The Democrats are a party controlled by elites, liberals and special interest groups. They are out of touch with America’s middle class. They are personified by a president who let inflation get the better of him and world events spin out of his control. As a result, the Democrats lost the White House as well as control of the Senate.
I’m talking about the 1980 election and its aftermath. But if politics back then has a familiar ring, it also has lessons for Democrats today, as they are in dire need of fresh vision and leadership. The election of a new party chair on Saturday is just the beginning of their reinvention process.
The Democratic Party is now in worse shape than at any time since 1980. Joe Biden’s policy mistakes — making inflation worse and making the border less secure — and the lack of trust in Democrats who circled the wagons around him in 2024 have done damage that the party does not yet seem to fully grasp. The party is paying the price for failing to develop and allow generational change in leadership; the Clintons and the Obama-Biden administrations have dominated for more than 30 years. At the same time, Democrats have too often been focused on whom they are against rather than what they are for. Especially for the past 10 years, the Democrats’ primary mission was defeating Donald Trump rather than articulating a coherent and appealing vision for the future.
“Coherent and appealing” are difficult goals, of course, when you are a federation of special interests — such as abortion rights, the environment, social justice, gun control, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and a pro-labor agenda — more than an inspiring and forward-looking political party.
In 2020, Democrats’ fears about Bernie Sanders pushed these groups to coalesce around Mr. Biden’s candidacy, which was made all the more palatable since he positioned himself as a transition candidate. But Mr. Biden proved to be a challenging figure in electoral politics: He had no political base of his own and he governed by trying to placate those various special interest groups — and yet their priorities were not aligned with what was most important to many voters. I cannot remember a single instance when President Biden took on any element of the Democratic Party in the interest of the greater good. This was not a presidency that reflected the mood and needs of the country; the sum of his presidency was less than its parts.
To regain power, Democrats would do well by first grappling with the best strategies for a minority party. As was the case when Ronald Reagan took office after 1980, the Democrats do not control their own destiny. At any given time, there are really only 1.5 political parties in America. Whoever holds the White House is the governing party, with the opposition essentially, at best, only able to affect policy-making at the margins.
With that in mind, Democrats need to start making a compelling argument that President Trump and Republicans are failing at governing. Democrats need to do this in a way that reflects the mood of the country and cannot repeat the mistakes of Kamala Harris’s campaign, like focusing on joy during a time when anger and economic frustration dominated voter sentiment. With Republicans now in full control of the federal government, Democrats are well positioned to be the party of change, a narrative that finally broke the Reagan-Bush 12-year hold on the presidency in 1992.
Then as now, the strongest message for Democrats is centered on economic security and opportunity. With Mr. Trump and Republicans focused on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, it should be easy to make contrasts with his agenda on a regular basis. His blundered attempt to freeze federal money in ways that might affect popular programs, like Medicaid and Head Start, is an example of a prime opportunity to brand the G.O.P. as failing dangerously at governing.
At the same time, Democrats need to neutralize issues of public safety and disorder that were central to Mr. Trump’s victory. That requires dealing with the immigration crisis in our country. Democrats don’t need to support every draconian measure that Mr. Trump puts into place. However, they need to establish their bona fides and make a credible case that they support secure borders in our country.
Establishing these bona fides — and ultimately driving any successful narrative on the economy and public order — depends on the quality, vision and trustworthiness of the party’s presidential nominees. Do they “get it,” in the eyes of voters? Do they believe in and even personify change? Do voters feel they can count on a given leader to do what they want? Mr. Trump bested Mr. Biden and then Ms. Harris on these fronts.
Bill Clinton’s candidacy and victory in 1992 offers valuable lessons for Democrats on the type of candidate who most likely succeeds in taking on Republicans. Mr. Clinton was not part of the ruling class of the party in Washington. His upbringing and his time as governor in a Southern state gave him an understanding of the country. Most important, he had a clear narrative about what he would do and change as president and where he wanted to lead the country. He also avoided choosing between being a liberal or being a moderate and getting mired in divisive social issues that were not essential to most Americans.
A key part of the foundation for Mr. Clinton’s victory came from Senate Democrats. At the end of the summer in 1991, President George H.W. Bush had a 74 percent job approval. But after Labor Day, Democrats organized a near-daily pounding of Mr. Bush’s policies on the Senate floor, with a consistent message that he was out of touch with the struggles of America’s middle class. This narrative helped Democrats pick up the Pennsylvania Senate seat in a special election that November. These efforts were so successful that by the beginning of 1992, Mr. Bush’s job approval had dropped to 46 percent.
The Democratic National Committee and its chairman also played a role. Under Ron Brown’s leadership in the run-up to the 1992 elections, the D.N.C. focused on creating a climate of the party “doing no harm” to Mr. Clinton. For the previous decade, the party label had been an anchor on Democratic candidates running for president. Mr. Brown was able to push the activist wing to focus more on winning rather than trying to push litmus tests on the candidates — something for the party to keep in mind as it gathers to elect a new D.N.C. leader.
Now, for the first time since Barack Obama’s ascent in 2008, there will be a wide-open opportunity for Democratic candidates to demonstrate that they, too, have the right stuff to run the country. Not many people thought that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama had what it took when they announced their candidacies for president. Rather than declaring their fitness for office, they proved during their campaigns the capacity to lead. And the Democrats have a deep bench of elected officials, particularly at the state and local levels, who will have the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to take on the Republicans.
The 2026 congressional midterm elections can play a key role in better positioning the eventual nominee for the 2028 election. The party in power generally suffers losses in the midterms. While it is unlikely that Democrats will be able to take control of the Senate, they are well positioned to take back the House. There are also 38 governor’s races in the next two years, which gives Democrats a tremendous opportunity to reset the party going into the next presidential election.
And if Democrats can address their vision, trust and leadership problems — a tall order, to be sure — their chances of retaking the White House in 2028 are more favorable than those they faced in the 1980s.
Mr. Trump won the recent election by one of the narrowest margins of the popular vote since 1900. He had no coattails, as evidenced by Republican losses in the House and the fact that they won only one of the five tossup Senate races in the seven battleground states that Mr. Trump carried. Given how unpopular the Biden administration was on Election Day, a more normal Republican candidate should have swept his party to victory in races across the country, as Mr. Reagan did in 1980.
Mr. Trump starts his presidency with only 47 percent of the country giving him a positive rating. Current polling shows that a majority of Americans do not support some of his most radical proposals. He is misreading how big a mandate the voters gave him in the election and is widely overreaching with his executive orders and policy proposals. And Republicans start out not only with a historically narrow margin of control in Congress but also with a track record of demonstrating during the last Congress that they were incapable of governing.
In this environment, Mr. Trump and the Republicans have set a high bar for themselves on how they are going to improving the economy. At the same time they also claim that they will cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget. Under Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. has become a working-class party, and its base is full of people who will be hardest hit by cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which now constitute almost half of all federal spending.
All of this points to a favorable opportunity for Democrats to regain power if they can learn the lessons that followed the 1980 election. Jimmy Carter was president for only four years, but because of Republican tactics, he defined what it meant to be a Democrat for 16 years. It was only when Mr. Clinton was elected president that the party was able to move past the Carter years.
The same will hold true for the Democrats, with Mr. Biden defining what it means to be a Democrat until the party retakes the White House — whenever that happens. History offers Democrats a blueprint for retaking power. The question is whether they will follow it.
The post The Democratic Party Is in a Ditch. There Is a Way Out. appeared first on New York Times.
