Democrats just can’t catch a break.

After a humiliating campaign season and a humiliating defeat at the polls, this week saw the Dems’ internal conflicts flows out to the public. Party insiders are now engaged in Twitter battles that do nothing to offer the party a road map back to political contender status. Instead, they confirm the normie’s worst caricatures of democratic dysfunction.

Well, pack your sorrows, because a new survey from Puck and Echelon Insights shows that a majority of Americans (51 percent) now dislikes the Democratic Partyand think of Donald Trump more favorably than any national Democrat. It should be a wake-up call to party leaders who spent 2023 and 2024 dismissing concerns about the party’s fractured electoral coalition.

A larger majority of Americans (58 percent) say they expect Trump to improve the economy next year, and the number of people who believe the country is on the right track rose to three in 10. Those are all numbers that suggest voters are buying the president-elect’s optimistic but overly simplistic economic ideas.

That poses a real problem for the Democrats. While the party’s post-election unpopularity shouldn’t come as a surprise, Trump’s growing popularity is harder for them to untangle. The situation is compounded by the fact that no one on the Democratic national political bench is garnering much enthusiasm from the electorate at large. Most Americans don’t even know who these people are.

Vice President Kamala Harris is reeling from her whirlwind campaign, still securing support from 41 percent of Democrats for 2028. Other challengers span the spectrum of uninspiring party officials: California Gov. Gavin Newsom leads the field with support from 8 percent of those polled, while Josh Shapiro locks in 7 percent. Tim Walz is neck and neck with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 6 percent, which is an insultingly low number for one of these men.

Things are not getting much better within the democratic apparatus; with both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the way out and Republican majorities arriving in the House and Senate next year, Democrats are low on institutional leadership. On Tuesday, the party took its first step toward filling the gap with an effort to position House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries as its de facto party leader.

“‘You’re the guy for the whole country right now,'” Rep recalls. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) that he told Jeffries. “I don’t think he’s ever tried to reach that kind of position, but it’s up to him.”

But while Jeffries may be one of Washington’s most influential and well-placed Democrats, he also leads a delegation divided by its own deep ideological cracks.

The party is also alarmed by its poor showing among younger voters and Hispanics, a veteran lawmaker told me on condition of anonymity. Another echoed those concerns, arguing that the challenges ahead justify choosing party leadership from outside the Beltway. Trump’s crafty use of alternative media as podcasters and YouTube influencers reach young voters directly, other insiders have wondered how Democrats lost the edge in a digital communications space they had dominated since Barack Obama’s 2008 victory.

Puck’s research shows that Trump’s embrace of alternative media worked better than he might have hoped. Of those who heard Trump on a podcast, more than half (55 percent) said it affected their vote. Voters were also nearly twice as likely to say they heard Trump on a podcast than to say they heard Harris. With such a message advantage, it’s no wonder so many young voters told pollsters they believed at least one of Trump’s false claims.

The Democrats’ post-election hangover won’t go away quickly. The party is now regarded by voters with a kind of low-grade scorn. It is seen as too fixated on Trump and not focused enough on the issues voters say they care about. The Atlantic Mike Pesca recently declared that “the Democratic Party resembles that most American of institutions: the HR department.” It’s not a party poised to win a 2026 midterm rematch with the MAGA Republicans—or anyone else.

Top-heavy Democratic leadership in Washington will make the rebuilding process more difficult by trying to exert their own influence over the Democrats’ political future. Instead of trying to stage-manage the party’s next steps, the leadership should try something else: actually listening to the base. It will require humility, a capacity for self-criticism and, most importantly, a new generation of democratic leaders emerging from the state and local levels.

The Democrats’ top-down campaign in 2024 led to an embarrassing blowout. It’s time to put the party back in the hands of the people – before it’s too late.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. With exclusive rights. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports and streaming video, go to The Hill.