It’s hard to find fault with the Democrats’ idea of holding a so-called “Mini Convention” ahead of the Midterms. After all, we’d likely do the same thing if we lacked for, say, a popular platform on which to run. At a time when the Democrats are “hemorrhaging voters,” as the Times reports, though, it seems as if the party is grasping for gimmicks instead of reversing the leftward policy lurch that is disenchanting voters.

Talk of the junior convention comes amid a larger debate among the Democrats over how to reverse the party’s unpopularity after a disastrous 2024 election. The Democrats lack control of either house of Congress, and lost the White House in a race that saw traditional party constituencies like minority groups shift their allegiance toward the GOP. Instead of tacking back to the center, though, the party shows signs of doubling down on leftist policies.

“The Democratic brand right now has about the appeal with the American voter as the Cracker Barrel rebrand has with the American consumers,” CNN’s poll tracker, Harry Enten, reports. He points to plummeting voter registration numbers. The restaurant chain had provoked complaints when it modernized its rustic-themed logo and minimalized its previously cluttered decor, but quickly reversed course. Will the Democrats follow suit?

Unfortunately for the party of FDR and JFK, the challenges would seem to go deeper than just a coat of paint or a branding redesign. Part of the problem is that dissatisfaction with the party seems to be running rampant among Democrats themselves. That’s the upshot of a report by National Public Radio, which finds that polls show “voters have historically negative views about Democrats in Congress and the overall brand of the party.”

What has alarms ringing, NPR reports, is that “a sizable share of the dissatisfaction comes from people who consider themselves Democrats.” These voters, NPR adds, “favor Democratic policies,” and it is expected that they “ultimately will end up voting for the Democratic candidate.” Yet assumptions like that failed to ring true when just 75 million pulled the lever for Vice President Harris in 2024, versus 81 million for President Biden in 2020.

It wouldn’t require a PhD in political science to understand why support fizzled for the Democrats after Mr. Biden’s failure to control immigration or raging inflation, just to take two of the big issues that paved the way for President Trump’s return. The party’s embrace of the far-left’s cultural agenda, like backing transgender athletes in school sports and defunding the police, along with a posture of hostility toward people of faith, isn’t helping matters. 

Yet many Democrats seem to be in denial about the unpopularity of these policies. A North Carolina state lawmaker, Sydney Batch, traces the party’s woes to the fact that “Republicans are much better at branding and messaging than we are.” Mayor Peter Buttigieg rambles about Democrats being “slow to understand the changes in how people get their information” and attached “to a status quo that has been failing us for a long time.” 

This variety of blather helps explain why voters have turned from the Democrats. So one can be forgiven some skepticism over the party’s suggestion that a mini-convention is being weighed to “showcase our tremendous candidates running up and down the ballot and harness the amazing grassroots energy we’re already seeing,” as a spokesman puts it. Absent a course correction on policy, there won’t be much to celebrate ahead of the 2026 vote.