“As Democrats search for their way out of the political wilderness, a new think tank, introduced on Wednesday, has some ideas about where the party went wrong,” the New York Times reports.

“Among them: too much emphasis on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights, and far too much deference to the powerful liberal organizations championing those causes at the expense, some argue, of appealing to voters in battleground states.”

Said veteran Democratic operative Adam Jentleson: “The folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions.”

The Economist: Who’s afraid of the Democratic Socialists?

“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) progressive members are growing increasingly agitated at him for not yet endorsing Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race,” Axios reports.

“What began as a local issue could have broader implications for Jeffries’ leadership.”

A new Data for Progress poll finds that “more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialist-aligned figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani to establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jefrries and Nancy Pelosi.”

“Democratic voters also view elected officials who describe themselves as democratic socialists about as positively as those who identify as Democrats, and they prefer democratic socialism to capitalism when written definitions of each are read aloud to them.”

Capitol Police responded to a bomb threat at the Democratic National Committee headquarters but determined the threat was not credible, NewsNation reports.

Jill Lawrence: “‘Authenticity’ is an overused word in politics, and ‘diversity’ is under assault, but they are both underappreciated assets in the Democratic party.”

“Four Democrats in the news right now prove the worth of these concepts in the nonconceptual, hardball realm of aiming to win elections. They are as different from each other as the states and cities they call home.”

“Democrats have to give up on the idea that they’re a governing party. They have to give up on the idea that the Republican party is a traditional political party of which you can have some sort of meeting of the minds.”

— Former GOP strategist Stuart Stevens, on the Bulwark Podcast.

Jonathan Chait: “In its period of exile, the Democratic Party has a lot of decisions to make. One of those decisions concerns its relationship with organized labor. Joe Biden and members of his administration—and, indeed, much of the party’s leadership—believed that forming a historically tight partnership with organized labor would help arrest the party’s decline with the working class. They turned out to be wrong. Working-class voters, even the small and shrinking share of them who belong to private-sector unions, continued drifting away, seemingly unimpressed by Union Joe’s long list of policy concessions.”

“Having seen their labor strategy collapse, Democrats are weighing two choices. One school of thought, favored on the progressive left, is that if Biden didn’t win back working-class voters, it’s because he wasn’t pro-union enough. For example, a recent newsletter by Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama-administration official turned podcaster, argues that the path to winning back blue-collar voters requires (among other things) that Democrats ‘become even more pro-union.’ Pfeiffer doesn’t explain why a more ardent alliance with organized labor would succeed for future Democratic candidates when it failed for Biden, or even how exceeding Biden on this score would be possible. The necessity and utility of the maneuver is simply taken as axiomatic.”

“A wiser strategy, one that a handful of Democrats have gingerly broached, would be to revert to the party’s traditional, pre-Biden stance toward labor. This approach would recognize that the political cost of trying to satisfy the labor movement’s every demand is rising, and the number of votes that the movement delivers in return for such fealty is shrinking. The experience of the Biden administration, and of some Democratic-run localities, suggests that automatic deference to unions can undermine what ought to be politicians’ top priority right now: lowering the cost of living. Which means it is making the goal of winning back working-class voters harder, not easier.”

Wall Street Journal: “But the most important message Spanberger sends, in an election that will be closely scrutinized as a bellwether of the second Trump presidency, could be to Democrats. The nomination of a democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, for mayor of New York City has seeded a narrative that the party’s left wing is on the march—a narrative that Republicans have eagerly embraced to paint Democrats as radical.”

“With polls showing her well ahead of her Republican opponent, Spanberger is heavily favored to flip the blue state’s governorship back to the Democratic column after four years of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who cannot run for re-election. Virginia is the only state that limits governors to a single four-year term.”

“As the Democratic Party wrestles with historic unpopularity and a post-2024 identity crisis, moderate Democrats point to Spanberger, a self-styled pragmatist, as a more politically viable face for the party than the likes of Mamdani.”

Dan Pfeiffer: “In terms of education and income, the Democratic Party of 2024 looks a lot like the Republican coalition that supported Mitt Romney in 2012: more college-educated, wealthier, and more suburban. There are advantages to this shift. Because college-educated suburban voters are high-propensity voters, Democrats tend to do very well in special elections and midterms.”

“But it’s a huge challenge in presidential elections. According to the 2024 exit polls, 59% of voters reported making less than $100,000 (Trump won that group by 4), and 57% did not graduate college (Trump won non-college graduates by 13 points).”

“This represents a complete inversion of the long-term coalitions of both parties. Democrats may call ourselves the party of the working class, but fewer and fewer working-class voters seem to agree.”

Wired: “In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet.”

“But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce.”

ABC News: “The Democrats are in a tough stretch. Their fundraising and voter registration lags Republicans. And polls show American voters find the party generally unfavorable.”

“But at this week’s Democratic National Committee summer meeting in Minneapolis, members are desperate to turn a page, shed a rudderless reputation, and more clearly define their platform as they look to deliver wins in upcoming governor’s races and the midterms next year.”

“A polarizing resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel was voted down Tuesday by members of the Democratic National Committee, who opted instead to approve a more modest measure that called for a ceasefire to the conflict in Gaza,” NOTUS reports.