Three times in American history, Democrats faced the difficult task of defining their character and regrouping for the political battles ahead. Each time, they flinched.
For roughly a half century after the election of Abraham Lincoln, the once-proud party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson struggled to shape an identity that appealed to a country freed of slavery and open to a growing federal role in American life. For a dozen years beginning in 1920, the party floundered in the wilderness as the economy boomed and then nearly went bust. For two dozen years beginning in 1968, broken only by the single Jimmy Carter term, Democrats staggered aimlessly in a political landscape controlled by Republicans from Richard Nixon to George H.W. Bush.
This time, approaching a decade during which Donald Trump, in or out of the White House, has dominated American politics, they cannot afford to wait that long.
With the midterms behind them, and with fresh Democratic majorities in both chambers on Capitol Hill, the Democrats are fortified, now possessing subpoena power to conduct their investigations of the Trump administration and the power at least to blunt the president from pursuing his ever-changing trade, defense and domestic agenda and from expanding the executive powers of his office.
This time, they’re doing what it took them years to do in the 1980s: Embrace the notion sometimes attributed to the motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, himself a Republican, that the first step is to recognize there is a problem. “A big part of the back-and-forth we see now between centrists and progressives is just that,” said Dennis Goldford, a Drake University political scientist.
“The only way to do what they need to do is with an argument and a fight,” said Alvin From, who as president of the moderate-oriented Democratic Leadership Council prompted just that from the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, often to the derision of more progressive Democrats and the withering criticism of Jesse Jackson.
With prices soaring, an on-and-off war festering in the background, a deeply unpopular president in the White House engaging in range wars with close allies (Canada), established institutions (the judiciary and, occasionally, the Supreme Court), cultural entities (the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and even with duffer golfers (the East Potomac Golf Links), the Democrats could have ignored those nagging problems and simply run against Trump. They did more than that.
“There’s no doubt this is a referendum on Trump, and he encouraged that,” said Kathryn DePalo-Gould, a political scientist at Florida International University. “This is a self-inflicted wound, through gas and grocery prices and Iran.”
Running campaigns that returned to their sweet spot of affordability — in a way, the theme that catapulted Franklin Delano Roosevelt to power in 1932 — they did more than merely inveigh against Trump. But now — ready or not, and some elements of them are not — they must begin in earnest the searching, searing process of crafting a fresh profile and creating at least an uneasy peace among their factions.
There was no hiding the fissures, not that it was plausible in a party whose nominees ranged from old-style Democrats to the 19 Democratic Socialists of America figures they nominated for Congress. While more Democrats (30%) than Republicans (19%) told the respected Marquette Law School Poll that they held unfavorable views about their own party, Democrats strayed from their party Nov. 3 less than did Republicans.
A surprising disadvantage the party faces, especially in the House that will assemble in the first week of January: Their margin is big enough that there will be less pressure for party unity than there might have been with a less formidable victory.
But who are the Democrats of today — or at least the New Democrats that Americans have been spending the past several days getting to know? Are they James Talarico, who was elected in Texas, and Adam Hamilton of Kansas — mellow figures, with one foot on the pulpit and one heading to the blue carpet of the Senate floor? Are they Abdul El-Sayed, who was elected in Michigan, and Troy Jackson of Maine — combative figures with the ardent support of the new progressives but drawing the skepticism of moderates?
Did they prevail because of the attractiveness of their policy proposals, or merely because they were the candidates on the ballot sheet who were not affiliated with the party of Trump? Are they prepared to govern the country, or merely to prevent Trump from doing so? It was the insight of Bill Clinton, employed by Hillary Clinton later, that it was more important for the party to articulate what it was for than to continue to repeat what it was against. That’s the challenge now.
“The process of working out an overall party approach isn’t done,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked on a series of Democratic campaigns and served in the Clinton White House. “A lot of the spade work has been done. But a lot of it had been deferred because of Trump. It cannot be deferred any longer.”
One area where the party used the 2026 midterms to prepare for the 2028 presidential election is in fundraising. In the financial dress-rehearsal for 2028, the party displayed surprising talent. The Democrats roughly kept pace with the Republicans, and in some races showed uncharacteristic fundraising prowess; the $64 million, for example, that Talarico raised in the third quarter of the year in his successful campaign against Ken Paxton was the largest haul in that time period in history. Campaign money already has begun to flow to possible presidential candidates Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gavin Newsom of California.
Indeed, a shorthand for the party’s fresh approach might come from FDR’s 1932 acceptance speech: “Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.”
Persuading voters that Democrats stood for exactly that has been the recurring challenge the party has faced for the past century. After FDR left the scene, they failed more than half the time, preventing them from claiming what seemed obvious in the Roosevelt-Truman years, that they were the natural party of governance.
David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
