Democrats have so insulated themselves in their liberal media echo chamber that they have lost the ability to debate beyond their rehearsed attacks and social media talking points.
With the 2026 midterm elections just a month away, candidates in several important races took to the debate stage over the past week, with Democrats struggling to adapt to the long-form debate format.
The most striking example came in Michigan’s Senate race, where progressive darling Abdul el Sayed walked into a wall against Republican candidate Mike Rogers.
El Sayed chose to hit Rogers during the debate for owning a home in Florida, a fairly common political attack in a vacuum. The problem, though, as Rogers was quick to point out, was that el Sayed owns a home in the United Arab Emirates.
As Rogers said, “At least Florida is in the United States.”
Is el Sayed simply so arrogant about his chances that he thinks this won’t matter, or did he and his team not anticipate that bringing up a home Rogers owned in Florida would backfire in such a way? El Sayed’s entire campaign has been focused on pandering to his terrorist-supporting base, so it would not be a surprise if he did not consider the obvious counterattack Rogers would use here.
In another competitive Senate race, Democrat Troy Jackson took on Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Jackson attempted in Monday’s debate to attack Collins over abortion as a way to win over Maine’s left-wing electorate, citing her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Like el Sayed, Jackson chose an attack line that left him vulnerable as well. As Collins pointed out in her response, Jackson was previously opposed to abortion, to the point that his position in 2010 was that “abortion should never be legal.”
The best (or worst) debate moment of the week came from New York’s attorney general debate. Letitia James, the incumbent Democrat who was just put in charge of a sham investigation into the Cornell rape case, thought she had a witty comeback to her Republican opponent that sounds absurd when you remember she’s the state’s attorney general: “You don’t have to look at the facts and the law.”
ARE THE POLLS OVERESTIMATING SENATE DEMOCRATS AGAIN?
This is not a series of coincidences, either. The last two Democratic presidential candidates were an old man who could barely complete his sentences in a televised debate and a former prosecutor who turned into a rambling mess when she was off a teleprompter. They have lost track of how normal people think and view issues, from state issues to major culture war issues, such as transgenderism or immigration.
As the years have gone by, the Democratic Party’s candidates have become worse debaters as a result because they are so focused on viral moments or rehearsed talking points that they have become increasingly incapable of talking about the issues at hand.