Progressives are arguing over how to refine their message to voters after losing the White House again to President-elect Trump.
There is little agreement that things need to change. The Democrats’ latest electoral strategy has proven ineffective, returning Trump to Washington with his party’s complete control of Congress.
But there is no consensus about what the left should do next.
One camp says the future lies with the economic populists, a group that puts financially disadvantaged voters of all demographics at the forefront. They believe that if Democrats prioritize class wars over culture wars at the national level, they will anger fewer people and have a chance to win again.
The other group of progressives sees room for multiple top priorities with varying orders of importance. They believe their wing can highlight all aspects of identity politics while advocating for democracy, the rule of law and a better economic future.
“The idea that economic populism is the real patriotic path is a really good one,” said Pete D’Alessandro, a former senior campaign aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) of Iowa.
Some argue that the difference is very subtle. The progressive wing agrees that class and identity are intersectional and firmly believes that no group should be sacrificed at the expense of another.
But fault lines are emerging in progressive circles over the order and scope of each issue, foreshadowing a debate that is likely to unfold as Trump takes office and Democrats prepare to leave their party in the minority to govern and transform.
Progressives who came of age in the Sanders wing began conducting their own autopsies after November. 5, hoping to get ahead of various narratives that place economic realities low on the list of reasons Vice President Harris lost to Trump. A grassroots group founded after Sanders’ first presidential campaign, Our Revolution, surveyed 12,000 progressives and found that 91 percent said, “The party has long neglected the multiracial working class.”
“The neglect of working people, the failure of the Democratic Party, the late shift from Biden to Harris and the campaign’s misguided focus on Cheney Republicans and celebrities” were the main reasons for the defeat, according to their poll of progressive respondents.
Sanders has gone his own way in the wake of Harris’s defeat, trying to steer the conversation among progressives back to the economic conflicts that played out in election polls and explained part of Trump’s victory. He has delved into established media outlets, from cable news to the New York Times, to explain why the working-class agenda should be at the core of the Democrats’ DNA.
In recent discussions, the senator has emphasized that identity is inherently linked to the struggles of various diverse segments of the working class. “You can say, ‘We’re going to fight for an America without bigotry’ — that’s an ongoing fight. “We’ve made progress and we still have a long way to go,” Sanders said on the Times’ “The Daily” podcast this week.
“But at the same time, we can stand up for the working class in this country, which, by the way, is predominantly African-Americans, Latinos and women, who make up the majority of the working class,” he emphasized. “It goes both ways. This is a winner.”
The emerging Sanders wing — which progressives agree is in the talent-hunting phase for fresh, younger leadership — also sharply criticizes the idea that the makeup of voters who supported Trump is inherently biased be.
“Some of the Democratic pundits are saying, ‘The problem is all these Trump people are racist, sexist and homophobic.’ Well, there’s no doubt about some of them, and that’s true. Most of them aren’t,” Sanders said. “They are working class people in large numbers and we need to speak to them from a clear and direct economic perspective.”
Stevie O’Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, said a key problem is that “most Democrats have failed to present themselves as a credible voice for working people.”
“For the first time in years, the Democratic candidate lost the votes of households earning less than $100,000 and won those earning more. “This is the price of decades of policies and rhetoric from Democratic leadership that have allowed Trump to claim to be the champion of the working and middle classes,” O’Hanlon told The Hill.
While Sanders promotes this to the outside world, other leftists who share his worldview adapt the message to fit their personal brand. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a staunch Sanders ally and member of the “Squad,” removed her pronouns from her bio on the social platform X this week.
“I think it’s a small thing,” said a source familiar with the Ocasio-Cortez news.
Still, the exploit of pronouns as personal descriptors is widespread among progressives on Capitol Hill, who see issues of gender identity as crucial to the Democratic Party’s push for inclusivity. Liberals have created space for communities that have faced disproportionate discrimination, including the LGBTQ population, to create a contrast with the Republican Party.
While losses for Democrats were widespread, progressives added their first openly transgender member of Congress to their slate in Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who offered a unique perspective in a press conference with the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus explained.
“What I heard was that the American dream is becoming more and more unaffordable and inaccessible,” McBride said of running in Delaware’s only congressional district, which spans enormous urban, suburban and rural areas and spills into the Philadelphia media market.
McBride said that by participating in this market, voters were exposed to Trump and Republicans’ attempt to divide over gender and identity, an approach that ultimately didn’t work. “I didn’t reveal my identity, but my identity wasn’t a secret,” she said. The Millennial Congresswoman’s X-Biography simply states: “Delaware Congresswoman-elect. I am working to support ALL Delawareans.”
“When people can’t afford rent or food, they look for someone to blame,” O’Hanlon said. “Trump and far-right politicians have told people to blame immigrants, transgender people or people of color. That was a central part of Trump’s closing message: “Kamala Harris cares more about Group bring.”
While a growing group focuses on economic populism, other members of the progressive movement are more directly interested in issues that may emerge under Trump. They see threats to the judiciary on the horizon that some believe can be minimized before the president-elect takes back the Oval Office.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), credited by many college-educated and wealthy liberals with her emphasis on cultural issues, outlined her vision for Democrats based on bulletproof democracy.
“While we are still in charge of the Senate and the White House, we must do everything we can to protect our democracy,” Warren said wrote in a fresh comment on-time. “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must use every minute of the year-end legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators – none of whom can be removed by the next president.”
The Warren-aligned Progressive Change Campaign Committee circulated a petition titled “Protect Democracy While You Can,” calling for support for key legal structures.
Warren is poised to take on an elevated role within the Senate minority, where as the top Democrat on the Banking Committee she has pledged to strengthen “working families.”
While the Massachusetts senator also promotes an agenda for low-income Americans, her exploit of “families” is another slight difference from Sanders’ rhetoric about working-class people, which doesn’t necessarily specify a family unit.
Some populist progressives say it’s a straightforward bridge between the two camps, which already agree that the causes of income inequality are mass concentration among the country’s wealthiest people and the dominance of corporate influence over the status quo to maintain.
“I’m not too worried about them,” D’Alessandro said of the two approaches. “I’m more worried that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction and we’ll get more 1970s Republican politicians like Buttigieg and Ritchie Torres.”
“I think the discussion is easier with the Warren people because it’s about tactics. Nobody says you shouldn’t tolerate these things,” he said. “It’s more about what you can lead with. If we argue with each other about tactics, the economic Democrats like the people I mentioned will just storm through the gap.”
