The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Why Do the Democrats Keep Losing Ground? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

The future of the Democratic Party in the US isn't looking too bright. When strategy and targeting don't change for over half a century, I suppose that's what they get.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/why-do-the-democrats-keep-losing-ground

Hey all, Peter Zine here, coming to you from Colorado. Today, we're taking a question from the Patreon page, and it's about U.S. politics, so we! Specifically, the question is, is there a future for the Democratic Party in the United States? And the short version is, probably not. Just to review, the Democratic Party is not what it used to be. It has been through several iterations since it was formed back in the 1800s. But in its most recent iteration, one that dates roughly, back to the post-World War II environment.

The party basically, it's formed around three big pillars of voters. The first is organized labor with capital being on the Republican side of the equation. The second are ethnic minorities with most white people edging towards the Republicans again. And then the third group is coastal elites, specifically of the white tower crowd. People who live in cities and have a very different way of looking at the world than say rural voters who are more likely to be Republicans. Those three categories are the bulk of the system. And if you look at it just on the numbers, if you add up all racial

minorities in the United States with all organized labor or blue-collar workers, with everyone who's living in the cities, it's a super majority of the population. It's pushing 70% of the total. It should, by the numbers, not only be the dominant party, but it should be the only party in the United States. And yet and yet and yet, they keep losing elections by ever more impressive margins. Why? Well, a couple things to keep in mind. Number one, politics evolve. Remember, this isn't the first form the Democrats have been in. I believe this is the fourth. And to think that it is static for all times is silly. Second, politics evolve in terms of the issues. Technology pushes people on different size of the wind loss ledger. Economic transformation can make some states or

urban centers rise while others fall. Changes in technology, change how we interact with the world. And all of these things have happened at scale in the last 35 years. I mean, just think about what we've been through since 1985. We had the nuclear scare of the Cold War, then the collapse of the Cold War, then the rise of China. We've had the baby boomers being the predominant factor in American politics as they were entering their adult years. And now they're all retorting. hiring, changing the financial and the budgetary shape of the entire country. We've had the onset of the digital revolution and the rise of social media, changing how we all interact with one another. Of course, we're going to manage our politics differently. But for the Democrats, this has not

been a gift. Three basic things have combined to make it non-functional in its current form. First, those liberal, coastal-educated urban living elites, they're not nearly as united as you might think, and more importantly, they have a hard time resonating their ideas with the rank and file the United States. Most Americans do not own six figures. Most Americans have not graduated from graduate programs. And so the sort of tunnel vision that you can get if you're a part of this coastal elite just doesn't really carry out to others. And when you see people starting to protest for trans rights, that just doesn't resonate for most of the country. The second issue is racial. one thing that defines your average American is race.

White, black, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, islander, mix, however you want to call it. And it has been an important aspect of American identity, but it's not the only one. And it often finds itself clashing with other aspects of identity, your education level, your region, where you're from, how you define your sense of self, whether you're gay or straight. All of these things muddle together.

together along with economic issues to give us all our sense of self. And one of the huge mistakes the Democratic Party has made over the last 30 years is to simply bet that because birth rates were higher under Hispanics than they were under whites, that the country was going to become more and more and more leftist, more and more democratic. And that is simply one measure. Instead, we saw two things happening with specifically the Hispanic population. Number one, they became steadily and steadily more wealthy. which tends to put them over into the Republican camp.

And second, Hispanics, especially first and second generation Mexican Americans, are very strong in blue-collar work, specifically the trades like electricity and welding and similar items, construction think. Well, the United States is going through an industrial renaissance where those skill sets are massively in demand. And so if you want to look at politics through the lens of the economic haves and haves-nots, the Hispanics have become more and more in the category of the have moving forward. So for them, tax rates have become as important, if not more, for most, than things like racial equality.

And so more and more of these people have shifted over in the general direction of Trump-style Republicans. And the third of two is cultural. If you're a first or second-generation Mexican-American, a first- or second-generation immigrant from any background, odds are that where you came from, from is less organized than the United States and less wealthy. You came to pursue the American dream, which means you have some firsthand experience in your family of what a system with weak rule of law looks like. One of the great things that we have forgotten in this country is that most migrants have a deeper degree of religiosity than most Americans. And so when you get a Mexican immigrant or Nigerian immigrant and they come to the United States, they are far more

likely to be socially conservative than say the social liberals of the coasts. So we have all of these things happening at the same time changing our idea of identity and the net result is a lot of factions that used to be core to the Democratic coalition are now toss-ups. Hispanics were as likely to vote for Trump as they were likely to vote for Harris. Same for people under age 30. The youth are now in play as well. You pull this all together and at the moment it is absolutely impossible for the Democrats to win any big election unless there's something else very big in play. Does this mean that the Democrats are dead forever? Not quite what I'm saying. What I'm saying is they can no longer count on winning by the numbers. There has to be another issue out there that

motivates. And the general unpopularity of Donald Trump is something that the Democrats today are counting on. But as we learned in our last federal elections, that is not enough. Thank you.