To listen to the author in conversation with Gluesenkamp Perez, go to Blue City Blues, S1, episode 19: “Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on What Urbanites Get Wrong about Rural America”
The Democratic Party is not in a good place. A Wall Street Journal poll that dropped a few days ago shows the party’s favorability is at its lowest level in 35 years, with only 33 percent of voters holding a favorable view of the party. A supermajority – 63 percent – disapprove. Even more alarmingly, it shows that even though Trump’s chaos, cruelty and ideological excesses have left him underwater with the public on a wide range of issues, including on the economy, inflation and tariffs, on eight of the 10 issues tested voters still trust Republicans as much or more than they do Democrats, including on the economy, inflation, immigration, and even tariffs(!).
Assessing these results, prominent Democratic pollster John Anzalone (who conducted the poll along with Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio), stated: ““Until [Democrats] reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems.” Receiving less attention, but perhaps even more alarming, last week Emerson College Polling released results showing Vice President J.D. Vance (narrowly) leading potential ’28 Democratic nominees Gavin Newsom and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (each by three points), and Pete Buttigieg (by one) in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.
The inescapable conclusion is that the Democratic party’s brand is seriously tainted, particularly with culturally normie and non-college educated voters – the sort of voters who tend to decide American presidential elections. The question is, why? One answer – one I’ve been highlighting for a while now – is that the cultural and political gulf between educated urban progressives and rural and blue collar Americans has accelerated in recent decades past a tipping point. The downstream negative consequences for the Democratic Party from that divergence are profound. The party has been left uncompetitive in huge swathes of the country where the density of college graduates is low.
While urban progressives still claim to speak for the working class, they seem increasingly incapable of talking to them. As Obama political strategist David Axelrod has observed, Democratic leaders often interact with working class communities like “anthropologists.” He adds, “You can’t approach working people like missionaries and say, ‘We’re here to help you become more like us.’”
But one Democrat demonstrating a pathway for Dems to reconnect with blue collar voters is Blue Dog Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of the 3rd Congressional District in Southwest Washington. I remain a big Marie fan after consulting on her campaign in 2022, when she pulled off that congressional election cycle’s most stunning upset by defeating MAGA extremist Joe Kent in a race where national Democrats wrote her off and prediction models gave her a two percent chance of prevailing.
The magnitude of Marie’s achievement in carrying that district (twice now) is enormous. Outside the blue urban enclave of Vancouver, WA, the 3rd CD remains largely red-leaning Timber Country: it voted for Trump in all three recent presidential elections, and no other Democrat had carried it in any race, federal or statewide, in 15 years. It is one of the epicenters of the class, cultural and demographic earthquake that threatens to make the Democratic Party a minority party in the United States for the foreseeable future.
So David Hyde and I invited Marie onto Blue City Blues to talk with her about the growing urban/rural chasm. In our conversation, Marie, who (like us) attended Reed College as an undergrad but who went on to own an auto repair and machine shop with her husband before her election to Congress, brought a thoughtful and unique perspective on the nature of growing hyper-partisanship, and how it is distorting our politics and leaving many voters feeling left behind. We explored what she learned from her experience running for the county commission in deeply rural, overwhelmingly Trumpy Skamania County in 2016, a race she lost, but one where she listened intently to the anger and resentment of her fellow rural voters who felt ignored by urban elites.
We also discussed how Marie sees the blowback from progressive Democrats in blue urban bastions like Seattle or Portland who expect her to align with their positions on every issue, and about her efforts to revive and reinvent the moderate Blue Dog Coalition as the voice of blue collar voters within the Democratic Party. And we talked about her open avowals fo her religious faith, and the tensions that creates for her in a party increasingly dominated by secular, cosmopolitan progressives.
My own assessment is that Marie has been successful where other Democrats have fallen short by combining three things: a hyper-local focus on Southwest Washington issues (a VA clinic in Lewis County, funding a replacement bridge across the Columbia River) and constituent needs, a disciplined commitment to anti-partisanship (she repeatedly refused to answer media questions if she was voting for Kamala Harris), and an authentic lunchpail populism (centered on off-the-radar-screen issues like right-to–repair and costly table saw safety mandates) that has her giving side-eye to the elitist concerns of both parties. And that’s an approach that could work in a lot of currently red districts around the country where blue collar, non-college educated, less affluent voters predominate.
I really think Marie is on to something important, politically. If they actually mean what they say about reconnecting with the working class, educated urban Democrats ought to be listening to her closely rather than – as is too often the case – denouncing her loudly. Listen for yourself to see if you agree.
Blue City Blues, S1, episode 19: “Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on What Urbanites Get Wrong about Rural America”
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Yes, the Democrats have their share of problems, but you ought to read the polls on the other side.
I would not count the D’s out. Before putting the last shovel full of dirt on the casket, let’s see if the Republicans keep the House
If the Ds don’t take back the House in 2026, we’re in even bigger trouble than I think we are. But given how uncompetitive the party has become in so much of the country outside of the blue urban bastions, we may not take it back by all that big a margin.
MGP has stayed in power precisely because she has been laser focused on her constituents’ needs. It does not follow that other Dems will succeed by insisting their voters adopt platforms of some distant district that does not align with their interest or needs.
Personally, if Dems continue to muddle along like these are normal times and measure their core values by polls and surveys, which they only half heartedly defend when push comes to shove, then I’m out. I’m tired of being a tool to the powerful who have no intention of defending me.
I am so pleased that Sandeep keeps writing and speaking about this: the “class, cultural and demographic earthquake” that affects the Democratic Party. Here in deep Blue Seattle, this “normie” Democrat is sick and tired of being asked my pronoun, sick and tired of seeing great “normie” and moderate candidates attacked on the daily by the “extremist alternative” news site, sick and tired of being challenged when expressing anger about our ongoing enablement of open-air drug use, sick and tired of being asked to pay for levies and bonds that double every cycle, at the same time that local politicians rail against the inequity of our tax system as they raise taxes that are regressive.
We need MORE Blue Dogs; we need them in the Legislature (which is increasingly like the Seattle City Council circa 2019-2023), we need them in the City Council, and we need them in Executive offices, not to mention Federal offices.
Stop reading The Alternative Publication Who Shall Not Be Named, and enjoy your life!
It would help if the “Blue Dogs” elected to Council were more effective, instead we have a whole lot of hand wringing about clapping in Council Chambers, fixation on some road median in West Seattle, and a Councilmember who decided they didn’t want the job after all. Progressive Seattle, much like the dominant party at the federal level, at least knows what it wants and goes after it.
I admire Marie’s “independence” but the admiration is significantly limited by some of her poorly chosen decisions and votes….(1)Not signing an otherwise total delegation letter supporting the Bonneville Power Administration, (2) Supporting a GOP voting rights “Save Act” bill that required “proof of citizenship to vote; and (3) Not signing a recent delegation letter supporting release of $137 million education funding for Washington public schools.
And her go to the wall issues: “mental capacity” of Congressional members and headlights too bright!
And then she “ducked” the Clark County Democrat annual dinner because she knew she would be booed, when she should have acknowledged the “progressive” unrest and used to to her benefit.This was the antithesis of “Profiles in Courage”
I hope she faces a significant Democratic primary. And I might end up voting for her -because if the Democrats retake the house sh e hopefully will use her vote to reclaim some control over the Presidents total control of our government.
And yes I am a moderate Democrat and if she continues to straddle an admitted “divided” Congressional District she will lose the District for moderates like me for decades.
The truth is that MKG is being responsive to her base and urban democrats to theirs. This may be good advice for democrats running in red or purple districts, but it feels like unnecessary finger wagging to politicos following the lead of their Seattle/Portland constituents. Why would or should they change a platform that reelects them every year?
How about: because they represent the views of a relatively small minority of the country, and if they want to win national elections they have to accept that reality.
I think Sadie is right: MGP is good for WA-03, just as AOC is good for NY-14. There really is only one “national election,” and even that (presidential race) is the sum of 50 state (and DC) elections that turn as much on identity/sentiment as they do on policy/ideology.
Sure, I agree that MGP would not be a good fit for, say, Seattle (or Brooklyn). The problem, though, is that far too many Democrats in Seattle and Brooklyn are fixated on denouncing and excommunicating Democrats like Marie, lebeling her a Republican, calling for her to be primaried by an orthodox progressive who sees he world as they do (and who would have no hope of winning a district like hers). I hear this all the time. This noisy (and influential, within the party’s structure) small tent cosmopolitan progressive purism is a significant part of the reason Democrats have such a serious branding problem in places like SW WA.
Agreed (and I’ve had a few of those difficult convos with purists, too). But that’s a very different point from the one you first delivered to Sadie.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Sandeep. Rank and file Democrats across the country aren’t interested in your accommodationist strategy, as this Washington Post piece makes clear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/04/democratic-party-change-under-trump-polls/
Marie should do as she pleases. It’s her district and her constituency. Her strategy does not necessarily apply everywhere else.
Nobody is saying every Democrat should be like Marie Perez. But I am saying the cosmopolitan progressives who (as you say) increasingly dominate the party and its thinking need to come to terms with Democrats like Marie, and if they don’t they risk relegating the party to semi-permanent minority status.
What do you mean “come to terms” with her? She is going to do as she pleases. What leverage do you see other Democrats trying to exercise on her? Quit creating a straw man. Nobody has to like all her positions, or all her votes, to recognize that any alternative to her down in Clarkansas would be some MAGAt. No Democrat wants that.
@Ivan, I think the author—consultant for moderate election campaigns—has nothing to lose by asking the other wing of the party to cool it. But for the rest of us, I don’t see a value add in propping up a party that isn’t clear on what it stands for or who it is defending. That needs to be its own reconciliation and stat.
And there’s no pleasing the critics anyways. They’ll always find something weird or threatening about voters in the “big city,” even if we do manage to moderate ourselves. Polarization in the nature of politics.
The ensuing wrangling, in responding comments, over where should the Democratic party stand, sort of misses the point. Some districts will elect Jayapals, others will elect Gluesenkamp Perezes, because they represent their respective districts.
The answer to where the Democratic party should stand, is “nowhere in particular.” Political parties are only a negative influence on American politics.
The Republican party has a successful model going for them, though at the expense of the country, but they’ve always had a strong ideological element. The Democratic party is more diverse, and generally more responsive to real problems that need to be addressed. If they’re saddled with a party policy that makes the party represent some of its electeds and not others, that’s obviously a problem.
This all may sound very plausible to us college educated intellectuals. Oh yes, good show on right to repair, because your farm communities will really appreciate that!
Sure.
She won a close one, after a recount, against a psycho who had nothing for the county.
See “Sen. Jon Tester, Endangered Democrat” for what Democrats can normally expect from rural voters, however moderate/conservative/cowboy-boots they are. Today, it’s Trump country, and the only way to really line up with Trump loyalty is to be a party member and toe the line. You can do whatever you want with policy, and the MAGA political social media will tear you to ribbons anyway. This is what really has to be fixed. We can’t go on as a nation, with voters seeing the world through a funhouse lens manufactured by that crowd.
I have supported MGP’s campaigns in her prior election victories. However, she faced a Trump diehard, who was easier to defeat than Jamie Herrera-Butler. MGP is focused on representing the members of her district, but her perspective is on representing its rural population rather than the interests of the majority of its suburban residents, who live in Clark County. According to census data, in 2023 792,906 people lived in the 3rd district. That same year, according to Data USA the population of Clark County was 510,516. While there are rural areas in Clark County, the majority of its population live in suburban areas, including the city of Vancouver. I think MGP needs to focus more on meeting the needs of the suburban residents of her district. They are probably not that interested in the right to repair machinery, for instance. I think she could have trouble winning in 2026 against a Republican that is more acceptable to her district than Joe Kent.
The right to repair that Marie is fighting for is hardly limited to tractors and backhoes. It also includes TVs, smartphones, kitchen and all kinds of household appliances, electric vehicles, and gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles, all of which affect suburban voters, and just about everyone else.
Marie’s likely opponent, State Senator John Braun, if his voting record in the Legislature is any indication, will take a hard line against any right to repair. He might not come across as batshit crazy as Joe Kent did, but he is a hard-core corporate absolutist, as anti-consumer and anti-labor as it gets. No dissatisfaction with Marie is worth enabling this guy.
Thanks to Ivan and Diane (below) for restating (as I interpret their comments) the adage about not making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think that thought process explains much of what has paralyzed and degraded the democratic party.
Yes, yes, and yes! Spot on, Mike.
Couldn’t agree more with the assessment in this article. Thanks so much for writing it! I’m part of a small neighborhood political group in Seattle and we’re thinking of adopting her reelection campaign from up here… in part because of the issues you raised; in part because she’s listed in multiple places as one of the top ten most vulnerable candidates.
OMG – it is way past time for this country to have more than two viable political parties!