Stephen A. Smith didn’t mince words this week. Asked by Sean Hannity why Democrats keep embracing open-borders rhetoric and soft-on-crime policies, the ESPN personality said the party is being dragged by its extreme flank—and that leaders need to say “to hell with that.”
“Let me speak. How many times have I been on this show and I’ve said the party needs to be purged,” Smith said, arguing that top Democrats have ceded the microphone to the loudest ideologues. “Chuck Schumer… doesn’t have the cachet that he once had. AOC has too much damn cachet… Jasmine Crockett keeps getting soundbites all over the place,” he added, noting Sen. Bernie Sanders is “at rallies in New York City” boosting socialist NYC mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani—politics Smith said “might win them New York City” and California, but “the vast majority of Americans ain’t going to flow with that.”
Smith’s blunt assessment comes as Democrats struggle to settle on a standard-bearer and a message ahead of 2026. Registration data and polling aren’t kind: a New York Times analysis in August found Democrats shed roughly 2.1 million registered voters across 30 states and D.C. between 2020 and 2024, while Republicans added about 2.4 million. National favorability has slid, too—CNN pegged the party at 29% favorable in March, down 20 points from January 2021, and a July Quinnipiac survey found just 19% approval for Democrats’ congressional leadership.
Against that backdrop, Smith ticked through issues where he said normal voters want clarity and backbone, not activist sloganeering. “Yes, you have some Democrats out there that are centrists… But in the same breath, we ain’t about defunding the police. We know that we [are] going to dial 911 when there’s trouble… We know that the crime needs to be addressed. We know that the economy needs to flourish. We know that we need national security,” he said. “We know that we need strong borders. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be a Democrat if you believe in those things. It means that the party has changed because it’s been taken over by others on the extreme left.”
His advice to Democrats who still want to compete nationally: confront the takeover—out loud. “Others need to stand up and say, ‘To hell with that. Hell no, we’re not going down like that!’ Because they will be going down on a national scale if that’s the vision for America from this side. There’s no way it’s going to work,” Smith said.
The timing of Smith’s warning is notable. President Donald Trump has made aggressive law-and-order moves central to his agenda—backed by broad public support for crackdowns on violent crime and criminal illegal immigration—and has baited Democrats into weeks of reactive press conferences and legal threats. Blue-state leaders like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have promised to resist expanded federal enforcement, suing and staging press events while homicides and high-profile incidents keep the crime narrative on the front page. That dynamic, as Fox’s Brit Hume put it in a separate segment, looks like “a political winner” for Trump because “people want to see [crime] stopped, ended, suppressed.”
Smith, who has criticized both parties at different times, didn’t suggest Democrats abandon liberal goals. He urged them to reconnect with voters’ baseline expectations of safety, prosperity, and border control—and to stop confusing viral applause from the online left with a viable national coalition. “That’s not going to win you a general election,” he said of the hard-left program. “It might win them New York City… [but] the vast majority of Americans ain’t going to flow with that.”
Whether party leaders heed the message is another matter. Potential 2028 aspirants—from Gavin Newsom to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—are already courting the progressive base, while moderates warn that the party’s brand is hemorrhaging persuadables in the suburbs and among working-class voters of every race. For Smith, the choice is stark: confront the wing pulling Democrats left—or watch the middle walk away.