Is the Democratic Party Starting to Show Cracks?

For years, we were told the Democratic Party was fine. Now even a few party elders are admitting it’s broken. But naming the problem isn’t enough. We need primaries.

It took 30 years, two Trump presidencies, and a broken economy— but the cracks are finally too big to hide.

Some mainstream Democrats are even starting to admit something they spent years denying, the party lacks vision. They offer too little in the way of a competing alternative to MAGA

Senator Michael Bennet, who's now running for Governor of Colorado, said it straight: "The Democratic Party failed to articulate a compelling vision of what it stands for."

Bernie was out on the road with AOC packing gymnasiums in red states, telling crowds what a lot of us have known for years:

"What Democrats lack now is a vision for the future."

And up in New Hampshire, JB Pritzker's up on stage telling Democrats to "knock off the rust of poll-tested language and stale decorum" and start fighting like they mean it.

In these moment of change we have to watch for false profits.

Don't be fooled, aside from Bernie these folks aren't trying to rebuild the party. Pritzker and Bennet are just positioning themselves to capture a moment. They're insincere and opportunistic – trying to catch the anger wave and ride it into a new job at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Still, cracks are cracks. The old game is breaking down. The question we must answer is, what, if anything are we going to do about it? Are we going back to the status quo that got us here? Are we going back to the leaders who put us in this position?

For years, anybody who said the party needed a new direction got laughed out of the room. When Nancy Pelosi was asked after Trump's 2016 win if Democrats needed to rethink anything, she didn't even have to think about it:

"I don't think that people want a new direction." - Nancy Pelosi

Today, the Democratic Party is sitting at 27% approval — the lowest in recorded history. Even Trump — twice impeached, criminally convicted — is polling better.

That should be a five-alarm fire in every Democratic headquarters across the country. Instead, Chuck Schumer's out there claiming Democrats are "totally united" and "doing very well," still talking about Trump's tariffs like that's what's going to move voters.

When Dana Bash played him Bennet's criticism about lacking vision, Schumer didn't budge and just went right back to the same talking points. Some version of, “It’s all good! We got this!"

It’s like watching a building collapse and seeing the foreman brag about how well the windows are holding up.

At least Bennet was willing to say it: Democrats have "failed to build a coalition that could win in November" because they can't explain what we even stand for anymore.

No shit. Some of us have been screaming that for a decade.

I've been around these folks. I've seen how they operate.

The night AOC pulled off her first primary upset, my phone rang off the hook. It wasn't members of Congress asking what we were going to do about policy, or how we could use this momentum to fight for working people. They were all asking the same thing:

"What's her career path?" "What leadership slot is she going to run for?" "What committee can we help her get on?"

Not one of them—not one—asked how we could use this victory to advance a cause. All they cared about was the politics of it. All they saw was a new piece on the board.

I dealt with these members of Congress when I worked on the Hill for AOC. What they cared about was who stood where during press conferences, who got to speak in what order, and how to get more attention. Not for a cause—for themselves and their own political aspirations.

I'm not saying electoral politics is worthless. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Electoral politics matters. A lot!

But without primaries, we’re not fighting for anything new. We’re picking the same people, putting them back in the same seats, and hoping they magically do something different.

That’s not how power works.

What scares Congress isn’t speeches. It isn’t even crowds. It’s seeing one (or ten) of their own get sent home.

When AOC won in 2018, we took down one Democrat—a guy who was supposed to be the next Speaker of the House. And it scared the bejesus out of the whole caucus.

They acted differently, for a little while. They backed the Green New Deal and fought for industry and infrastructure. That’s how you change a party. That’s how you change a country.

If we want a Democratic Party that's worth fighting for, a party that can actually beat Trump and MAG, then we have to start by cleaning house in 2026.

Electoral politics that can transform the Democratic Party need to be led by people willing to take chances. That’s critical. They must be willing to primary Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and the leadership that led us over this cliff. They can’t be careerist.

Too many Democrats want to blame "wokeism" or a few transgender people or some other bullshit for their failure to beat a convicted felon. They're just passing the buck. James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi – they've been driving the party bus for decades and they parked us here. Now we're at the destination they chose, and they want to blame the passengers who had been pleading for a different course the entire time.

The real reason Democrats can't inspire anybody anymore isn’t because people are woke, it’s because people are broke. And the Dems? They gave up on a real vision to fix that decades ago.

They still believe the market knows best. They still believe the government's job is to regulate, nudge, and step aside. They still live inside Milton Friedman's old playbook.

Democrats today don't offer a competing worldview. They offer Republicanism with a better attitude towards the LGBTQ community and women.

Government isn't just a referee. It's a builder, a competitor, and a creator of capacity.

Here's what a real vision would sound like:

When Big Pharma jacks up insulin prices, government should be out there making insulin itself — at cost. When telecom monopolies abandon rural America, government should run fiber the same way we ran electricity. When housing costs crush working families, government should build affordable housing — not just hand out tax credits and hope.

It's not radical. It's just remembering who we are supposed to be.

That's how America became strong in the first place. And it's the only way we're going to stay standing.

This isn't just about Trump. It's not about "saving democracy" with better speeches.

It's about whether we're willing to do the hard work of rebuilding a party and a country that deserves to survive.

Will we settle for tweaks and an attempt to go back to the old status quo? Or do we finally rebuild a government that belongs to us again? Normal didn't save us it gave us Trump, twice.

IMO, if we don't start building something better, someone else will. But we ain’t gonna like it.

Corbin