Chuck Todd lays out big ‘problem’ facing Democratic Party 

Former NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd warned during a Thursday interview that it is problematic for Democrats that they are apparently aligned only by their contempt for President Donald Trump.

During the 2024 presidential election, former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, seemingly in an effort to broaden her coalition and defeat Trump. Journalist Charlie Rose, on his YouTube channel, asked Todd whether the Democratic Party was “left of center,” prompting Todd to say the party has an “identity crisis” and that its anti-Trump “tent” is complicated to maintain.

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“I think it’s just a collection of people that don’t like Trump right now. And that served them well in ’20. But imagine trying to create a big tent that had AOC [Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and [Former Republican Ohio Gov.] John Kasich in it. Or Liz Cheney and AOC,” Todd said. “You’re sort of going to rip a hole in the middle as you’re trying to stretch that tent. And I think that that’s why they sort of have lost their — they’re just — it feels like they’re way too poll tested. It feels like that they’re trying so hard to sort of keep their suburban voters. And that’s been part of their problem. The growth in the Democratic electorate is in the suburbs, wealthy suburbs.”

“And so the growth of the Republican electorate has been in the working-class excerpts and actually even in working-class, urban areas. And I think that that’s been their disconnect is that their voters are in one place, their messaging is in another, but then when they try to message to their suburban voters, they sort of lost touch to their with their working-class roots,” he continued. “So I think that’s been part of the problem is that their coalition — look, I think both parties’ coalitions are too big. We would probably be a better democracy if we could be and have four major parties, but our system just doesn’t support that.”

Veteran Democratic strategist Patti Solis Doyle also warned on “Next Up with Mark Halperin” June 20 that her party was in dire straits.

“Right now, we’re leaderless, we’re messageless, we’re agendaless,” Solis Doyle said. “We don’t have any alternative ideas to the president’s and the Republicans’ right now. So I’m concerned to say the least.”

Over 60% of Democrats think their party requires new leaders, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on June 9 found. Just roughly one-third of Democrats said they felt “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” regarding the future of the Democratic Party, according to a May poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Moreover, a May Puck/Echelon poll showed that likely voters mainly perceived the Democratic Party as “liberal, weak, corrupt,” while Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters most commonly viewed their own party as “weak.”

Former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine also criticized his party on “The Morning Meeting” Thursday for relentlessly attacking Trump following his move to strike three Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday.

“They’re just finding something to attack him. I mean, that’s it. There is no position. There is no goal. There is no set of ideas,” Turrentine said.  “It is just, ‘What can we find a way to attack Trump? How can we say that he’s a failure or what he did is not a success?’ … You start to lose credibility when, on every single instance, you’re just saying, ‘Nope, not good. Nope, not good. Nope, not good.’”

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