NBC News: “More Democrats are openly criticizing Obama strategists and consultants, who were long treated as the high priests of their party’s politics. Democratic National Committee officials at a news event last month blamed Obama’s lack of investment in state parties over his two terms for setting back local organizing, with the party still feeling the effects. The so-called Obama coalition of voters — less politically engaged voters, younger voters and voters of color — is no more. In 2024, each of those groups shifted toward Trump in high numbers.”

“Going forward, it could mark a clean slate for a party whose course for nearly two decades cascaded from decisions Obama had made. It was Obama who chose Biden as his vice president, offering him the elevated perch that set up his 2020 election and his aborted 2024 re-election. Obama selected Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, then anointed her for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 race against Trump. The operatives Obama and his top aides empowered have carved out leading, decision-making roles at the top of the Democratic Party since then.”

Washington Post: “As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain.”

“They contend that liberal candidates too often use language from elite, highly educated circles that suggests the speakers consider themselves smart and virtuous, while casting implied judgment on those who speak more plainly — hardly a formula for winning people over, they say.”

“The latest debate is, in part, also a proxy for the bigger battle over what the Democrats’ identity should be in the aftermath of November’s devastating losses — especially as the party searches for ways to reverse its overwhelming rejection by rural and White working-class voters.”

New York Times: “Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places.”

“The prospectus for one new $20 million effort aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online. It is code-named SAM — short for ‘Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan’ — and promises investment to ‘study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.’ It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.”

New York Times: “Six months after President Trump swept the battleground states, the Democratic Party is still sifting through the wreckage. Its standing has plunged to startling new lows — 27 percent approval in a recent NBC News poll, the weakest in surveys dating to 1990 — after a defeat that felt like both a political and cultural rejection.”

“Communities that Democrats had come to count on for a generation or more — young people, Black voters, Latinos — all veered toward the right in 2024, some of them sharply. And unlike Mr. Trump’s win in 2016, his victory last year could not be waved away as an outlier after he won the popular vote for the first time.”

“The stark reality is that the downward trend for Democrats stretches back further than a single election. Republicans have been gaining ground in voter registration for years.”

“The Democratic National Committee took another step Thursday toward removing a pair of vice chairs — including David Hogg, who ignited controversy in the party with his pledge to challenge ‘asleep at the wheel’ Democrats,” Politico reports.

“DNC members will now vote via electronic ballot from June 9 to June 11 on whether to hold a redo of the election for the two vice chair positions, after a DNC panel granted a procedural complaint about the original contest that was unrelated to the broader firestorm surrounding Hogg.”

“Six months after the Democratic Party’s crushing 2024 defeat, the party’s megadonors are being inundated with overtures to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop an army of left-leaning online influencers,” the New York Times reports.

“At donor retreats and in pitch documents seen by The New York Times, liberal strategists are pushing the party’s rich backers to reopen their wallets for a cavalcade of projects to help Democrats, as the cliché now goes, ‘find the next Joe Rogan.’ The proposals, the scope of which has not been previously reported, are meant to energize glum donors and persuade them that they can compete culturally with President Trump — if only they can throw enough money at the problem.”

“Democrats widely believe they must grow more creative in stoking online enthusiasm for their candidates, particularly in less outwardly political forms of media like sports or lifestyle podcasts.”

Kamala Harris continues her political reemergence, headlining a DNC fundraiser next month.

Time: “Democrats know they have a branding problem that transcends policy, messaging, or leadership questions. They largely agree they need to re­center economic issues in their messaging and develop what some are calling a ‘patriotic populism’ to counter Trump. They need to build a bigger tent. Many moderate Democrats want to sideline the ­activist groups that pressured elected officials to take unpopular positions. Even many progressives are retreating from the purity politics that reigned in the Trump era. They know they need fresh ideas and new leaders, even though they can’t always agree on how to find them…” 

“Democrats are coming around to a new mantra: winning the argument is less important than winning elections. If the path to victory means embracing economic populism, they’ll do it. If they have to make room for new faces, then sayonara, old friends. If they need to tack to the center on some social issues, so be it. If winning requires doing more podcasts, or embracing Instagram influencers, or campaigning on permitting reform, they’ll give it a try. Because now that Democrats have seen what a second Trump presidency looks like, they’re relearning the lesson they should have known all along: only winning is winning.”

Gerald Seib: “They’ve lost the House, the Senate and the White House. They have full control of only 18 state legislatures across the country. In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, just 37% have a favorable view of the party.”

“Here’s an idea: Perhaps Democrats should do what Republicans and conservatives did, to great success, over the last quarter-century: start building back not in the hothouse of Washington, where they have limited power and little room for maneuver, but out in the states and at the local level.”

“Slow, steady, un-flashy work out in the states is what really laid the groundwork for the dominant position Republicans now enjoy. The states, not Washington, became the springboard for political success, the testing ground for policy and the sounding board for messaging.”

“The base of the party, they just want us to do anything. They feel alone, they feel isolated, they feel unheard, and they feel like they’re not being fought for.”

— DNC vice chair David Hogg, in an interview with The Guardian.

A new AP-NORC poll found that only about one-third of Democrats are “very optimistic” or even “somewhat optimistic” about their party’s future.

That’s down sharply from July 2024, when about 6 in 10 Democrats said they had a positive outlook.

The poll finds that about half of Republicans, 55%, are very or somewhat optimistic about their party’s future, up from 47% last summer.

Time: “For months, Democrats have been searching for a clear, galvanizing issue following their defeat in the 2024 election. More so than Trump’s deportations or sweeping government cuts, many now believe this could be it…”

“Democrats are betting that voters, fatigued by Trump’s provocations but unsure what line he cannot cross, will see the jet deal as a glaring example of personal enrichment and compromised national interests. Last month, the Trump Organization finalized a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar featuring Trump-branded villas and a course constructed by a Saudi firm—the first such foreign venture since Trump returned to office.”

Bloomberg: Trump’s freebie jet is the stuff of nightmares in spy world.

Wall Street Journal: Republicans raise concerns over Trump’s plane gift as he heads to Qatar.

Aaron Blake: Before Qatar plane controversy, Trump derided foreign gifts — and Qatar.

“The credentials committee of the Democratic National Committee voted on Monday to void the results of the internal party vote that made David Hogg a party vice chair, ruling that the election had not followed proper parliamentary procedures,” the New York Times reports.

“The decision — which came after roughly three hours of internal debate and one tie vote — will put the issue before the full body of the Democratic National Committee. It must decide whether to force Mr. Hogg and a second vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta, to run again in another election later this year.”

“Democratic National Convention Chair Ken Martin on Saturday doubled down on his ultimatum for rogue Vice Chair David Hogg: Take a neutrality pledge or step down,” Politico reports.

Said Martin: “Party officers have one job: to be fair stewards of a process that invites every Democrat to the table — regardless of personal views or allegiances.”