A Quinnipiac University poll released in January found that 57% of Americans view the Democrat Party negatively. Just 31% had a positive view of the party.

Meanwhile, Republicans, riding high off Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory and the GOP’s gaining complete control of Congress, saw their favorability hit 43% among voters. Furthermore, as Trump has aggressively pursued his agenda to reform Washington, primarily via the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, his favorability numbers have reached an all-time high.

To put it in a nutshell, the Trump-led Republican Party is doing what Trump promised — winning — whereas the seemingly rudderless Democrat Party is directionless and foundering.

Another recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that over 40% of Americans have no idea who House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more Americans know who Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is. Yet, for a party that must moderate if it wants to start winning elections again, that the most radically left members within the party are their most identifiable lawmakers is a big problem.

How does the party of AOC and The Squad, with their blatant anti-American values, appeal to Regular Joe Americans? That, in a nutshell, is the root of the conundrum for today’s Democrat Party.

In many ways, Democrats have yet to come to grips with why Trump won the election so handily after they threw nearly every possible roadblock in his path. They seemingly don’t understand that Americans just aren’t buying what they have been selling for the past four years under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

When many Americans look at the Democrat Party today, they see a party opposed to patriotism, free speech, meritocracy, and white men. Furthermore, the leftist ideals the party upholds are just as offensive: globalism, unchecked illegal immigration, transgenderism, DEI, and climate cultism.

In short, the Democrat Party’s platform is downright offensive to a majority of Americans. But do enough Democrats see this reality? Do enough Democrats recognize that they will have to embrace real change in order to become relevant again?

Thus far, the answer appears to be no. For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom, widely viewed as the current leading contender for the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination, recently launched a podcast. He, along with many others, has recognized that new media was, in many ways, responsible for allowing Trump to get his message out to the masses unfiltered by the legacy media gatekeepers.

Michelle Obama has also launched her own podcast, yet it is off to a rather abysmal start with few viewership numbers. While she may be doing this just for her own publicity, maybe she secretly craves to be another Oprah Winfrey. It’s still rumored that she may make a run at the White House, but with her inauspicious podcast, it seems that ship has sailed.

Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, recently announced a red district town hall tour. The strategy is to target Republican districts and convince these voters that Republicans and Trump don’t know what they are doing. But that is a tough sell after four years of Biden and the radical leftist agenda his administration foisted on the American people.

As Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Republican Party in Iowa, put it, “I’ve never been a big fan of the circus, and Iowans know that when Rob Sand, Rita Hart, and Tim Walz all tumble out of the clown car, it’s not entertainment, it’s a warning. Walz has embraced the worst of left-wing policies, from trying to eliminate the Electoral College to supporting unlimited abortion and reckless government overreach. Under his failed leadership, Minnesota’s economy has tanked, crime has exploded, and personal freedoms have been trampled.”

Yet another poll that should have Democrats doing some deep soul-searching was conducted by the Democrat group Navigator Research. It found that just 27% of voters in battleground states believed that Democrats were focused on them and their needs, whereas 55% said they were focused on others.

When you become the party that caters to the extreme, you lose the majority in the middle. Democrats are flailing right now and are seen as increasingly disingenuous because they are trying to hold onto the radicals who hold inherently anti-American views while at the same time claiming to be concerned about upholding the Constitution.