Democrats are undoubtedly favored to retake the House in November’s midterms, and their odds of taking the Senate have jumped in recent weeks.

Political betting site Polymarket gives Democrats an 86% chance to take the House, and now they even have a slight lead in the Senate.

That said, the prospects for Democrats’ short-term success may be overshadowing what could be a defining moment in American politics.

Specifically, Democrats’ intra-party dispute over which wing of the party will control their direction, messaging, ideas and principles: the seemingly moderate establishment or anti-establishment progressives?

WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST ADMITS ‘WOKE’ POLITICS HURT DEMOCRATS

This fight will also determine who will be the party’s standard bearer for the 2028 presidential election.

It is not a new conflict, although with midterms approaching – not to mention the 2028 campaign beginning to take shape – it has taken on renewed importance.

The end of April’s “No Kings” rally, initiated by the far-left wing, was embraced by both wings of the party, underscoring the growing influence of the extreme wing of the party over tactics, strategy, and messaging.

DEMOCRATS ‘DOOMED TO FAIL’ WITHOUT POPULIST ECONOMIC MESSAGE, WARREN WARNS

Moreover, reports emerged stating that progressive Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tina Smith, D-Minn., met to gauge support for removing Sen. Chuck Schumer as Senate minority leader.

Schumer appears to be the latest casualty in this battle, one which has metastasized to pull in all Democrats, as the entire party has moved further to the left.

Unfortunately for those of us who believe that the health of American democracy is tied to having two viable parties, as the far-left forces the party further from the center, national Democrats may be setting themselves up for electoral suicide.

DAVID MARCUS: THE 3 ISSUES DRIVING FAR-LEFT’S SPLIT WITH DEMS

Put another way, in order to be competitive, establishment Democrats must assert themselves with a more moderate agenda, rejecting progressive ideas on hot-button issues like transgender policies, ICE and immigration, and diversity, equity, inclusion.

To be sure, today’s establishment Democrats are a far cry from what would be considered moderate not long ago.

When I worked for former President Bill Clinton, Democrats understood that to win, policies like balancing the budget, securing the border, tightening welfare requirements and being tough on crime were essential.

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In a sign of how far left the Democratic Party has moved, former President Barack Obama – lionized by many liberals today – was initially publicly opposed to gay marriage and race-based identity politics.

Obama’s initial opposition to those policies would put him starkly at odds with where progressives have steered the Democratic Party today.

Even former President Joe Biden ran as a moderate in 2020.

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Then, he governed as a progressive, tarnishing his administration to the point his vice president lost the popular vote, something no Democrat had done in 20 years.

In other words, despite Democrats’ drastic shift left, today’s so-called moderates must act as a bulwark against a slide into national irrelevancy. Failure to do so would be a level of irresponsibility the country can ill-afford.

To that point, despite numerous studies – including from Third Way and Split Ticket – showing that moderate Democrats do better than progressives in competitive races, the Democratic Party continues drifting further from the median voter.

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Consider that in recent weeks, when the Senate took up a proposal to ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports, every Democratic senator who was present voted against.

It seems that these Senators – and the party writ large – learned nothing from the 2024 campaign.

Then-candidate Donald Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them, I am for you” ad was, for lack of a better word, ruining for Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Even when California Gov. Gavin Newsom – nobody’s idea of a moderate yet a Democrat who has reached out to Republicans for his podcast – had the temerity to declare that he disagrees with girls playing against biological males, progressives pilloried him.

The risk of the far-left driving Democrats out of contention for national elections extends beyond transgender issues.

Progressive ideas on the economy, immigration and ICE, Israel and more may work in local elections, but are resounding failures on the national stage and will destroy Democrats’ 2028 chances.

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Ironically, Democratic voters recognize this, even if their elected officials – outside of a handful such as Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman and New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer – do not yet.

Polling from Gallup shows that Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independent voters prefer moderates to progressives generically when thinking about their vote.

Likewise, as journalist Matthew Yglesias noted, Democrats’ “brand has become so toxic” that the party may need to “change their brand” by abandoning extreme – and unpopular – progressive positions.

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To be clear, this is not to suggest progressives cannot compete. In solid blue states and districts like New Jersey’s 11th or Illinois and other states, progressives will certainly win.

Rather, this is to make clear – if the 2024 election did not – that on a national level, Democrats need centrist, broad-based coalitions and a matching agenda to win.

And yet, Democrats appear poised to allow the far-left to dictate the party’s direction, leaving a rapidly shrinking minority of moderates.

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In fact, progressives’ obsession with wealth taxes has even made Newsom seem like a so-called moderate by comparison for opposing the levy due to the serious harm it could do to state economies.

Similarly, calls to defund ICE – like “defund the police” before it – have become so popular a catchphrase for the far-left that moderates who simply want reform to address overreach are increasingly silenced.

In no uncertain terms, if progressives succeed in rebranding the Democratic Party as the party of open borders, the Green New Deal, identity politics and abandoning Israel, Republicans will dominate the presidency for the foreseeable future.

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Only a few brave Democrats, Fetterman and Gottheimer amongst them, who have stood up against cutting off all aid – military and economic – to the Jewish state and recognize that, while flawed, Israel is certainly our most capable and vital ally in the Middle East.

To that end, there is a considerable amount of evidence that progressives are rapidly consolidating their power.

Recent Yahoo polling shows Newsom (19%) with a slight lead over Harris (18%).

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Behind the two front-runners are former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg (13%) and “Squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (12%) – both progressives.

Ocasio-Cortez probably has the broadest appeal of any non-senator or former presidential candidate.

Her fundraising base is unmatched: last year her $15.4 million war chest was the biggest in the House, having pulled in nearly $10 million in just the first quarter.

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Axios reporting also suggests that she could raise “$100 million online without a single in-person fundraiser” while noting she’d be competitive against any Democrat in either a presidential or senate run.

Critically, both the growing power of progressives and the necessity of establishment Democrats to retake the center are due to the same reasons.

For the last decade, Democrats have been able to paper over their differences with a simple – yet nominally effective – strategy of running against Trump.

However, the ability to solely oppose an unpopular president is not enough to sustain a political party, notwithstanding its potential for short-term success in midterms.

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In order to win national elections going forward, Democrats need to build coalitions and not allow progressives to move the party outside the mainstream with unpopular – and arguably unworkable – policies.

Quite simply, Trump won 86% of the counties in this country, and Republicans control 28 state Houses to Democrats’ 18.

Our country is much closer to the center than progressives believe, as shown by the fact that there are entire states where Democrats, stained by the progressive agenda, cannot meaningfully contest statewide elections.

This fight for control of party leadership and its agenda is a defining division in American politics. How it plays out will be decisive this fall and more importantly, into 2028.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DOUG SCHOEN

Exactly 23 years ago, I was a Marine headed to the Persian Gulf aboard the same ships now taking thousands of Marines towards Iran today. Many of us had questions about President Bush’s intentions with Iraq, but asking them was not our job. Congress had voted and we had a clear task in front of us.

Today, as a member of the branch of government charged with declaring war, those questions are my job. And after President Trump’s address on Wednesday, the American people have more questions than answers.

Instead of laying out a clear strategy to end this war or reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump offered vague promises of escalation and even veiled threats of war crimes against the Iranian people. Financial markets took a nosedive in real time during his speech, mirroring the same uncertainty and fear that our service members and their families are feeling right now.

WHY TRUMP FACES AN AGONIZING DECISION ON OBLITERATING IRAN’S OIL SUPPLY IF HE CAN’T GET A DEAL

We’ve heard a lot of stated objectives from the Trump administration that seem to shift by the day, from regime change, to ballistic missile “obliteration,” to seizing their oil. Last night it was stopping Iran from projecting power and building a nuclear bomb. Leaving aside that Iran has been projecting power much more violently and effectively since Trump started this war, and he supposedly “obliterated” their nuclear program just last summer, none of the options involving ground troops will help end it.

If Trump is serious about the 2-3 week escalation he outlined on Wednesday night, these are the options he appears to be considering.

The first option is seizing Kharg Island. It’s Iran’s economic center of gravity, but to correct a common misunderstanding, it is not in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s logic seems to be that if you make this war extremely costly from an economic perspective, Iran will cave.

There are two problems with that logic. One, it makes zero sense that Trump is willing to lift sanctions on Iranian oil in an attempt to lower skyrocketing gas prices in the US, but would also be willing to take Iranian oil off the global market entirely by seizing Kharg Island. Two, a hardline theocratic regime is not particularly vulnerable to economic pressure.

His second plan is a risky special operations mission to secure the uranium from the bombed-out vaults in the mountains. The chances such a complex operation goes completely right are small, and even if it succeeds, we would be incredibly naive to think Iran won’t simply enrich more uranium down the line. It also wouldn’t help open the Strait, and it’s unnecessary: Obama accomplished this with a piece of paper back in 2015.

The third plan is forcibly reopening the Strait of Hormuz by occupying the Iranian coast. Such an amphibious assault would require tens or hundreds of thousands of American troops, result in thousands of American casualties, and wouldn’t have a military endgame besides sitting there forever.

Every option runs into the same problem: The regime would still be intact. We removed one older hardline leader and replaced him with a younger one who is even more radical, which leaves us with only one military path: degrading Iran’s capabilities, then leaving and watching them reconstitute and rearm.

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The Pentagon’s own reported request for a $200 billion supplemental bill tells you what they think each round will cost. That’s an expensive habit, costing the average taxpayer about $1,300, and costing the families of the troops we lose every time unimaginably more. Are you ready to spend $1,300 on Iran every few years?

That is why the only path that can actually end this war is a negotiated agreement. This is the path President Obama set us on with his nuclear deal. It was imperfect, but it removed the threat of a nuclear Iran, backed up by inspections and constant electronic monitoring. Trump lied when he told the American people Iran wasn’t abiding by it; his own first Administration certified Iran was following it. And it’s telling that most of the nuclear proposals he’s now making were already contained in Obama’s deal.

Unfortunately, Trump has now made getting back to the negotiating table harder than before. Both times the Iranians sat down to talk, he attacked them and, incredibly, Iran actually has more leverage today than it did before by closing the Strait.

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Nonetheless, the longer we stay stuck in this mess, the harder it is to get out. The more our goals expand, the harder it will be to claim victory, and the more leverage Iran gains. Just imagine if, a few weeks from now, Iran has captured several American troops and we’re back to the hostage crisis of four decades ago.

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Trump says we need two or three more weeks of war. But he also claims we’ve already achieved our military objectives and have won. Both cannot be true. Either he’s misleading the American people, or he has no clear plan to bring this war to an end.

Iran is not a problem the United States can solve militarily without Americans bearing far higher costs. We are watching that truth play out in real time.

If the self-described President of Peace does not want to be remembered for the worst strategic blunder in a generation, there is still — barely — time to make a deal.

He says he’s good at that.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM REP SETH MOULTON

There was something about President Trump’s prime-time address that didn’t add up.

Several things, actually.

But what struck me immediately was his low-energy delivery. He backed into it, first talking about the Artemis moon mission and then the oil we’re seizing from Venezuela. After that he was just reading words off the prompter.

No one could argue with the president’s core message. Iran is the world’s leading terror state. Something should have been done during its 47-year history of violence and murderous proxies like Hamas. Iran can never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. The dictators killed 45,000 of their own people (though Trump played this down when he was trying to negotiate a deal).

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But the 19-minute speech was a jumble of contradictions. Trump kept saying we’ve won, we’ve decimated Iran’s military, which is true. And yet he said the U.S. will intensify its bombing campaign for the next two to three weeks, targeting Tehran’s energy facilities. 

Why is that necessary, if America has already won? And will it really last less than a month?

It was clear heading into the speech that Trump knows how unpopular the war is. He knows that soaring gas prices are hurting him at home. He knows he is dropping like a rock with young men who bought his no-foreign-wars rhetoric.

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He knows – and this is critical – the stock market has tanked since U.S. and Israeli warplanes attacked Iran on the last day of February. Trump is extremely sensitive to the market, as we saw when the Dow hit 50,000, and that often spurs him into action.

Having boxed himself into a corner with an Iranian regime that refuses to seriously negotiate, the public expectation was that he would declare victory and get out. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Trump declared he’ll be bombing Iran back to the “Stone Ages.”

What about the president’s own goals?

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He said the war’s goal was never regime change. But he spoke about regime change the morning after the initial attack. In any event, Trump now claims it’s been achieved because several levels of leadership, starting with the Ayatollah, have been killed, 

But the new sheriff in town, the Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Ghalibaf, lashed out yesterday.

“When it comes to defending our homeland,” he said in a posting, “each and every one of us will become a soldier of this country. If you look askance at our mother’s house … you’re up against the whole family, all of us. Armed, ready, and standing. Come on in, we’re waiting.”

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So much for regime change.

Again and again, Trump said the war could not end until Iran stopped blockading a fifth of the world’s oil traffic at the Strait of Hormuz. But in Wednesday night’s speech, he washed his hands of the matter. We don’t rely on the strait, so who cares? It will “open up naturally,” on its own.

The president then scolded our onetime European allies, saying they should show some “delayed courage” and “just take” Hormuz–as if it were that easy.

TRUMP’S IRAN STRATEGY SHOWCASES ‘DOCTRINE OF UNPREDICTABILITY’ AMID STRIKE THREATS AND SUDDEN PAUSE

As for Trump’s declaration that our country is now “free of the specter of nuclear blackmail,” Iran still has nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium–and further enrichment could lead to a nuclear weapon.

In a CNN poll released just before the speech, 66 percent of those surveyed said they strongly or somewhat disapprove of the decision to attack Iran, a 7-point jump since the conflict began.

Most network pundits criticized the address as a rehash of things that Trump has said before.

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“There was nothing new in that speech,” said ABC’s Jonathan Karl, adding: “Not a lot of optimism.”

His colleague Martha Raddatz: “It added to the confusion of why we are there.” 

European leaders felt blindsided by the war. “When we’re serious,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, “we don’t say the opposite of what we said the day before every day, and maybe one shouldn’t speak every day,”

Austria and Switzerland yesterday joined Italy, Spain and France in banning U.S. warplanes headed for Iran from their skies. They don’t want any part of this war. Britain’s prime minister had done the same but reversed himself after Iran retaliated.

In the first sign of intensified bombing yesterday, Iranian authorities said an airstrike had destroyed a Tehran research facility called the Pasteur Institute. 

I don’t know if the timing was deliberate, the day after the speech, but the president dramatically changed the subject yesterday.

The media are already moving on to Trump’s decision yesterday to fire Pam Bondi as attorney general, because she hasn’t been aggressive enough in prosecuting his political enemies, and for her mishandling of the Epstein files.

In the end, the speech may matter less than what happens for the rest of April.

If Trump ends the assault on the timeline he’s suggested, voters may breathe a sigh of relief and move on. They’ll remember that Trump went after the Mideast terrorists and be mollified if gas prices start declining.

The problem is that the damage to the world economy may be far more painful, and much longer lasting, than if the president had not launched his war of choice. And no single speech could change that.