Normally, when a political party gets its clock cleaned at the ballot box, it goes back to the drawing board. It conducts a postmortem, figures out what went wrong, retools its message to reconnect with the people, and then begins building toward the next election.

Normally. But there’s nothing normal about today’s Democrat Party — unless you consider open borders, economic stagnation, societal disintegration, and political weaponization to be normal.

It’s been more than six months since Donald Trump took his second oath of office and nearly nine months since the electoral shellacking of last November 5, when the American people so resoundingly rejected the party that believes men can have babies. And yet, as even the hang-dog hangers-on at The New York Times seem to recognize, the Democrats are unwilling to do any serious soul-searching.

Oh, sure, the Democratic [sic] National Committee is conducting an “after-action review,” but as the Times reports, that review will likely steer clear of whether decrepit Joe Biden should’ve run for reelection in the first place, or whether Kamala Harris should’ve been anointed his replacement without any input from, you know, the voters. “Nor,” they continue, “is the review expected to revisit key decisions by the Harris campaign — like framing the election as a choice between democracy and fascism, and refraining from hitting back after an ad by Donald J. Trump memorably attacked Ms. Harris on transgender rights by suggesting that she was for ‘they/them’ while Mr. Trump was ‘for you.’”

The truth hurts, and facts are stubborn things, but they’re especially hurtful and stubborn when we choose to ignore them and focus instead on lesser factors, such as the apparent misallocation of advertising funds by Democrat PACs and super PACs. This seems to me not just patently stupid but wholly unfair. To suggest that the American people would’ve overcome their hard-earned revulsion to Kamala Harris if only they’d done a better job of marketing her is akin to suggesting that dog food would taste a lot better if only it looked more like prime rib. Or, as columnist Keith Naughton mordantly quipped, refusing to focus on the candidates themselves is “like performing John F. Kennedy’s autopsy and only examining his feet.”

Recent polling reflects the Democrats’ problems, and while it’s still early, the numbers paint a grim picture for their prospects in the 2026 midterms. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal summed up its recent survey of the landscape:

The Democratic Party’s image has eroded to its lowest point in more than three decades, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll, with voters seeing Republicans as better at handling most issues that decide elections.

The new survey finds that 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party — the highest share in Journal polls dating to 1990 and 30 percentage points higher than the 33% who hold a favorable view.

Trump and the Republicans look downright titanic by comparison, as they’re “only” viewed unfavorably by seven points and 11 points, respectively. A mere 8% of voters view the Democrats “very favorably,” compared with 19% who show that level of enthusiasm for the GOP.

In addition, just 8% of voters view the Democrats “very favorably,” as opposed to 19% for the Republicans. Eight percent. That’s friends-and-family territory.

Democrats and the legacy media want you to believe the polling is “confusing,” but only one party is polling at historically bad levels, and only one party is struggling to find policy issues on which it can run. Trump has them flummoxed on every big issue. Even on the economy, where the GOP numbers still seem vulnerable, the trend line is unmistakable: The GOP numbers have been steadily improving.

But here’s the Democrats’ real problem: the policies. When it comes to handling illegal immigration, Trump and the Republicans hold a whopping 24-point lead over the party of Zohran Kwame Mamdani. On the economy, the Republican lead is 12 points. On inflation, it’s 10 points. On those Armageddon-inducing tariffs that the Democrats and their self-discrediting mainstream media bootlickers have been warning us about, the GOP leads by seven points. As for foreign policy, the Democrats trail by eight points. Heck, they trail the Republicans by five points on Ukraine.

What can the Democrats hitch their wagon to? Healthcare?

Another bit of bad medicine for the Democrats is party identification. As the Journal notes, “More voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats by 1 percentage point, and the GOP led by 4 points in the April poll.” For reference, the Democrats enjoyed a 12-point lead in ID when Barack Obama swept to victory in 2008.

So, despite their worst efforts to tell us what an awful Nazi king Donald Trump is, the gravitational pull of the Democrats’ people and policies keeps pulling them downward.

How low can they go? you ask.

Hold our Chardonnay! the Democrats say.