If you listen to Donald Trump, the 2024 election was a landslide that gave him a complete mandate to implement his agenda. Democrats, on the other hand, tell a different story. They point to the 230,000 vote difference between Kamala Harris and Trump in the three key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which determined the election results. And although the Democrats are correct from an Electoral College perspective, focusing on the narrowness of these margins or even the results in the House of Representatives obscures the broader picture of the 2024 election.
The Democratic party saw around ten percentage point swings in the presidential election in four of their biggest strongholds: California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey. States once considered winnable, such as Florida or Texas, moved decisively out of reach, driven in part by large shifts among working-class Hispanic voters who moved from delivering big Democratic margins to boosting Republican vote totals. Republicans unexpectedly won a key Senate race in Pennsylvania that contributed to their reversal of all Democratic gains since the 2018 Senate elections. Finally, in the House, the Republicans maintained their majority and kept many districts Democrats hoped to win in their hands until at least the 2026 midterms.
These losses are driven by far more than an unpopular candidate in Kamala Harris and a bad political climate in 2024. The state of the Democratic Party today continues to look bleak. Thanks to Republican redistricting efforts and the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans may keep the House along with the Senate, where their majority is likely to remain intact. These problems are not momentary setbacks. Structurally, the Democratic party is behind. The party is underrepresented in state legislative control, constantly seems to be playing catch-up in the Senate, and frequently concedes Republican narratives on issues such as immigration, transgender rights, and inflation, rather than centering widely popular policies like health care reform and a higher minimum wage.
The Democratic Party’s net favorability stands at negative 26 percentage points, reflecting the gap between voters with favorable and unfavorable views of the party. Although this margin is similar to that of Republicans, it reflects a sharp change from the party that has claimed the popular vote in seven of the eight presidential elections before 2024. This is a massive deficit driven by both Republicans who hold strong dislike for the party as well as many on the left and in the center who find major flaws in the Democrats’ approach to handling President Trump.
Although not a philosophy all Democrats agree with, the party’s approach increasingly resembles James Carville’s proposed strategy of “playing dead,” both politically and electorally. Instead of bold strokes to oppose Republicans, sometimes sacrificing popularity or political capital in the short term for long-term victories, Democrats have sought to give Trump freer reign over his decisions, waiting for mistakes to capitalize on in the 2026 midterm elections. This approach was evident during two recent government funding crises in the Senate, in which Democrats caved twice and permitted Republican budgets to advance even when voters blamed Republicans for these situations. As many voters now ask, what does the Democratic Party stand for besides being “not Trump?”
Democratic leaders have pointed to the Republican trifecta to assert they have no control over the political process. However, in many cases, they have enabled this power by helping Trump break the filibuster that famously blocked Democrats from implementing a $15 minimum wage in 2021. Somehow, when Republicans are in the minority, they demonstrate the ability to exercise power that Democrats now insist they lack.
Instead of exerting the power they do still have, Democrats are making a shallow appeal to future victory. Recent successes in Virginia and New Jersey, although large, reflect typical anti-incumbent sentiment in the first year, a strategy Democrats seem to be hoping to carry into the next elections. With these small victories, the Democrats can easily cast aside 2024 as a fluke, waiting for Republicans to mess up so badly that voters have no choice but to trust Democrats. Instead of making serious reform, they wait for nationwide chaos.
During the Obama administration, the Democrats had a message and a plan: progress. Obama rose to power with a hope-driven motto of “Yes We Can” coupled with concrete plans for sweeping healthcare and banking reforms. However, after the rise of the tea party movement and the 2013 Republican “autopsy,” in which Republicans sought to reach out to minority voters and build a broader coalition, the tide turned in favor of the Republicans. They saw significant gains in Congress and state legislatures that put them in a commanding position for redistricting for the next cycle, an electorate that looked to Trump as a political outsider who could bring back progress, and their first Presidential victory since 2004.
In a structural way, Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016 can be closely compared to Kamala Harris’ 2024 defeat. Both were women with extensive experience in politics and a center-left appeal, and crucially, both came to the campaign trail promising somewhat of an extension of their predecessor’s policies. Instead of winning on a positive progressive agenda, Democrats’ most significant successes in the Trump era have been against him, rather than for a broader governing vision. Biden’s razor thin margin reflected anger about COVID and incumbent fatigue, while 2022 midterm successes had much more to do with the Dobbs decision than the popularity of Biden. Biden’s success in 2020 may have been promising, but playing defense and hoping for circumstances as drastic as a pandemic is no viable election strategy.
In many ways, today’s Democratic party mirrors the Republican Party after its losses in 2009. After a substantial loss, the party has struggled to find a message, a key base, and importantly, a coherent oppositional strategy. Like the Republicans of the past, the Democrats have been the party that prioritizes seniority, procedure, and maintenance of the status quo. Democrats should be fighting Republicans on their most popular issues — healthcare, labor reform, and paid family leave — many of which poll above 75 percent. Instead, Democrats have only further alienated themselves from progressives, signaling an openness to abandoning issues like transgender rights for the sake of moderate voters who have yet to put their faith in the Democratic Party despite constant appeasement. But if the recent 2025 elections are any indication, the party can win on a platform that champions the working class and affordability instead of one that hides from debate and naively tries to make everyone happy.
The key driver of Democratic loss is political positioning. Social issues, which progressives in the party have pushed to the left, are easily strawmanned by Republicans, while increasingly popular left-of-center economic policy is pushed to the side in favor of market-oriented policies, all to appeal to a set of moderate and wealthy Democrats who oppose wealth redistribution. Victories in New York City and Virginia this past election cycle suggest Democrats can unify economic populism with social liberalism rather than choosing between them. Instead of being forced to choose between reliable progressive voters and fiscally conservative moderates, the Democrats must restructure their agenda, framing, and party in order to create a coalition that represents progress, no matter how each individual candidate defines it.
Now is not the time to play dead. For the sake of its own survival and the progress of the country, the Democratic Party needs to come to life and offer the American people a vision worth believing in and voting for.
