NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly a month after a devastating election defeat that exposed cracks in their party’s foundation, Democrats remain deeply divided over the extent of their political problem — or even whether they have one.
A number of Democratic leaders are downplaying the strength of Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, casting it as the inevitable result of an inflationary backlash against the incumbent that has shaped elections around the world. But others are convinced that the Democratic Party is facing an acute crisis that requires an urgent overhaul of its brand, its message and its economic policies.
Trump swept every battleground state on November 5, becoming the first Republican candidate to win the national popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004. Yet almost half of the country voted against him. Because the final votes were still being counted in some places, Trump only won the popular vote by 1.6 percentage points. He led the seven top swing states by about 760,000 combined votes out of more than 151 million votes cast statewide.
“The glass is half full. It was close. If we could get another 2% or 3% of the American electorate, that would have successfully translated into presidential victories,” said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who leads a group called Governors Safeguarding Democracy.
But for Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Labor-Farmer Party and candidate to chair the Democratic National Committee next year, the election was “a devastating indictment” of the Democratic Party.
“People don’t believe the Democratic Party is fighting for them or their families or giving a damn about their lives,” Martin told The Associated Press. “We have lost ground with almost every group except wealthy households and college-educated voters.”
The internal debate over the party’s health comes at a critical time.
Trump will return to the White House on January 20 and push to implement a dramatic “Make America Great Again” agenda that includes the mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the country illegally. an overhaul of the federal ministries of health, education and justice, and high import tariffs that threaten to burden the U.S. economy and international alliances alike.
Even though Democrats are weakened and divided, they represent the only organized resistance to Trump and his emboldened MAGA allies. But at least for now, the Democratic Party has no leader and no agreement on what policy problems need to be solved or how to solve them can be.
Many Democratic groups and leaders are working on post-election analysis to better understand what went wrong on November 5, but few are collaborating. And some already fear that the different postmortems will produce competing recommendations that will likely be lost when moving past the pain of 2024.
Priorities USA, one of the Democratic Party’s leading super PACs, will release its post-election results this week. The group will recommend, among other things, that Democrats listen to voters rather than pollsters while offering a forward-looking positive alternative to Trump’s MAGA movement.
Unless they make significant changes, Priorities believes there is no guarantee that key elements of the Democratic base — particularly newborn people and voters of color — will return to the party in future elections, according to a preview of this briefing.
Among the loudest voices calling for dramatic change are the party’s far left wing, which is often ignored by establishment Democrats who control the party’s messaging, strategy and policy platform. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders angered some party leaders the day after the election with a keen criticism: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has rejected it failed.”
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” Sanders continued. “And they’re right.”
In the weeks since, California Rep. Ro Khanna, a Sanders ally and potential future presidential candidate, has called on his party to overhaul its economic message. Specifically, he advocates for a “New Economic Deal” that focuses on creating high-paying jobs for the middle class.
Khanna’s chief of staff, Marie Baldassarre, said some Democrats might embrace Khanna’s message and his willingness to promote it on podcasts and right-wing media outlets like Fox News.
“I don’t know how you look at this election and not get rattled. “This is the time for change,” Baldassarre said. ‘Why shouldn’t we do something right now?’ We didn’t get any response.”
Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, a former spokesman for Justice Democrats and the Uncommitted group that criticized Joe Biden’s nomination in the primaries, said Harris’ defeat showed the party “has a huge problem with bleeding working-class, “Information and Social Democrats” have college voters.”
He notes that some Democratic leaders have responded with a collective shrug.
“A lot of people at the highest levels of the party are feeling pretty lost,” Shahid said. “I am skeptical that they will be able to build the kind of coalition they need to bring about transformative change throughout our lifetime.”
The upcoming National Committee election to select a fresh leader serves as a litmus test for the party’s direction.
According to an internal memo released last week, the DNC is expected to elect a fresh chair in February after a series of four candidate forums in January. It remains unclear whether delegates will welcome a high-profile outsider or an insider more familiar with the intricate workings of the party’s political machine.
Few are calling for sweeping changes.
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, who announced his candidacy for DNC chairmanship on Sunday, said Democrats need to adopt a fresh communications strategy to connect with voters who don’t pay much attention to politics. He praised Trump’s mastery of the media landscape and suggested that his own party should pay more attention to non-political and right-wing podcasts and news channels.
However, Wikler was skeptical that the 2024 election results would signal a political crisis for his party.
“What we saw was a narrow shift to the right, driven most by the people most affected by inflation and paying the least attention to the news,” he said. “This does not indicate a permanent turn to Trump. I think there is a very real opportunity for Democrats to regain ground.”
He added: “I also think Trump will most likely do more than repeat history and be a disaster.”
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Cappelletti reported from Lansing, Michigan.
