There has been a lot of talk about the Democrats as a “damaged brand.” The Democratic Party actually has a lower approval rating than Donald Trump does.
There are lots of explanations for this. One is that the fragmented party identity adds up to a mixed message. Corporate Democrats on the take to crypto cancel out progressive ones. Another is that much of the disapproval actually comes from rank-and-file Democrats, who rightly blame the party leadership for the poor performance in 2024 that in turn gave us Trump II.
The damaged brand stuff also needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It doesn’t prevent effective Democrats such as New York’s Zohran Mamdani or Rep. Greg Casar of Texas or Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker from winning broad approval notwithstanding the Democratic label. Conversely, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate for governor in New Jersey, is barely ahead in the polls—not because of the party brand but because she puts audiences to sleep.
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All that said, the Democrats are in monumental trouble in predominantly red states. According to fascinating research by Les Leopold, a labor organizer and student of working-class politics, a range of pro-workers provisions actually poll better when they don’t come attached to the Democratic label.
Leopold points out that today there are 132 Congressional districts that Republicans won with a margin of at least 25 percentage points. Democrats are never going to win those seats, but independents with a populist message might pick off some. A third-party movement or an independent movement in those regions would not spoil Democratic chances, because, as Leopold puts it, “there is no Democratic Party to spoil.”
Leopold’s role model, not surprisingly, is Dan Osborn of Nebraska, an independent populist candidate and former union activist, who ran 15 points ahead of Kamala Harris when he ran for the Senate in 2024, losing by six points. He is running again in 2026, and the race is rated a dead heat. For Osborn, and other potential red-state populists like him, the Democratic label is toxic.
Leopold, correctly in my view, is not promoting an independent movement generally, but only in red states. We already have a Working Families Party in fusion states and in other blue cities like Philadelphia where WPF candidates can pick off seats from both established parties. If an Osborn-style populist like oysterman Graham Platner can succeed in a purple state running as a Democrat, that’s fine with Leopold.
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More successful economic populists within the Democratic Party can help other Democrats revive their brand with an appeal that rouses voters. In the meantime, populist candidates running in red states as independents or under a labor label can pick up some seats and show Democrats the way.
Third parties have a tricky history in the US, where our constitutional system makes it very hard for them to gain a foothold. In some elections, third party candidates have indeed sometimes functioned as spoilers, splitting liberals and electing conservatives, as they did in Maine until that state adopted ranked-choice voting.
Populist candidates running in red states as independents can show Democrats the way.
The last third party to displace an established party was, of course, the anti-slavery Republican Party formed in 1856. Yet the People’s Party of the 1880s and 1890s, which elected six governors and six senators, definitely pushed the Democratic Party to the left; and the socialists of the early 20th century elected at least 70 mayors, more than a thousand local officials, and set agendas for decades to come.
In New York, with its fusion system, the American Labor Party of the 1930s and 1940s was central to a political system that elected great progressives like Sen. Robert F. Wagner, Gov. Herbert Lehman, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and Rep. Vito Marcantonio. Today that role is played by the Working Families Party.
But in the red states, once the center or prairie populism, the opening for a new populist agenda may well come from more candidates like Osborn running as pro-worker independents with none of the Democrats’ baggage. And that success, in turn, could help return Democrats to their progressive roots.
