Beyond Red and Blue

How pragmatic populists are helping Democrats in competitive states and districts.

---

Navy veteran Rep. Chris Deluzio (PA-17) ran a successful re-election effort this year by focusing on western PA issues, economic opportunity for workers, and anti-corruption measures. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

As the post-mortems of the Harris campaign pile up, the Democratic Party is fighting over its strategy, policies, and overall mission in ways not seen since the Reagan revolution. The battle lines, however, do not always neatly run between the progressive left and the liberal establishment. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), a prominent coastal liberal, has assailed the party’s losses with the working class and wondered whether Democrats avoid “true economic populism” because it “is bad for our high-income base.” Although some pundits have echoed him, other influential commentators such as Matthew Yglesias argue that many on the left “harbor weird fantasies about the possibilities of politics grounded in ‘populist’ economics.”

The identarian left, meanwhile, seems inclined to parse the striking shift of nonwhite, non-college-educated voters toward Trump and down-ballot Republicans. This is a futile attempt to muddy the undeniable: that the multiracial working class is up for grabs but it is not particularly confident in Democrats’ ability to govern on its behalf. The task of rebuilding the infrastructure of the Democratic Party—one long deferred by what Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis call a “shadow party” of elite donors, the nonprofit complex, cultural radicals, and consultants drawn from progressive echo chambers—now extends from the hinterlands to taken-for-granted urban districts.

These are serious doldrums. The Democratic Party desperately needs an unfiltered debate about how to win and develop popular, effective policies that promote economic development, social welfare, and civic health. Still, efforts to either squelch economic populism or hitch it to litmus tests on identity and culture misconstrue what has been convulsing the electorate since the Great Recession. Anti-establishment and anti-incumbent sentiment will remain the defining currents of national politics as long as ordinary Americans feel they are on a knife’s edge or reviled by elites. For those who want to win with a big tent in the New Deal tradition, the criteria for moving forward should be based on what makes workers of all backgrounds feel empowered and more secure.

One of the silver linings of Harris’s humbling defeat is that a new kind of working-class politics along these lines may yet find a home in the Democratic Party. A cohort of pro-labor Democrats fought tough races this past election, and while only a handful won, the victories of Representatives Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-3), Jared Golden (ME-2), Pat Ryan (NY-18), and Chris Deluzio (PA-17) show that Democrats succeed when they are rooted in their communities, focused on economic opportunity, and doggedly opposed to outsourcing, corruption, and profiteering.

Call it populism with pragmatic instincts. These millennial incumbents waged campaigns informed by distinct, local conditions and they were propelled by constituents who support a mixed economy but want policies geared toward productive investment and enablement. The priorities of these Democrats aren’t always identical: some ideas are tailored to relatively niche concerns while others connect to national debates about corporate power and our economic future. Of the four, Gluesenkamp Perez, a former auto repair shop owner, is most focused on understated reforms like “right to repair” that nevertheless could have a big impact on rural economies. Golden, meanwhile, emerged as one of his party’s chief protectionists in September when he introduced a bill to enact a ten percent universal tariff, just as the Harris campaign was equating Donald Trump’s tariffs to a national sales tax. And Ryan and Deluzio have proven to be vocal proponents of domestic manufacturing while taking a hard line against monopolistic practices. After the election, Ryan underscored in an interview with MSNBC that while Democrats need to show working families they will fight for them, they must also name who “they’re going to fight against.”

None of these Democrats meet the current definition of progressivism, at least as wielded by activists driven by identity politics. Many leftwing academics blanch at “economic patriotism,” and the generally tough line on border security taken by this cohort has antagonized advocates for unregulated migration and sanctuary cities. But neither are these Democrats the direct ideological descendants of the old “Blue Dog” conservatives of the late twentieth century, despite the fact that Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden co-chair the current Blue Dog Coalition in the House of Representatives. All have grown up in an era of widening inequality and regional hardship exacerbated by offshoring, stagnant wages, the opioid and fentanyl crisis, and the housing shortage. Liberal, active government, in their view, must rebuild the foundations of shared prosperity and strong families.

Put another way, these Democrats are fighting for a vision of responsive, accountable government untainted by either boutique beliefs, bureaucratic arrogance, or corporate capture.

---

Their success raises the question of whether the Republican sweep on November 5^th could have been prevented had the national party devoted more resources to other viable congressional candidates. Democrats ended up just three seats short of a House majority, in part because Republicans narrowly prevailed in three swing districts in Pennsylvania and flipped three other seats. Hoping to explain away this failure, some analysts believe “Bidenomics” and subsequent high prices, from groceries to housing, were an albatross for Rust Belt Democrats.

The toll of inflation—which was catalyzed by the pandemic’s supply-chain shocks and then worsened by opportunistic corporate mark-ups—undoubtedly presented a challenge for down-ballot Democrats. Yet several survived, in fact, by leaning in to the populist economics that Biden himself was unfit to advance. DeLuzio, for example, championed alongside Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) a “Make Stuff Here Agenda,” while Ryan lobbied Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, to investigate private equity’s role in exorbitant housing costs. Another successful Rust Belt Democrat, Representative-elect Kristen McDonald Rivet (MI-8), campaigned on wage growth and fighting to ensure that workers “keep more of their money.” As pro-labor analysts Dustin Guastella and Jared Abbott recently wrote for The Liberal Patriot, traditional social-democratic policies tend to poll strongly in voter surveys. The pragmatic populists who won—or came to close to winning—adapted Biden’s key planks, industrial policy and anti-monopolism, while being authentic and accessible in ways neither Biden nor Harris mustered.

In fact, Democratic leaders might be having a different conversation about how to confront a second Trump presidency had they more aggressively boosted other Democrats in the populist mold. Down-ballot, the 2024 election was arguably more complex than party strategists think. The defeat of Senator Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s storied Democratic populist, was a heavy blow, yet Marcy Kaptur, his pro-union counterpart in the House who was first elected in 1983, eked out another victory. Elsewhere, there are overlooked districts where pragmatic populists could gain ground. Among the candidates in red and purple states who stressed brass tacks reform, there were two underdogs of note this cycle: Christina Bohannan, a challenger for Iowa’s First District, and Rebecca Cooke, a challenger for Wisconsin’s Third. In her closely fought rematch against the Republican incumbent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Bohannan trailed by just over 800 votes—a significant improvement over her 2022 campaign. Bohannan’s margin in the district also exceeded Harris-Walz by 8.2 percent, indicating that voters are still receptive to independent Democrats in states that have swung hard to the right since 2016. Cooke, by contrast, fared worse in her bid to oust Derrick Van Orden, a hard right Republican, though she may be poised to do better in 2026. A dedicated campaigner and protégé of Wisconsin governor Tony Evers, Cooke lost by 11,000 votes but narrowed Van Orden’s margin over his 2022 opponent.

In an era of intense polarization, dwindling swing sweats, and blatantly partisan redistricting, it is possible contenders like Bohannan and Cooke have hit their ceiling. Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden may be the exceptions that prove the rule: that Democrats are strictly a party of the biggest metro areas. But Democrats desperately need more candidates with a populist “Main Street” message and a humble background—Bohannan grew up in a trailer and Cooke waitressed full-time during her campaign—if they are to ever recover in the heartland. As with the other pragmatic populists, Bohannan and Cooke are fairly liberal by pre-“woke” standards. Both support abortion rights and unhesitatingly attacked their Republican opponents on the issue; both similarly affirmed the importance of border security. But their economic message was otherwise front and center. Like Dan Osborn, a pro-union independent who fell short in his compelling bid to unseat Republican Senator Deb Fischer in Nebraska, Cooke and Bohannan emphasized the importance of stronger public schools, support for local businesses and small farms, better wages and economic diversification, lower health care costs, and sound regulations that curbed fraud and political enrichment.

There is nothing new, of course, about these ideas. In the vein of Wilsonian progressives and New Deal liberals, the pragmatic populists have tried to bridge the interests of workers, small business owners, independent farmers, and consumer advocates; personal experience, in a sense, counts more toward an understanding of political and economic power than the ideologies fashionable among today’s urbane left. In turn, they have offered a reinvigorated “people over profits” message, albeit one still oriented toward the economic growth and opportunities struggling Americans hope for.

Many big-city Democrats, blue-state governors, and blue-state Senators insist the party has made great strides to reclaim these very principles and court disaffected workers. But as Alexander Stern of Commonweal magazine observed in the wake of Harris’s defeat, strong coalitions “cannot be created by technocratic fiat from above and controlled by means of staged events and strategy sessions in tastefully decorated DC offices.” Trump’s rise and the pandemic recession may have jolted Democrats out of complacency, but new policies by themselves can’t forge a big tent. There is an unavoidable vacuum in districts and regions that Democrats have gradually ceded to the right, either because local offices and rural congressional seats are unglamorous prizes or because, until very recently, the “kitchen table” issues that arise from corporate mergers, junk fees, financial scams, wage theft, and plant closures were not considered salient by the party elite. In the end, changing course to defeat Trumpism cannot be sustained without elected officials who intimately understand the economic and social challenges of left behind America.

This state of affairs is all the more dispiriting given that, twenty years ago, DNC Chair Howard Dean pursued a 50-state strategy for party renewal. It was a bold plan, though economic progressives were watchful. Back then, it seemed that “Paul Wellstone Democrats”—liberals like the recently deceased Minnesota Senator who held firm to Rooseveltian beliefs and goals—were on the outs in a party that had few misgivings about globalization. The Great Recession subsequently relit the populist flame, and a left flank led by Bernie Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus was able to push Joe Biden and other members of the establishment toward economic reform. Yet in the interim, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party—resurgent at last—saddled itself with activist dogma and Orwellian ways of speech. This ultimately ran counter to regaining the trust of working-class voters.

Now the party is again at a crossroads. The pragmatic populists represent a plausible way forward, but to gain strength they must simultaneously pull coastal progressives toward a big-tent strategy and persuade the party elite to refine the post-neoliberal vision Biden introduced. Whether that is possible before the 2026 midterms is another matter. With the partial exception of Osborn, whose grassroots campaign proved irresistible to progressive media, it seems that insurgents who don’t conform to every tenet of identity politics are either quietly marginalized for their apostasy or are dismissed as dull “moderates.”

---

There are steep costs to such a rigid view of party-building. Gerrymandering has locked Democrats out of power in once-competitive states such as Ohio and Missouri; outside of Georgia, North Carolina, and those districts in the Deep South with large black populations, the party base has withered across the Southeast and central Appalachia. Ignoring or forfeiting winnable races elsewhere promises to estrange the party from rural and small-city workers for a generation. And it tells those scrappy insurgents who put everything on the line that their communities and values aren’t worth the long-term investment. That compounds the perception that party insiders don’t want to be challenged—and that maybe they are indifferent to hard right Republicans expanding their ranks, despite eight years of exploiting fears that Trump’s GOP will destroy democracy and the rule of law.

Making matters worse are the party elite’s pervasive short-sightedness and its fixation on charismatic, celebrity-like personalities who might recapture the Obama magic. The old-school machine politics in which aspiring local leaders rose through the ranks almost seems honorable in comparison to what passes for party building today. Social media, party-adjacent news sites that imitate the right’s cheap partisanship, and incessant fundraising emails have largely supplanted the humble but vital work of traditional retail politics. Even when donors are moved to bundle large sums for competitive House races, there seems to be little talk about laying the groundwork for mundane but important offices. In fact, the ability to throw around money has become a poor proxy for the strength of purpose which made happy warriors out of mid-century liberals. As the Harris campaign demonstrated with ferocious speed, today’s Democratic elite can raise and burn through cash with nothing to show for it.

Hence, the great obstacle the pragmatic populists must first surmount: a begrudging unwillingness by the national party to truly cultivate new voices from different regions. The bizarre impatience with America’s vast middle which has become so palpable since 2016 must be stamped out by new leaders who grasp that making democracy resilient is a ground-up endeavor—and who know that humbling trials are sometimes the prelude to transformative change. Ultimately, the story of the second Trump era will come down to this: whether Democrats rediscover the politics that once made liberal government popular and strong in both red and blue areas of the country. If the new populists can hang on, they just might shift the balance of power—in their party, and the country—for the better.