Dead or Alive? What can Democrats do?

Even six months into the second Presidency of Donald Trump most polls agree that the decline of his ratings does not translate into support for the Democratic Party. This tallies with what Republican voters told me during my travels through rural America this spring. They could imagine being disappointed by Donald Trump in a couple of years’ time - and by now some might be already. But they could not imagine voting for the Democrats in the foreseeable future: “not for the party of “woke” which did nothing but gave money to others than us”. There are many concurrent and contradictory explanations of why the Democrats lost the presidential election in November 2024. And the party has been discussing its many failures since then. But there is still no real understanding where this deeply felt distrust and abhorrence of the Democrats even among moderate Republicans and independent voters is coming from. 

At first there was a debate if the defeat of Kamala Harris was due to the late exit of President Joe Biden from the race and the mismanagement of her belated election campaign or due to a structural “vibe shift” in American politics. Today we can safely say that it was both. With a Joe Biden twenty years younger or a different candidate right from the start of the campaign the Democrats could have won. But at the same time the underpinnings of American politics have been changing for quite a while, and most of those changes are to the detriment of the Democratic Party. 

Yes, the Democrats might have won in 2024 if Kamala Harris would have distanced herself more from Biden’s policies, particularly on the issue of Gaza. In that case they would have gained more support from young voters and Arab Americans. Democrats also missed to declare themselves the anti-war party leaving that mantle to Donald Trump. They might have won by choosing a candidate who had not been a second choice for Vice-President, a lawyer from California who thought she could make it with the support of Beyonce and Taylor Swift. They could have won if they had not taken the African American and Latino vote for granted. And they would have won if they’d better explained their economic policies and addressed the inflation issue early.  

But that is water under the bridge. What the Democratic Party must address now are those structural shifts affecting the outcome of future elections which seem to favour any populist candidate and government; that is, to address what some call “The end of old politics”. Because the Democrats are lagging far behind in understanding the new political environment and in finding the means to adapt to it. 

If you look at the Democratic Party today it is still arguing about the loss of 2024 instead of preparing for the mid-term elections of 2026. Its structure and funding are still elite driven, its internal bodies seem unprepared, many of its representatives are uninspiring, its congressional leadership looks hapless and lost. And the drive of the large demonstrations in April and June came from civil society not from the Democratic Party itself. 

The loss of 2024 has widened the generational divide between younger voters who think the party needs to move to the left and older Democrats who think that less of identity politics and more of the same Bidenism with another candidate will just do. Yet there are few Democrats on the national level working towards a new narrative that tries to combine elements of both strands into a positive vision of what the party stands for; and present its new image in a well-communicated election campaign. 

Over a long period of time, Democrats “have lost the working class” as the saying goes. They did not react to the results of the financial crisis of 2008 when President Obama bailed out the bankers and left ordinary households with their mortgages and pension plans in the cold. They did not reckon with the long-term grievances of people who saw their money spent on questionable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when they had to tighten their belts at home. They did not feel that the ground was shifting when a radicalizing Republican Party turned traditional political competition into a culture war: from the first attacks on political correctness during the 90s to the anger expressed by the Tea Party in 2008, to the hatred stoked by the Maga crowd in 2015 and encouraged by Donald Trump. They did not perceive to what extent they themselves were being seen as a party of the well-educated cultural elites which had lost the connection to ordinary voters, particularly to young men without college degrees. And finally, they did not understand how the changed media environment of the “attention economy” put them at a disadvantage compared to a political right which had nurtured an alternative media sector with talk show jocks and influencers topped by a president whose relentless performance of boasts and lies turned America into a no-truth society. 

With about 450 days until the midterm elections for the party to work out its identity crisis there is no lack of advice from politicians and pollsters. Ex-President Obama, not exactly known for risk-taking and political courage, has criticized his party “for failing to speak out” and now tells it to “toughen up”. The Democratic National Committee promises to change the tone of its social media strategies from carefully scripted and poll-tested language to swearing like Republicans, saying sh… and f… , to show more “authenticity”. And Antonio Delgado, the lieutenant governor of New York, calls for state and local governments to counteract the Republican cuts to the social safety net by raising local taxes on the rich.  

The surprising success of Zohran Mamdani at the recent democratic primary for the Mayorship in New York with his energetic, original and social media driven campaign has probably become the most analysed victory in the recent election history of the Democratic Party. The 33-year-old, affable and witty Uganda-born New York State assembly member of Indian descent had beaten the favoured candidates of the Democratic establishment by taking the issue of “affordability” straight to the voters by crisscrossing New Yorks neighborhoods and documenting his discussions in Kebab shops and on street corners on TikTok and Instagram. Young New Yorkers voted for him in droves.  

With his good chances to become the mayor in the traditionally democratic city of New York in the November election Mamdani has become the poster child for progressive Democrats who think his leftist policy proposals and his media skills are the way forward. As a foreign-born Muslim socialist, he also serves as the ideal hate figure for the Republicans. But whatever you think about his policy proposals and the applicability of his campaign techniques to Congressional or Presidential politics, Mamdani is the first Democrat who has shown the establishment of his party how to campaign in the new media environment. 

So, what can Democrats do to overcome the deep distrust that has built up against them over the years? If you follow the columnist Thomas B. Edsall, who has been interpreting poll results and expert advice for the New York Times for decades, and who has seen a fundamental shift in the political landscape “from group think” to individual “needs and grievances”, Democrats should not put their hopes on an automatic anti-incumbency effect. They need to widen their outreach after they have lost the votes of unionists whilst the Republicans have gained with the churches. They should distance themselves from political correctness, cultural liberalism and become more tolerant in accepting ideological diversity. They should no longer put up candidates that fit the liberal litmus test of party activists but will then fail the concrete expectations of a wider audience.  

There are some examples where Democratic politicians have managed to succeed in states and districts won by Donald Trump. There are Democrats who will master an appearance on the influencer circuit of conservative talk shows like the former Transport Minister Pete Buttigieg; or Senator Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) who can address voters in a plain language; or Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut) who, with his statements on the economy, sounds like a progressive populist. But in general, the image of the party is still shaped by those who despite being no harbingers of the future do not want to leave the Democrat’s stage: the Bidens, the Clinton’s, the Pelosi’s and Obama’s - and Kamala Harris who last week did not preclude running again in 2028.  

Yet there is little time to get rid of the old guard and promote the new generation of hopeful outsiders in the party before the crucial midterm elections in 2026. Winning back at least one chamber of the US-Congress won’t be an easy task. It is unlikely that Democrats can flip the necessary four seats to win over the Senate. They will have a better chance in the House of Representatives where about 20 congressional districts are up for grabs and where the current Republican majority is 219 to 212. 

But there are sizeable obstacles. Democrats are already far behind the Republicans in fundraising for those Congress and State elections. In states like Texas Republicans are currently trying hard to create more save Republican seats by changing the borders of voting districts through the state legislature they already control. And the America-wide population movement from blue states like California to red states governed by Republicans like Florida and Texas disadvantages the Democrats further; not to mention the threatening Democratic collapse in rural states. In short, long-term election prospects do not favour Democrats either. 

All the more important it becomes for the Democratic Party to work on their selection of more diverse candidates and to develop campaigns which are less ideological and more pragmatic, less policy-driven but tailor-made for the state or district to attract a wider array of voters than just the Democratic base. And those campaigns must be run across all social media channels marrying messenger and message. It’s a tall order. 

But to veto the increasingly radical Republican agenda a Democratic majority at least in the House of Representatives will be crucial. Because with a craven Republican Party, the Supreme Court clearly on the side of Donald Trump, with corporate America following its self-interest and conservatives winning the media war for attention there will be no other checks and balances on the Trump-Administration during its remaining two years in power, if it remains only two years. “We are running out of bulwarks” as the New York Times columnist Frank Bruni puts it. If the Democrats fail again in 2026 there won’t be much resistance left to the further dismantling of the American democracy.