Several prominent Democratic Party consultants, state legislators and possible candidates met this week in Atlanta for a so-called “NewDEAL Ideas Summit.” According to a report in the Cobb Voice, “party insiders privately admitted what many Georgians and Republicans already know: the Democratic Party has become increasingly out of touch with the average voter.”
The latest evidence is that even a liberal Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll recently found the Democratic Party’s favorability rating with registered voters has fallen to just 35 percent statewide. Only 24 percent of independent voters looked favorably on the party. And African-American support fell to 59 percent favorability.
State Sen. Jason Esteves, a gubernatorial candidate, warned that while Democrats hope anti-Trump sentiment can simply carry them into power in 2026, they’re waking up to a harsh reality that Georgia voters are perceiving the party as too radical.
“The summit featured Jim Kessler of the left-leaning think tank Third Way,” the Cobb Voice reports. “His message was blunt: Democrats are bleeding support among working-class voters, especially minorities without college degrees, while doubling down on issues that don’t matter to most people. Kessler’s presentation was titled ‘How Democrats Lost the Middle,’ and the data he shared should send a chill down the spine of every Democratic campaign manager in Georgia. Kamala Harris won in states with high numbers of college-educated voters but lost nearly all the rest. And she lost married voters by a double-digit margin. But here’s the real headline: ‘White and woke doesn’t win.’ That’s Kessler’s own words”.
Latino voters, once considered a lock for the Democratic coalition, are starting to vote more like middle-class white voters, concerned about kitchen-table issues, not pronoun politics. Furthermore, Kessler said, “voters care about inflation, crime, education and the economy. But Georgia Democrats? They’re still busy staging walkouts over transgender policy in prisons.”
For example, a prominent liberal – state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta— voted with Republican lawmakers on an inmate gender surgery ban. She flatly said that “Democrats are seen as caring more about hot-button issues than what truly affects people’s lives.“
The average Georgian isn’t obsessed with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or compelled by the latest pronoun debate, Kessler told the summit. They want leaders who understand what it’s like to raise a family, pay taxes and make ends meet in a world that seems increasingly hostile to common sense.
The bottom line: Kessler warned his fellow Democrats to “stop talking to activist groups and start talking to real people.”
