Detoxifying the Democratic Brand

A pair of increasingly influential inside-game Dems are trying to cure what ails their party by looking beyond the Beltway and way downballot—to the blue team’s signs of life in the nation’s state legislatures.

"James Talarico is a very, very talented public servant with a real sense of who he is and why he does this, and that’s a set of qualities that cuts across many levels of government. But a second thing is also true: James is really relevant to policymaking today, and that’s true of all of the 7,000-plus state lawmakers around the country," says the State Project's Daniel Squadron. Photo: Jason Bollenbacher/SXSW Conference & Festivals/Getty Images

John Heilemann

August 5, 2025

Join Puck to listen to this article

For all the trouble Donald Trump has been in lately, from the Jeffrey Epstein brouhaha to economic numbers that suggest stagflation around the corner, little of it has accrued to the benefit of the Democratic Party, which remains deeply in the doldrums: chronically unpopular, still litigating whether Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is more to blame for what happened in November, engaged in factional squabbling about where the party needs to go from here, and in control of zero national power centers—not the White House, the House, or the Senate in D.C., nor the majority of governorships around the country (with Republicans holding 27 and Democrats 23). When people say a party is in the wilderness, this is what it looks like.