Democrats lack a message and a messenger

Democrats don’t just lack a message — they also lack a messenger.

While the focus is on the former, the latter is forgotten, as if somehow solving their message problem will automatically create the messenger to deliver it. In fact, the opposite is occurring; Democrats’ message problems are killing off their potential messengers.

Democrats’ message problems are much discussed… for good reason. They killed not one, but two Democratic 2024 presidential campaigns.

First, refusing to admit their message problems, Democrats turned on the messenger — and that turned out to be former President Joe Biden. But installing in Kamala Harris in his place didn’t change their messaging problems; instead, it confirmed them.

Harris was Biden’s polar opposite in every way except one — message. But that single continuity yielded the same comprehensive failure Biden had been facing.

Because November made it inescapable, there’s been an unrelenting focus on the Democrats’ message. Coming from opposite perspectives, James Carville and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have made the same point: Democrats’ message needs fixing. Countless others have added their voices.

Lost in this microscopic focus on message is the fact that Democrats also have no messengers. Biden, Harris and Walz were all swept from the national stage by Trump’s tsunami. Bernie Sanders is too old.

Nancy Pelosi is both too old and now discredited by Trump’s return. Pelosi started the concerted operations against Trump back in 2019 with House hearings, investigations, and impeachments. She was the mastermind behind Biden’s removal and Harris’s insertion. Her tearing-up of Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address ironically presaged her own fate.

Despite her disdain for Trump, she could pull every lever, but still not concoct a strategy for defeating him. Now he is back and stronger than ever; she is being primaried in 2026 by an acolyte of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

In the states, Governors Gavin Newsom, Kathy Hochul and JB Pritzker are all hamstrung by their failures in government. Each offers Republicans beaucoup campaign ad opportunities.

Governors from states like Pennsylvania (Josh Shapiro), North Carolina (Roy Cooper), and Kentucky (Andy Beshear) — places Democrats desperately need to win to rebound nationally — are all too moderate to win a Democratic nomination contest for president. This is probably why all were passed over as Harris's running mate in 2024.

Leaders in Congress look even worse. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had his Michael Dukakis tank moment when he stood holding an avocado and a Corona at a press conference against Trump's tariffs. House Minority Leader Hakeem “Street Fightin’ Man” Jeffries let slip a call to “fight it in the streets.” The nation’s scold, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)? No way.

Messengers matter. Donald Trump proves this daily, to Democrats’ dismay. Crafter and deliverer, message and messenger — in perfect synergy, each propels the other.

Dyssynergy can also occur, each spiraling the other downward. Look back to Kamala Harris this fall: Bad positions of the past dragged her down (support for illegal immigration and paying for convicts’ transgender surgeries), and her ineptitude in trying to explain these made the positions look worse.

This applies in spades to the Democrats. It is not that Democrats lack messages. They have them; it's just that they are bad. Nor do Democrats lack messengers; it's just that they are also bad.

Democrats’ messages turn off the voters they need to win, and none of Democrats’ messengers speak to these groups they do need to win. Rather, Democrats’ messages and messengers speak to groups they already have and candidly, could use some distance from.

Finally, Democrats’ messengers look overmatched — not just by Trump but by the very moment. Democrats are not one step away from resuscitating their political fortunes. They are at least two and perhaps, three.

They assuredly do not have winning messages. They also do not have someone who could deliver them if they had them. And they do not have someone their party will listen to who could craft one for them.

It is folly for Democrats to think a new message will magically produce itself, alongside someone to deliver it. To believe this is to put things backward. It is also to dismiss the evidence they want to deny, which is right before their eyes.

At its core, Democrats’ message-messenger conundrum is their policies. Pretending these policy failures can simply be communicated into successes is the real crux of Democrats’ predicament. If they could have, they would have done it in 2024, when Democrats had every conceivable advantage — incumbency, money, elite support, establishment media backing and an opponent with high negatives. All these advantages are diminishing by the day.

Democrats’ policy failures are killing any hope of a positive message. And their negative messages are taking Democrats’ potential messengers down with them.

J.T. Young is the author of the recent "Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left" from RealClear Publishing. He has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, and the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.

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