NO ONE GAVE THOSE LOST VOTERS A REASON TO REGISTER AS DEMOCRATS

Despite everything else that's going on in America and the world right now -- Russia and Ukraine, anger about Texas redistricting, Trumpist goon squads on America's streets -- this was the lead story on the New York Times site when I woke up this morning:

The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.

Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot....

All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million.

There are still more Democrats registered nationwide than Republicans, partly because of big blue states like California allow people to register by party, while red states like Texas do not. But the trajectory is troublesome for Democrats, and there are growing tensions over what to do about it.

The Times is obsessed with this topic. "The Democratic Party's Troubles" has its own banner (click to enlarge):

I'll admit that the numbers above aren't great. I'll also note that during the years in question, the party was led by the worst public communicator in the modern history of the presidency. Joe Biden did a better job than most Americans give him credit for on many issues, but he was a black hole of inarticulateness just as American politics fully entered an era in which social media and short videos became the dominant means of political communication. Biden also led a party that seems to believe that voters voters should just ... know that the government has done good things for them, and he naively believed that red-staters would reward the party for policies that were intended to create blue-collar jobs and build modern infrastructure. Add all that to temporary but unnerving post-pandemic upheavals (inflation, upticks in crime and border crossings) that Biden never spoke about in a compelling way, and it's not surprising that these registration numbers are bad.

The Times story tells us that even former skeptics see the extent of the problem:

Tom Bonier, one of the Democratic Party’s leading experts on voter registration trends, spent much of 2024 downplaying the seriousness of his party’s registration woes. He has now come around.

“I was wrong,” he said in an interview.

“Clearly, in retrospect, we can say the Democratic Party had dug itself in too deep a hole in the preceding four years for the Harris campaign to dig itself out in the last few months,” added Mr. Bonier, referring to the 2024 bid by former Vice President Kamala Harris. He now calls the registration figures “a big flashing red alert.”

Yes, but:

Here is what things looked like among new registrations in PA last year, from the election up to the inauguration, Republicans were crushing Dems in new registrations... pic.twitter.com/6vgGw69bHW

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) August 11, 2025

What was happening that week?:

- No Kings protests
- Trump's military parade
- Bombing Iran

Were any of those related to the registration surges? I don't know. It will be interesting to continue to watch though.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) August 11, 2025

Hell, maybe Zohran Mamdani's upset victory in New York's Democratic mayoral primary (June 24) was a factor.

The Biden administration did many good things, but Biden himself was uninspiring, and the Kamala Harris campaign became more focus-grouped and less inspiring as it went on, to the candidates' detriment. In the second Trump era, party leaders such as Hakeem Jeffries have boasted about their lack of emotional engagement.

We'll see whether registrations tick up if people start identifying the party less with Biden, Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer and more with Mamdani, or Nicole Collier and other Democrats in the Texas legislature who are protesting mistreatment at the hands of majority Republicans, or Gavin Newsom and his Twitter feed -- or even this candidate for the Senate seat currently held by Susan Collins:

look I'm not myself a political scientist so I can't say what effects it would have for a spate of politicians to crop up saying "the enemy is the oligarchy" and "the enemy is billionaires" while swinging a kettlebell but I think we should try it for science and see what happens

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— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) August 19, 2025 at 12:38 PM

To some of you, Platner's campaign might seem a bit inauthentic, and made up of too many poll-tested attributes (military background, blue-collar job, ad featuring boomer-dad-friendly blues guitar). But I really like the fact that Platner calls for universal health care, backs unions, and denounces the oligarchy. (It wasn't long ago when Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin, who wants to be seen as a "tough" Democrat, was telling us that the word "oligarchy" is elitist, despite the massive crowds who turned out for the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "Fighting Oligarchy" tour.) And I love the line "We've fought three different wars since the last time we raised the minimum wage."

Democrats can't engage voters simply by trying not to offend them. That's the Schumer-Jeffries strategy. It's not working. It's hollowing out the party.