Dem
47
GOP
53
The Democrats are at a crossroads now. They don't have a clear leader or a clear direction, and different groups are trying to pull them in opposite directions. One advantage of losing all seven swing states, the popular vote for president, their former base, and control of the Senate (and probably the House) is that they can't pin their loss on the peculiarities of the Electoral College (as they did in 2016). If they want to ever take over again, they are going to have to do some serious thinking.
To start with, it is not unheard of for a party that takes a shellacking to come back next time. Here are the electoral college maps for 1964 and 1968:
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater and Republicans despaired of ever winning a presidential election again. But in 1968, they reached into the dustbin of history, pulled out Richard Nixon, dusted him off, and won against Johnson's veep, Hubert Humphrey.
More recently, in 1988, George H.W. Bush ran for "Ronald Reagan's third term" and won easily. Then his reelection in 1992 against a womanizing small-state governor nobody had ever heard of until the primaries should have been a slam dunk. It wasn't. Bill Clinton won that one. Here are the maps.
Jonathan Martin, Politico's long-time politics bureau chief, makes the case that the Democrats, who used to be the party of the working man, have been taken over by college-educated voters whose concerns are future-oriented, including climate change, D.E.I., abortion, and voting rights. In contrast, Republican voters now are largely working-class people who are having to decide whether to pay the rent or buy medicine their kids need. Martin makes the case that the majority of voters are still white working-class people and they have come to believe that the Democrats have moved so far left that the blue team doesn't care about their pocketbook issues. In reality, they sort of do, but their care is drowned out by the (mostly Republican-generated) noise about transgender surgeries and pronoun usage.
In contrast, the Republicans don't care at all about working-class people, but at least none of them spew views that many traditional people find absolutely abhorrent. Former senator Henry Clay once famously said: "I'd rather be right than be president." He was right, but he was never president (despite trying four times). Many Democrats know in their hearts that they are right. Unfortunately, becoming president often requires supporting views they know are "wrong" (or at least hiding the views that are "right") because that's what the voters want.
Martin writes: "So the more Trump targeted vulnerable constituencies, the more Democrats sounded like campus faculty members attempting to placate radicalized students for whom identity is central." Put in somewhat different terms, many Democrats are convinced that the road to success is winning various identity groups: Black voters, Latinos, women, etc. That may not be true anymore. Republicans don't play that game. Their pitch is: "We will help YOU personally," as in "We will protect YOU from criminals and we will give YOU a tax cut." Democrats focus on identity groups; Republicans focus on individuals. The identity group thingie is not working so well anymore because many group members don't identify primarily with "their" group anymore (e.g., young Black men voting for Trump).
Martin's suggestion to the Democrats is to drop all the left-wing stuff, pronouns and all. Some Democrats back him up. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel agrees with this view. He said: "Identity politics did not work electorally and it failed miserably strategically." Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a Latino himself, has denounced the use of "Latinx" as not English and not Spanish. Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) said: "We've got to talk about pocketbook issues and get over the identity politics—that's in the past, I think—and get rid of the buzzwords."
However, other Democrats want to move further to the left. They note that Kamala Harris campaigned as a centrist and lost, so centrism doesn't work. They want to campaign on economic populism. They want a positive vision of what Democrats can do for people and reject Trump's fear-based campaign. They want to raise the minimum wage and focus on reducing the costs of gas, food, and housing. Of course, reducing the cost of gas will encourage more driving, and those Democrats who care mostly about climate change don't want more driving, at least not with gasoline-powered cars.
The cheerleader for these people is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), one of the most popular politicians in the country. He says that the Democrats now care more about corporations and big banks than about ordinary working folks. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is on the same page as Sanders: "The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of 50 years of neoliberalism, which has left legions of Americans adrift as local places are hollowed out, rapacious profit seeking cannibalizes the common good, and unchecked new technology separates and isolates us." Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has called for rebuilding the entire party from scratch.
This debate is going to rage within the Democratic Party for months, maybe years, as it always does when a party gets its ears pinned back. Maybe some currently unknown but enormously charismatic person will emerge and lead them out of the wilderness in 2026 and 2028. (V)