COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Democrats’ approval ratings are at a 35-year low, the tensions between their progressive and moderate wings are on display in the country’s largest city and it takes only a light breeze, or Hunter Biden interview, to restart recriminations about the last four years. Oh, and the party’s deeper structural issue — the flight of working-class voters of all races — remains unaddressed.
Democratic governors, though, have a solution: themselves.
“Governors are extremely popular,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green reminded me, adding that he and his fellow Democratic state executives “have a story to tell, whereas senators and congresspeople tend to have a conflict.”
Now, governors tend to believe that they are the solution, and Washington is the problem, as reliably as they are given to reminding people that they have to balance budgets and state capitals are the laboratories of democracy, time-honored gubernatorial chestnuts all.
But whether the thin mountain air here had gone to their heads or they were genuinely bullish, I found a remarkable confidence among Democratic governors at last weekend’s summer convening of the National Governors Association.
The thinking goes something like this: Past is prologue, and once voters absorb Republican overreach, Democrats will benefit in the short term and then can reclaim the White House by simply finding a strong candidate with a compelling message.