The Scolding
Cory Booker went to Michigan to yell at the people who sat out 2024. The voters he was yelling at have been telling pollsters what would actually bring them back.
Cory Booker gave a speech at the Michigan Democratic Women’s Caucus luncheon over the weekend, and in the days since, a clip of it has pulled in nearly 10,000 likes and more than five million views on an X account called “best of kamala harris.” A lot of people are watching. A lot of them seem to think Booker is finally telling it like it is.
Booker ran through some church and football metaphors, invoked the “enemy within,” and brought up the 2016 election, saying that after Hillary Clinton won the primary, some Democrats refused to back her because they didn’t agree with everything she said. Then he turned to Harris:
“I saw it with Kamala Harris. Too many people that say I don’t agree with her on everything. I mean, 90 out of 100 I agree with her. But those 10 I can’t do it. Well, you may disagree with her on 10% of her views but you let someone get in office who you disagree with on everything. You let somebody get in office who was locking up our children. You let somebody in office who’s taking away our health care. You let somebody in office who’s taking away workers’ rights. You let somebody in office who got rid of the Department of Education.”
This is a scolding. Strip away the football and church metaphors from earlier in the speech, and what’s left is a United States senator telling a room full of Democrats that the voters who didn’t show up in 2024 are the reason Trump is president. They got hung up on 10% ideological purity. They let it happen. Be mad at them.
It’s a righteous-sounding scolding. And I’m sure it lands for Harris voters who turned out, watched others stay home, and have been stewing ever since.
I get the stewing. I voted for Harris. I wrote pieces making the case for voting against Trump. I went on CNN right before the election to talk about trans rights specifically, even though Harris’s stance on that issue was weak enough that I was making the argument despite her, not because of her. I’m not the person Booker is lecturing in Michigan. I’m one of the people sharing his exasperation.
But the exasperation doesn’t make the scolding a good strategy. And shaming voters who already opted out of a political process they found disappointing is a strategy with a track record. The track record is that it doesn’t work.
Data about who actually sat out in 2024, and why, exists. Celinda Lake, who ran Joe Biden’s polling in 2020 and has worked as a lead DNC pollster since, published a version of it in USA Today last September. The voters Booker was scolding from the Michigan stage have told surveyors, repeatedly, exactly what would have brought them to the polls. Almost none of it looks like what he’s selling.
When Democrats lose and demand unity, the demand tends to run one direction. Voters are told to get behind the party. The party is almost never told to get behind the voters. Booker’s Michigan speech is the most viral recent version of that demand, delivered in the register of a parent disappointed in a child. It’s also, if you look at the research on bringing Biden-to-dropoff voters back into the party, about the worst possible speech he could have given.
The data Booker ignored
In July 2025, the Democratic donor group Way to Win released a slide deck summarizing a new poll by Lake Research Partners. The poll surveyed 822 “Biden skippers”: registered voters who turned out for Biden in 2020 and did not vote in 2024.
Nothing in the poll matches Booker’s description of these voters.
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If the skippers had voted, 56% of them would have gone for Harris. 25% would have gone for Trump.
These voters still like Democrats. 67% hold a favorable view of the party. 62% would vote for a Democratic member of Congress. Just 19% would vote Republican.
They pay attention. 75% follow politics closely. 49% check the news multiple times a day.
The two political figures they admire most, by wide margins, are Bernie Sanders (78% approval) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (67%).
They also have a coherent theory of what’s wrong with the country. 72% told the pollsters the top problem facing America is that the richest 1% have taken $50 trillion in wealth from the bottom 90% over the past several decades. Only 20% picked government spending, immigration, or “wokeness.” That’s a 52-point gap.
Now the reasons they stayed home. 26% said they didn’t like either candidate. 19% said their vote wouldn’t make a difference. 14% cited Harris entering the race late without a primary. 14% said nothing positive got done during the Biden term. 11% said Harris was no different from Biden.
Asked to pick from Harris-specific issue positions, the top reasons had to do with the economy and her leadership. 16% said she didn’t have a plan strong enough to bring the cost of living down. 15% said her economic message was too focused on the middle class and ignored poverty and inequality. 15% cited her leadership qualities. After that: 13% said she did too much to court Republicans like Liz Cheney. 12% said she didn’t do enough to support Palestinian rights in Gaza. 12% said she moved too far right on border enforcement.
Celinda Lake summed up the findings herself, in a USA Today op-ed co-written last September with Way to Win’s Jenifer Fernandez Ancona: “The data shows what motivates these voters isn’t culture war noise on transgender issues and ‘wokeness.’ It’s economic promise and freedom and having a chance at success.”
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