The approach of the 2026 midterm elections has intensified competition among several intraparty factions within the Democratic Party. A number of groups from traditional Democratic elites, who have held leadership positions in the party for decades and consolidated around the political entourage of Bill Clinton, announced the end of their political careers throughout 2025 and early 2026.
Thus, in November 2025, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and longtime Democratic leader in the lower chamber of Congress Nancy Pelosi stated that her current term as congresswoman, which ends in January 2027, would be her last.
A number of other influential Democratic congressmen announced that they would not run for the next sessions of Congress.
The resignation of some longtime party leaders became the first stage of cadre renewal among Democratic elites following the defeat in the 2024 elections.
At the same time, the cadre reboot of the Democratic Party is occurring at a moment when a new group of party leaders has not yet fully formed, and informal discussions about the future party course are ongoing among intraparty factions and their donor networks.
The results of the November 2025 elections in the U.S. clearly outlined the formation of several influence groups in the Democratic environment.
Their representatives will compete during the next presidential campaign for control over the process of nominating candidates for President and Vice President, as well as for key roles in a potential Democratic administration after the 2028 elections.
The election of Barack Obama-supported candidates Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger as governors of New Jersey and Virginia, along with the election of progressive Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York and the confirmation of Gavin Newsom’s mandate for leadership in California through voter support for his proposed state constitution amendment, defined those centers of power.
These centers of power will fight for leadership during the party’s cadre restructuring.
On one hand, centrist Democratic leaders receive political protection from Obama and funding from a branched network of donors, the core of which consists of venture investors, managers, and owners of hedge funds interested in preserving the party’s moderate and predictable economic course.
In addition to Obama’s active participation in Spanberger’s public campaign, her success was driven by material support from the co-founder and managing partner of the venture firm 7Wire Ventures Glen Tullman and the chief investment officer of the hedge fund Bluestem Asset Management Michael Bills.
Although the winner of the New Jersey gubernatorial election Mikie Sherrill did not receive funding from major donors directly, political patronage from Barack Obama helped her raise $43 million for her campaign from funds affiliated with the Democratic Party.
The raised amount exceeded by $12 million the funds collected by her Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli, and Sherrill’s campaign became one of the largest in terms of expenditures in the state.
On the other hand, the progressive faction, whose key victory was the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, received resource and organizational support from funds and structures associated with the Soros family.
Financial support for Mamdani’s campaign from George and Alex Soros was primarily indirect and carried out through a number of progressive organizations that facilitated the nomination and victory of New York’s new mayor.
The Working Families Party received $23.7 million from the Open Society Foundations network between 2015 and 2025, while other nonprofit organizations, including Make The Road Action, Community Voices Heard, Move On, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action, received over $13.9 million in total.
The third group with ambitions to gain political leadership in the Democratic Party in the next political cycle is the governors of the largest states where legislatures and a significant number of local authorities are controlled by Democrats.
Democratic control over key power structures in Illinois and California enables their governors, J.B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom, to fully implement their political agenda and present it as the future path of development for the entire country after their nomination for the presidential position.
Since Trump’s victory in the 2024 elections, Newsom, Pritzker, and governors of other Democrat-controlled states have been increasing the level of political autonomy of their regions from the federal center.
Already in the first month after Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential campaign, Jay Pritzker, together with Colorado Governor Jared Polis, announced the creation of a political group called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, whose goal was defined as coordinating the efforts of Democratic states to counter the policies of the Republican administration.
Gavin Newsom indirectly joined the creation of this governors’ alliance, as his former chief legal advisor Julia Spiegel became the head of staff for Governors Safeguarding Democracy.
Although the created group did not gain widespread support from other Democratic governors, during Trump’s first year in office, leaders of Democratic states tested alternative forms of situational interaction.
On January 12, 2026, officials from the states of Illinois and Minnesota simultaneously filed federal lawsuits against the Republican administration, claiming that the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) units in Minneapolis and Chicago violates the U.S. Constitution and state sovereignty.
In early January 2026, Gavin Newsom addressed the California State Assembly for the first time since 2020, and during his speech, he positioned his policy in the state as a counterweight to the White House agenda.
Newsom’s address aimed to summarize the governor’s activities for 2025 and demonstrate that the leader of California has taken on the role of informal leader of the Democratic Party and is aspiring to its presidential nomination in 2028.
On one hand, Gavin Newsom currently has the highest approval among Democratic voters—according to averaged polling data from the aggregator RealClearPolitics, 23.6% of party supporters approve of his nomination for the next presidential elections.
On the other hand, throughout 2025, Newsom solidified his ambitions with specific political steps. In response to the Republican-initiated change in electoral district boundaries in Texas, Newsom began promoting mirror measures in California.
A few weeks after the corresponding vote in the Texas House of Representatives, Newsom signed bills on redistricting in his state and put the decision to a vote by voters, 64.42% of whom supported the California governor’s proposal.
At the same time, throughout 2025, Newsom’s team filed 50 lawsuits against the presidential administration. These lawsuits challenged the White House’s deployment of National Guard units in Los Angeles, demanded a review of the decision to cut federal funding for Democratic states, and contested Washington’s policies on migration, healthcare, gun regulation, and environmental protection.
Newsom’s active activities and level of electoral support prompted political groups consolidated around Barack Obama to intensify their own communication with Democratic voters and activate the presentation of their political agenda related to moderate initiatives.
In particular, at the end of 2025, former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff during Obama’s tenure Rahm Emanuel announced his plans to consider running for president.
Emanuel, who served in government during the presidencies of Clinton, Obama, and Biden, positions himself as a representative of the reformist direction in intraparty competition, opposing the more confrontational political line represented by Gavin Newsom.
During a meeting with voters in Mississippi, which Emanuel held in January 2026, the former Obama administration official stated that he expects a change in voter priorities during the 2028 primaries.
According to his calculation, Democratic voters’ attention during the next presidential campaign will be less focused on opposing Trump’s initiatives and policies.
The electorate’s demand will instead lie in the Democratic Party forming an independent agenda and developing long-term political solutions that will remain relevant after the political course laid by Trump no longer aligns with voter sentiments.
Emanuel’s statement indicated that political groups supported by Barack Obama do not share the strategy chosen by Gavin Newsom, which focuses primarily on criticizing Trump’s initiatives and targeted countermeasures that Democratic state governors take in response to White House actions.
From the perspective of Democratic politicians who orient themselves toward President Obama in intraparty competition, the current actions of governors are tools for containment and reducing political pressure from the federal government, but they are not capable of transforming into a self-sufficient strategy for forming the party agenda.
To gain support from a broader circle of citizens, including moderate voters, Obama’s team proposes a shift in priorities in communication with voters. On one hand, their political rhetoric will not focus solely on criticizing the White House and constantly denying initiatives proposed by the Republican team.
On the other hand, to win the 2026 and 2028 elections, Democrats will face the need to minimize attention to DEI initiatives and gender identity, and instead focus on issues of educational reforms, healthcare system policy, and citizens’ standard of living.
Rahm Emanuel has high recognition and support in Chicago—thus, in the 2011 and 2015 Chicago mayoral elections, Emanuel won twice, garnering support from about 55% of voters.
At the same time, in national politics, the former Obama administration official does not have a broad base of support, and thus Emanuel’s current participation in public discourse is a tool for determining Democratic voters’ demand for a moderate agenda.
Intraparty Democratic groups oriented toward protection from President Obama, through such communication, assess the extent to which Democratic Party voters are ready to accept a candidate who appeals to reformatting the party on the basis of a moderate agenda.
The adjustment of political priorities among groups consolidated around Barack Obama is driven by the growing distrust of an increasing number of moderate voters toward the White House’s economic policy.
Aggregated public opinion polling indicators show that during the first half of January 2026, Donald Trump’s approval rating reached its lowest levels and stood at 42.2% as of January 16, 2026.
At the same time, approval ratings for the President’s economic initiatives remain the worst. According to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC conducted January 8-11, 2026, 62% of voters negatively assess the economic situation in the country, while a January CNN poll found that only about 40% of them expect an improvement in the country’s economic state over the year.
55% of respondents place responsibility for standard-of-living problems precisely on the Trump administration’s policies.
Economic problems in the country transform into dissatisfaction with the government to the greatest extent among moderate voters. A study by NBC News conducted in November-December 2025 found that for 53% of voters who do not belong to any party, issues of economy and healthcare are key, while among all respondents, this figure was only 44%.
Thus, critical attitudes toward the economic situation in the country affect the reduction of the Republican leader’s rating more strongly than public dissatisfaction with migration, security, and foreign policy.
At the same time, the decline in support for the President is also occurring among moderate supporters of the Republican Party—at the end of 2025, only 35% of them unequivocally approved of Donald Trump’s activities, while in April 2025, this figure was 38%.
Simultaneously with the decrease in trust in President Trump and the Republican Party, whose support level in January 2026 polls trails Democrats by an average of 4.2%, independent voters remain critically attuned to progressive groups in the Democratic Party.
Among all voters who do not belong to any party, only 15% identified with liberal and progressive ideology. 60% of independent voters consider themselves moderate, and thus they are not ready to support the “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” program, on which the Democratic Party focused during the previous political cycle.
Against this backdrop, the progressive wing of the party is trying to compensate for the trust deficit through situational mobilization around resonant cases, positioning it as a morally legitimate response to federal authorities’ actions.
A telling example was the events in Minneapolis and other landmark episodes, which progressive networks integrated into their own agenda as proof of the need for tougher resistance to the administration.
However, it is precisely the low public trust in progressive groups that blocks the conversion of such campaigns into an expansion of support for the Democratic Party as a whole.
In the end, progressives, by appropriating individual cases as a basis for political attack and intraparty positioning, fix their own autonomous subjectivity but do not create a nationwide resource for electoral growth for the party among moderate and independent voters.
Taking into account such sentiments among some Democrats and the majority of independent voters, with whom 40% of American citizens identify, politicians oriented toward Barack Obama hope to combine the need for renewal of the Democratic Party with moderate, state-centric positions within the party environment.
From the perspective of the former president and the party groups consolidated around him, it is precisely this model that will allow accumulating support from young Democratic voters, for whom cadre renewal of the party is a relevant issue.
At the same time, it will attract older and independent voter groups through an emphasis on stability, predictability, and a pragmatic agenda during the 2026 and 2028 campaigns.
Before the intensification of pre-election competition between Republicans and Democrats, which will strengthen during the summer of 2026, politicians consolidated around Obama hope to formulate successful and effective proposals.
These proposals aim to overcome economic and inflationary challenges that are relevant simultaneously for a significant number of Democratic voters and most independent voters.
Moderate influence groups in the Democratic Party hope that it is precisely the ability to present convincing economic solutions that will consolidate the successes Democrats achieved in the November 2025 elections.
This ability will also provide an opportunity to complete the cadre and ideological renewal of the party in a way acceptable to a broader circle of voters, thereby safeguarding Democrats from losing electoral support during the midterm and presidential elections.
