Politically Unstable: Where does the Democratic Party go from here?

Video

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

OPINION:

Democratic strategist Julian Epstein, former chief Democratic counsel of the House Judiciary Committee and former staff director of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, joins Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler on Politically Unstable to discuss the Democratic Party as a whole and where they go from here.

[SADLER] President Trump — we’re in the midst of a government shutdown, don’t know how long it’s going to last — he complained from the Oval Office, he doesn’t even know who to negotiate with. He’s getting calls from moderate Senate Democrats, but not Chuck Schumer. He questioned whether Chuck Schumer has the juice over the party or if it’s AOC. Who is the leader of the Democratic Party right now?

[EPSTEIN] Well, it’s a great question, Kelly, and I wish I had an answer for you. I don’t think there is a leader of the Democratic Party. The putative leaders of the Democratic Party are Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and maybe Barack Obama. But each of these men, who at one point, I think, could bear the mantle of leadership, have become very small people. They have cowered to the ideological progressive left that is increasingly extremist, increasingly socialist, increasingly angry, increasingly belligerent and obstructionist. So it’s an unwieldy party. There is no real leader.

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have become too small of people to stand up to the left and say that they are wrong on a host of issues. And I think what they’re doing on the shutdown is sort of playing small ball. They’re looking for a tactical win. I don’t think they’ll get it. I think at best they’ll get a draw. It may get worse than that because I think the public is going to recognize, after another week of thi,s that it’s the Democrats who are voting to shut down the government. And given that they lost the House, the Senate, and the White House, it’s a little bit narcissistic to insist that they’re going to shut down the government unless they get their way on certain Obamacare subsidies, which, by the way, are subsidies that were supposed to be temporary. And they’re looking to restore the subsidies for people that are well above 400% of the poverty line, so the more well-to-do of the Obama subsidy recipients.

I don’t think, as this thing gets closer and gets more scrutiny, that it’s going to be a very good position for the Democrats. They may get a one-year extension on the subsidies. That’s about it. But the bigger point here, Kelly, is I think the Democrats are choosing the wrong fights. They’re looking for some kind of tactical win. They’re desperate. They’re losing on almost every single issue other than maybe health care, but on every other issue, whether it’s border, crime, foreign affairs, the economy, they are far behind in double digits in most cases.

And what the Democrats need to do is stop going to the socialist left and stop calling their opponents Nazis, their political opponents, Nazis, and they need to start building. They need to start doing things like fixing the pathetic school system where two-thirds or more of our students are enumerate and illiterate, and they need to start getting the working class ready for the AI revolution. They’re not doing anything constructive. It’s all negative, and that’s why their numbers are in the dumps.

[SADLER] Do you think a part of that is just always having to oppose the president no matter what issue he’s fighting on? President Trump has made crime a pillar of his presidency and restoring law and order to a lot of these lawless cities. If we look at the city of Memphis, the Democrat mayor there is actually working with the President of the United States to combat crime. Muriel Bowser, here in Washington, D.C., worked with the president to restore law and order. But then you look at the city of Chicago, where you have Brandon Johnson saying that the right wants another civil war. You got J.B. Pritzker calling ICE agents and Border Patrol agents thuggish goons. You look over in the state of California with Gavin Newsom resisting every single attempt by the president to restore law and order, and then the city of Portland.

And the narrative in all of these places are the same, that our states are doing fine. Our cities are doing fine. We don’t need your help. Get out of here. And it’s like, resist Trump. But then, when you actually go and interview residents of these cities, of these states, they’re just like, yeah, we want safe neighborhoods. We want to live in safe neighborhoods. Do you think the Democrats are dealing with this issue wrong?

[EPSTEIN] I think you stated it perfectly. I think the Democrats are incredibly out of touch. I’m a D.C. resident. And I can tell you, there is a marked difference since the National Guard has been in D.C. And almost everybody I talked to says the same thing. I think you’re going to see that kind of thing repeated in states. You look at carjackings and murder, they’ve gone down significantly. I think 87% on carjackings, and I think the murder rate went down, you know, certainly in double digits, the homicide rate. So I think there’s just no question that it’s having a positive effect.

I think your question, as you started it, is the Democrats just oppose everything that is Trump. And I used to think this notion of Trump Derangement Syndrome was sort of a silly thing, and I dismissed it. Now I actually think it’s a real thing. I think if Donald Trump came out with a cure for cancer tomorrow, Democrats would be opposed to it. It’s a culture that has become endemic in the Democrats… They’re looking for all this spiritualism in all the wrong places. And I think it’s become sort of this reaction, primal yell, caterwauling that gives them a temporary sugar high if they can demonize the other side. And I think it’s a bizarre and strange phenomenon that’s growing culturally.

Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the book, “The Anxious Generation,” speaks a lot about the disaffection, particularly of young people. We see it in the numbers with you.gov saying that 25% of young progressives think violence is justified in certain circumstances. So there is a cultural malaise. There’s a cultural decay that is occurring. And I think it’s occurring much more on the left than it is on the right, although there’s some of it on the right. But I think in terms of the crime issue, to get more specific, you know, I think Donald Trump is going to start asking the question. And it would be a smart question to ask in places like Chicago and other cities where the homicide rate is anywhere from 20 to 40 per 100,000. That’s, you know, that’s 20 times higher than it is in Islamabad, Pakistan. So the homicide rates in U.S. cities, the Democrats like to say it’s coming down. It may be coming down. It’s still obscenely high.