FEBRUARY 2026 – Mark Leibovich has made a perfectly good living as a smart-ass DC journalist – a bit of Maureen Dowd and, say, Joe Queenan, all mixed in with some real on-the-ground reporting. His recent piece in The Atlantic – which sizes up of the current Democratic Party heading into the midterms – properly criticizes the Dems for their special-needs preoccupations and their lack of strategy when it comes to elections. He interviews loads of candidates and officeholders, and it’s a revealing take, more evidence, in our view, that the US needs a fresh political movement apart from the Democrats’ elitist, micro-social-issue instincts.
Democrats have remained stuck in their funk for an unusually long stretch. For much of 2025, their doldrums felt much worse than the typical rough patch that parties endure after bad election defeats. They were staggered, self-pitying, and seemingly traumatized by the denouement of the Joe Biden years. They have wallowed and feuded.
Leibovich’s piece has touched a nerve, at least with the people closest to him: It’s been quickly buried by the editors who run the TheAtlantic.com, and it shows up nowhere among the site’s most popular articles.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/democratic-party-elections-future/685759/