Identity politics

After last year’s U.S. election defeats, the Democratic Party in America is out of power—way out of power. Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and Republican-appointed justices have a comfortable majority on the Supreme Court. What’s more, the Republicans control most governorships and state legislatures. As Matthew Continetti put it in the conservative magazine Commentary, the Democratic National Committee “is just about the only political institution Democrats still control.”

Since his inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have been relentlessly active in dismantling Democrats’ prior work. Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders that have shaken the federal bureaucracy, and he’s reversed many of the policies of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. Trump has empowered his top donor, Elon Musk, to go through the federal government with his newly created outfit, the Department of Government Efficiency, canceling contracts and firing civil servants. Trump has also upended longstanding U.S. foreign policy: He’s threatened traditional allies like Canada, Mexico, and Europe with tariffs, he temporarily cut off aid to Ukraine, and he and his team have meanwhile moved much closer to Russia. 

At first glance, the Democrats’ response to Trump’s victory and new policies appears unclear. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer is on a book tour; many of his colleagues want to take him out of his post for helping Republicans pass a bill to fund the government. The former vice-presidential nominee, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, has openly criticized the Democratic election campaign. Meanwhile, the old-progressive Democratic senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has organized a series of rallies with the new-progressive Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attracting tens of thousands. 

But others want a cooler response. The veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, for instance, suggested, “It’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” 

So if that's not what they’re already doing, what are Democrats up to? 

Daniel Schlozman is an associate professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins University and the co-author of The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics. Schlozman says that while the Democrats’ loss in November’s election was slight, their broader loss isn’t. They’re lost as a party. 

They’re searching for policy responses—with some Democrats wanting the part to focus on economic issues to win working-class voters and others wanting it to focus on more centrist positions. But they’re also searching for a political response—without yet having decided how to pitch the party to the American people. And they’re making these choices while facing a very grim math problem: To win enough states to retake control of the White House or the Senate, the party needs to broaden its coalition of voters on account of how overly reliant it’s become on college-educated urbanites …

Gustav Jönsson: What’s your understanding of the most prominent views in the Democratic Party on why they lost the election?