The Democratic Party appears to be in limbo following an unexpected electoral sweep by the GOP; Republicans won back the White House with the reelection of Donald Trump, and they will also control the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. This Republican trifecta means the Democrats won’t control a single branch of government for the first time since 2019.
While finger-pointing among Democrats has been ongoing since Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss, many within the party are searching for a new way forward. According to most experts, there seems to be a two-pronged strategy: opposing President-elect Trump while also looking for paths to recapture working-class voters, who largely shunned the Democratic Party at the ballot box.
How is the Democratic Party retooling its strategy?
Many Democrats are “seeking to build their second wave of opposition to Mr. Trump from the places that they still control: deep-blue states,” said The New York Times. In places like Illinois, New York and California, Democrats “envision flexing their power in these states to partly block the Trump administration’s policies — for example, by refusing to enforce immigration laws.” Democratic governors have also proposed “passing state laws enshrining abortion rights, funding paid leave and putting in place a laundry list of other party priorities.”
This strategy “resembles what Republicans have done during President Joe Biden’s administration,” said the Times. Republican governors have “pursued an agenda that flouted the administration by taking steps to restrict abortion rights, limit transgender rights, ban diversity programs and pursue other conservative priorities,” and Democratic governors will likely look to do the same.
But some Democrats are also recognizing that working with Trump on certain issues will likely be inevitable. Democrats have “got to be willing to fight the fight when it needs to be fought and find common ground when that’s what circumstances dictate,” Gov. Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) said to Politico.
How are Democrats looking to recapture voters?
Democrats “need to be clear-eyed about some hard truths in the results from election night,” Jen Psaki, President Biden’s former White House press secretary, said at MSNBC. Trump cruised to victory largely because turnout for the Democratic Party was lower. Psaki “[looks] at this from my vantage point as a college-educated white person, which is one of the only demographics Trump didn’t increase his share of the vote with, and I can tell you that the message of the party is geared too much toward me.”
To win working-class voters back, Democrats “must become more populist and more ambitious,” said The Guardian. There is also a chance to capture people who “voted for Trump not because they are committed to MAGA, but out of frustration with the status quo.” Instead of spending time and money “listening to the Liz Cheney-loving consulting class and the cable ad-buying gurus,” Democrats need the “kind of political determination that drove Susie Wiles to swing Florida firmly to the right and enabled Republicans to paint Texas a deep red,” said the outlet, referring to Trump’s campaign manager and incoming chief of staff.
There “was some good policy, but the American people and Southerners need to feel it in their gut,” Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said to the Times. If Democrats are “talking about the outrage of the day in Washington, D.C., and you’re talking about the crazy thing a politician said last night, and then you’re talking about jobs, you’re only talking about jobs a third of the time.” Beshear and others have pointed to this shift in dialogue as one of the key motivators for Democrats over the next four years.