'LOOSE PARTY TIMES': HOW LONG UNTIL DEMOCRATS SPLIT?
'OUT OF THIS CHAOS, NEW PARTIES WILL TAKE FORM AND SHAPE’
Loco Foco flyer. Photo credit: screenshot.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Dec. 17., 2025
Are the Loco Focos and the Barnburners set for a comeback?
The Democratic party is dead as a national force. It has lost complete control of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. It is now rudderless and lost at sea. Its “brand” is discredited. Losing to Donald Trump, the first time, in 2016, was bad, but losing a second time in 2024 is indefensible. Democrats only have themselves to blame: voters are always right.
Not only is the party totally shut out of the halls of power in Washington, its chances of a comeback are slim to none.
It's tough to see how Democrats will ever win another presidential election as long as the party prioritizes pronouns over pocketbooks, sex changes for kids not healthcare for all, migrants over Americans, and bankrolling bombs to accused war criminals in Israel instead of a just peace in the Middle East.
Democrats need to look inward and face these hard truths that readily explain how the party lost core components of its long-successful election coalition—its working class and anti-war factions. Instead, the party is doubling-down on failed strategies, gaslighting voters, accusing Latinos who refused to vote for its pre-selected candidate of suffering from a "slave mentality" and trumpeting down ballot victories in small-time state elections.
The great wide gaping canyon between the Democratic party and millions of Americans was made plain for all to see by the party's response to Luigi Mangione's alleged assassination of a health insurance corporation CEO on Dec. 4.
For a moment, Americans of all political persuasions united in hatred of predatory corporations while the Democratic party’s corporate puppets hid under their desks and tapped out frightened Tweets condemning "political violence"—ignoring the historical fact Anarchists helped create the space needed for the New Deal to happen in the first place.
How long until the Democratic party is abandoned?
Republicans are fundamentally reshaping their party too, but only Democrats appear set to fracture into factions that could spell the party's end—and herald the birth of a new one.
Political parties are not in the Constitution. In his Farewell Address, Founder and outgoing first president George Washington warned against them in no uncertain terms.
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension," Washington observed, "is in itself a frightful despotism."
Political parties "distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration," they agitate "the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms," they kindle "animosity of one part against another" and they even foment "riot and insurrection."
Washington's last foresight was confirmed by the attack by Republicans on the U.S. Capital on Jan. 6, 2021.
Loco Foch matches. Photo credit: screenshot via National Park Service.
In spite of Washington's dire warning, America has been dominated by not just political parties but a strict two-party choke-hold almost since Washington spoke it in 1796. By 1855, Federalists, Democratic Republicans, National Republicans and Whig parties were reduced by the proverbial American melting pot into the Democratic and Republican parties that still dominate today, 169 years later.
But the last decade has seen a polarity shift between the two parties.
Republicans, traditionally associated with white wealth, replaced Democrats as to go-to party of the working poor. Democrats became the party of rich coastal elites, while Blacks, Latinos and even former supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders are the new Republicans.
Republicans were once considered war mongers for an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy, but Pres. Trump ended the American occupation of Afghanistan in his first term. Democrats once supported peace initiatives around the world; Pres. Joe Biden cranked up the military industrial complex to feed a war on one continent and an alleged genocide on another.
Social media appears to be fueling these tectonic shifts.
In the past, new communication technologies have facilitated sweeping changes in the established political order. For example, Federalists turned into National Republicans and Democratic-Republicans became Democrats in the 1820s when the U.S. Postal Service started delivering mail.
It's no coincidence, then, that president-elect Trump is floating the idea of eliminating the postal service. Whether or not it happens, the fact its being considered confirms “we are indeed upon loose party times‟—as the Eastern State Journal editorialized when the Whig party waned.
Then, like now, as the newspaper said in 1854, “out of this chaos, [new] parties will take form and shape."