Mark Powell

The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging its base. Progressive disillusionment is now a measurable, systemic crisis. The Democrats offered up Kamala Harris in 2024 as a “Mommy State” to counter Donald Trump’s Daddy State. A cold-blooded heartless Prosecutor/Feminist vs a Flaming Narcissist, Harris offered absolutely nothing appealing to voters except a focus-group/consultant-driven ideological nightmare. 

The Anatomy of a Disaffected Democrat

“I’ve given them my vote for a decade, and nothing changes. I’m done,” says a 28-year-old ex-Democratic voter. This sentiment is far from isolated. Deep structural Democratic voter disillusionment is spreading, particularly among progressives, even establishment data shows public burnout (AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2025a; Pew Research Center, 2023). Over 60% of Democrats now describe their party as “weak” or “ineffective” (AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2025).

Young voters are especially frustrated: only 27% of Americans aged 18–29 believe the political system works for them (Harvard Institute of Politics, 2025), and nearly 70% of young adults think the system is fundamentally broken (The Next 100, 2024). Surveys also reveal 95% of progressives reject consultant-driven politics (Our Revolution, 2025). The stage is set for a broad left-wing critique of a party increasingly seen as detached from its base.

The Socialist Critique of Democrats: A Party Against Class Struggle

From Jacobin commentary and Theda Skocpol’s analysis, a Marxist critique of the Democratic Party frames it as a manager of capitalism rather than a vehicle for social change (Skocpol, 2017; Gambino, 2025). Grassroots energy is absorbed and redirected into avenues that do not threaten corporate donors.

Noam Chomsky warns, “Voting for the lesser evil is a guarantee of long-term political impotence” (Chomsky, 2021). Skocpol notes that modern parties often operate as “advocacy without members,” prioritizing fundraising and messaging over authentic grassroots engagement (Skocpol, 2017).

The “Dirtbag Left” & The Anti-Establishment Roar

Parallel to academic critiques, the “Dirtbag Left” offers visceral opposition. Commentators Krystal Ball and Briahna Joy Gray frame the struggle as “the left vs the Democrats”, criticizing the mantra of “vote blue no matter who” for disarming the progressive base (Our Revolution, 2025).

Mainstream reporting confirms these tensions: progressives increasingly reject top-down, consultant-driven politics (Yahoo News, n.d.). Without voter threats, the Democratic Party remains insulated from meaningful pressure.

Policy Failures: Mini Case Studies

Concrete failures fuel disillusionment:

·       Student Loans: Promises evaporated post-election, leaving millions in debt (Our Revolution, 2025).

·       Medicare for All Abandoned: Despite 60% public support, sidelined after 2020 primaries (Skocpol, 2017; Gambino, 2025).

·       Foreign Policy / Israel: Party positions remain disconnected from the progressive base (Greenwald, 2022).

·       Climate Policy: Ambitious bills reduced to corporate-friendly subsidies (CounterPunch, 2023).

·       Endless Wars & Corporate Donors: Elite funding drives timid policymaking (AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2025b).

The Illusion of the Saviors — Obama, Harris, and Biden

Even when the global spotlight shone on the devastating violence in Gaza, the so-called “saviors” of the Democratic Party failed to act decisively. As one analysis notes, the political careers of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris epitomize “figures described as ‘saviors’… clay-feet ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’” whose moral posturing masks systemic complicity (Spencer, 2024).

Despite repeated opportunities to curb U.S. military support, all three leaders — Obama, Biden, and Harris — continued the flow of bombs to Israel, offering instead a performative “peace process” theater. One critique notes that Harris’s tenure “displays a troubling callousness towards those entangled in the criminal justice system” — a mindset that translates into indifference to human suffering abroad, where military aid enables occupation and violence (Smith, 2024).

Thepeoplesvoice.org highlights the performative nature of Harris’s feminism and political branding: “Feminism today hardly resembles its initial mission of radical social transformation… The corporations that run the media, the intelligence agencies that shape public opinion, and the political powers that remain in control have combined a grand symphony of influence…” (RT, 2025). This same “grand symphony” logic applies to foreign policy: military aid continues unchallenged, while performative public rhetoric pretends diplomacy is underway.

Even fundraising triumphs underscore the problem. Harris “breaks fundraising record proving Americans are mindless woke sheep” — an ironic marker of political capital built on optics rather than accountability (Editor, 2024). The point is stark: Democratic leaders maintain the machinery of war while performing peace, betraying both domestic progressive ideals and international human rights.

Intellectual Standard-Bearers: Chomsky, West, and Robinson

Progressive intellectuals give rigor to this critique. Chomsky exposes structural failures (Chomsky, 2021), Cornel West offers a moral indictment of corporate influence (West, 2024), and Nathan J. Robinson meticulously dismantles establishment justifications (Robinson, 2023). Skocpol emphasizes that Democratic leadership has hollowed out grassroots power, leaving members as spectators rather than drivers (Skocpol, 2017).

The Donor Dilemma: Corporate Influence

Underpinning every failure is money. Corporate donors have shaped policy outcomes, curtailing progressive ambitions on Medicare for All and climate initiatives (AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2025a; Our Revolution, 2025). Without grassroots control, reforms threatening elite interests are systematically blocked (Skocpol, 2017).

Act Blue should be renamed to “Financially Cracked Through.” Act Blue sends out millions upon millions of crises emails daily, manipulating the public to “donate” to members of the Global Elite. MoveOn.org does the same thing. Everything is a dire emergency, everything requires that the lower and middle classes, working class people “dig deep and give” to the upper crust.

Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft flooded Obama, Biden and Harris with donor money, enriching so-called Democrat’s Campaigns and muffling the voices of “We the People.” Candidates like Harris lean into the news cameras talking about “Democracy” when they really mean Corporatocracy.

Beyond Disillusionment

The disillusioned Democrat is not apathetic but activated in redirected anger. Critiques from site:jacobinmag.com to Glenn Greenwald, from Noam Chomsky to Briahna Joy Gray, converge: the future of the American left depends on building independent political power outside the Democratic Party.

Support for the Democratic Party among young voters has fallen by nearly 15% in five years (Claassen, 2023; Martini et al., 2023). The question is no longer why the party fails, but how long the base will accept a deal that consistently sells them short (Harvard Institute of Politics, 2025; Bloomberg News, 2024).

In the article October 2024 article, “Beyond Empowerment: Kamala Harris and the Limits of Feminism,” the central thesis that Harris’s brand of feminism has become indistinguishable from state power, thus betraying its emancipatory promise. Feminism itself has become co-opted state and corporate power. The yard stick of feminism is no longer self-improvement and women’s rights. The state and corporations have morphed feminism into Harris’s desired Prosecutor Nanny State.

Re: Harris: “Her political rise is a fundamental shift, yet it also points out the lamentable things which feminism can and cannot do when it is too completely wedded to state power.”

Kamala Harris sold a brand of statist corporate feminism—and men nationwide were not buying it. Both Harris and Hillary Clinton embodied the archetype of tough women as feminist-mafia enforcers of state power, and both threw their consecutive elections trying to convince America that domination could pass for empowerment.

The Democrats could have run Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer or Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar—either woman far more viable than Hillary or Harris. But the Democratic Party is too enamored with its own reflection to do what voters actually want. The party has become narcissistic, and therefore it runs narcissistic statists—political spaghetti flung at the wall to see which strand might momentarily stick.

The Democratic Party may survive elections, but its soul is bankrupt and corrupted. For the left to matter, power must be built beyond the confines of an indifferent crumbling dying institution.

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Disillusioned Democrats Abandon Party, Progressive Anger Hits Breaking Point

Mark Powell