to Trump again in 2024 because working-class voters felt both culturally disconnected from Democrats and economically worse off under Biden.
• For Democrats to win in 2028, Sosnik suggests they need to nominate someone from outside Washington who is authentic, can articulate a vision, and can restore the party as one of opportunity for those without college degrees.

What’s the story?

Where did the Democrats go so wrong in the 2024 US presidential election that led to Donald Trump taking a second term in office?

Did Biden step down too late? Was Harris the wrong candidate? Or do Americans really believe in a future with Donald Trump at the helm?

It was none of those things, according to Doug Sosnik, who was senior advisor to Bill Clinton when he was president from 1994 to 2000.

“I think Trump's victory was largely a repudiation of Biden and the Democrats than it was a vote for Trump,” he says.

Americans, he says, have “real concerns about Trump personally,” but were supportive of his policies - but polling shows that support is starting to dwindle as he’s implemented those policies, such as sweeping global tariffs, since taking office.

“By historical standards, Trump 2.0 has, other than his when he first took office, the lowest level of support of any president since World War Two.”

So is the door wide open for Democrats - who have been unusually quiet since Trump returned to power - to make a comeback in 2028? And where did it all go so wrong for them?

Are the Democrats no longer the party for Working Class Americans?

Sosnik thinks the biggest predictor of how people will vote is education.

“Education correlates to income, but education also – at least in America – is about culture.”

Michigan, a key swing state, had voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1992. That was until Trump narrowly won there in 2016. The state voted for Biden in 2020, but Donald Trump took the win again last year.

Why? Sosnik says “the answer started with culture”.

“I think that working class people in America believe that a Democratic Party is disproportionately now controlled by elites, highly educated people look down on them.”

Not only did working class people feel a cultural disconnect with the Democratic Party, Sosnik says, but they also “saw that prices under Biden went up by 20%.”

“They felt culturally comfortable with Trump, his position on guns, on social issues, but they also believe that economically, they were better off with him than they were with Biden”.

There were only two groups that Trump didn’t over-perform with in 2024 compared to 2020; College graduates and people making over £100,000 a year.

The anomalies in Sosnik’s analysis are those who earn far more than $100,000 - the billionaires of America.

Whilst a lot of high profile entrepreneurs stayed quiet about their voting habits in 2016 and 2020, at the Trump inauguration in 2024 there were some highly recognisable faces sitting in prime seats - Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos. The billionaires that supported Trump did so for “economic reasons,” Sosnik says.

“Republicans in America now have become the working class party, and that transcends race and ethnicity,” he adds.

How do the Democrats win back support?

Sosnik thinks there are two things the Democrats need to do to get back into power. The first, is to “run people who are outside Washington and are outside the system,” the second, is to once again make the Democratic party the “party of opportunity”.

“The middle class has been declining since the early 1970s… we have to create an opportunity for the 70% of the people in America who don't have a college degree to be part of the middle class.”

He says the next candidate the Democratic party should nominate to run for President should be someone who has run something - a governor, a mayor, or someone in business.

They also need to “have a vision for the future” and be someone “people can connect with”.

Harris “didn’t know why she was running,” he says, “she wasn't able to articulate a message.”

The next nominee needs to be “someone who's from America for America, who's authentic, but speaks in a normal way, and isn't trying to figure out how you talk to these people, but actually comes from those people”.

“Bill Clinton didn't have to figure out how to talk to people in the south or working class people, because he grew up that way.”

Bernie Sanders, although has worked in Washington for decades, is seen as an “outsider”, he says, but as he approaches 84-years-old, is too old to run.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whilst may run, he believes isn’t “mainstream” enough to become the nominee.

“America is a centre-right country, and the sweet spot in American politics right now is economic populism and social moderation.”

“We don't know who has the right stuff, and we're not going to know until we have a primary. And I for one, would embrace that Democrats have a full primary.

“We need a process to get the muscle tone to see who's got the right stuff to run in the general election.”

Listen to the full interview on The News Agents USA.