‘We just have to be very honest with ourselves’: Dem analyst admits his party is in ‘terrible shape’

Matt Bennett, co-founder of liberal think tank Third Way, told journalist Mark Halperin on “Next Up with Mark Halperin” Thursday that the Democratic Party would not recover from its dismal state until it had a nominee for president.

The Democratic Party’s favorability rating is 34.7%, according to the RealClearPolling average. Bennett pointed to the party’s weak polling on the show to argue Democrats are “in terrible shape” and asserted they have not yet worked on solving their issues.

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“We’re in terrible shape. Like, we just have to be very honest with ourselves — the Democratic Party is in really, really bad shape,” Bennett told Halperin. “The fact that our approval rating is, depending on the poll you believe, somewhere in the 20s or the teens, while [President] Donald Trump is busy kind of vandalizing the government — that ain’t good.”

“And I think there are many reasons for that, which we can discuss, but we have not begun to address those problems. I do think we will not be able to fully address them until we have a leader, and that won’t be for like three years, when we nominate somebody for president,” he continued. “Because parties ultimately are defined by their leaders — and defined by them almost entirely.”

Moreover, a July 16 Quinnipiac University poll found that just 19% of voters approved of Democrats in Congress, an all-time low for the polling outlet.

Bennett said the party would flounder until it selected its nominee, which he noted would take years.

“[T]he nominees and the presidents make the party brand, and for the next few years, we won’t have that. So it’s going to be a tough couple of years deep in the wilderness for us,” he said. “And I think there are some things we can do to set the table for the nominee. But right now, I don’t feel like we’re doing it.”

Third Way urged Democrats in an August memo to avoid using woke language that it warned could repel voters. The think tank advised Democrats to refrain from using 45 words and phrases that it argued “no ordinary person would ever dream of” saying, asserting certain terms make the party sound like “extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory enforcers of wokeness.”

A New York Times analysis of voter registration data released in August also found that the Democratic Party experienced a decline of around 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom led the pack of potential 2028 Democratic contenders with 21% among registered voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, followed by former Vice President Kamala Harris at 19% and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 12%, according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll conducted from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2.

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