Opinion

A new report by a group of moderate Democrats called Welcome has quantified how far left the Democratic Party has shifted over the past decade — and how that move, especially on gun control, has hurt the party with working-class and moderate voters. The report, titled Deciding to Win, was authored by Simon Bazelon with contributions from Lauren Harper Pope and Liam Kerr.

A Party Moving Left

For anyone who has followed AmmoLand News, it is well known that the Democrats hate our constitutional freedom to Keep & Bear Arms, so it is interesting to see the Democrats’ own data showing what we all well know. The question is, will they ignore their own advice and keep pushing until the party is completely dead?

According to data presented in the report, the share of congressional Democrats cosponsoring an Assault Weapons Ban has more than doubled — from 41% in 2013-2014 to 88% in 2023-2024. The study lists similar jumps across other progressive priorities, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, noting that “Democrats have moved to the left since 2012 on essentially every issue.”

Welcome’s analysis shows that taking away your freedoms through gun control is now among the top issues emphasized in the Democratic Party platform — seeing one of the largest increases in frequency of mentions between 2012 and 2024, behind only race-related language and climate change.

Disconnect with Voters

The authors argue that this leftward movement is largely driven by highly educated [debatable], affluent Democratic elites, staffers, and donors [can you say Bloomberg/Soros], NOT by the party’s working-class base. These groups tend to prioritize climate change, gun restrictions, and identity issues far more than middle- and working-class voters do.

“Highly educated Democrats assign significantly greater importance to issues like climate change, guns, and political division — and significantly less importance to issues like border security, gas prices, and crime,” the report notes.

That imbalance, the authors claim, has made Democrats appear “out of touch” to average Americans and contributed to major losses among moderate, conservative, and working-class voters — including Hispanic and Black communities that were once reliable Democratic constituencies.

Electoral Consequences

The study connects this ideological shift directly to declining election performance. It highlights that House Democrats who opposed the Assault Weapons Ban overperformed expectations by 1.8 percentage points, while those who supported it performed worse than expected, making it the third most damaging issue for Democrats in 2024. Glad to hear they are feeling the pain for their actions.

“More moderate Democrats tend to outperform electoral expectations, while progressive Democrats tend to underperform,” the report concludes.

Warning from Within

The Deciding to Win report urges Democrats to return to an economic focus that resonates with voters — tackling inflation, job growth, and cost-of-living issues — and to moderate positions on immigration, crime, and gun control.

The authors warn that Democrats cannot “expect to govern as progressives and then flip to being moderate during an election” — a reference to Kamala Harris’s failed 2024 campaign, which the report says was “too little, too late” in convincing voters she had moved to the center. Like claiming she was a GLOCK owner.

The Bottom Line

Welcome’s findings suggest that Democrats’ deepening commitment to restrictive gun control policies — including their overwhelming support for another Assault Weapons Ban — has become politically costly.

“More voters now think the Democratic Party is too liberal than think the Republican Party is too conservative,” the report states bluntly.

For a party that once claimed to represent working-class America, Deciding to Win delivers an uncomfortable message: the louder Democrats talk about banning guns, the quieter their traditional base has become at the polls. That is sweet music to my ears.

About Tred Law

Tred Law is your everyday patriot with a deep love for this country and a no-compromise approach to the Second Amendment. He does not write articles for Ammoland every week, but when he does write, it is usually about liberals Fing with his right to keep and bear arms.

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Kamala Harris’s Claim She Own a GLOCK Raises Suspicion Amid Her Gun Control History ~ VIDEO