Hating the Other Side Doesn’t Work for Democrats

The most successful Democrats in history have embraced American optimism, core national values, and hope for a better future.

The Democrats’ rush to put the 2024 election aside and move into the next phase of “resistance” is understandable. No party likes to dwell too much on how they blew an election. It’s easier to just stew in partisan anger and desire for retribution than to confront your own weaknesses with nearly every segment of voters.

But this approach is misguided and won’t work for Democrats. They are a different party than the Trump-dominated GOP. Democrats cannot mimic what Trump did after his loss in 2020 and expect to win the allegiance of more voters in the future.

Trump’s version of resistance last time around was to deny that he had in fact lost, try to change the results, and promise to get back at all those who “stole” his victory. It worked for him. Trump knew that his voters truly hated members of the other party and “the threat from within” more than they adhered to any specific governing principle or agenda—with promises to restrict immigration, erect tariffs, purge the bureaucracy, and “Make America Great Again” filling in the policy gaps. Trump could easily make his people smile and fight for his re-election by relentlessly ridiculing and attacking Democrats and cultural elites as the internal enemy with a supportive conservative media infrastructure to back him up. Resistance Democrats and “never-Trumpers” made the job easier with his base by pursuing excessive partisan legal maneuvers and over-the-top rhetorical accusations of “fascism.” No matter what charges Democrats hurled at Trump, his voters had his back and refused to accept any of them. In turn, Kamala Harris’s past leftism and Joe Biden’s lackluster presidency—particularly on the key issues of inflation and immigration—made the choice easier for those who weren’t regular Trump voters. Independent and less engaged working-class voters wanted their own “return to normalcy” that Biden and Harris promised but did not deliver after 2020.

So, the “anti-MAGA majority” strategy of Democrats failed and instead fueled a decisive “pro-MAGA” popular vote win and a GOP sweep of all the battlegrounds despite some close results.

Democrats now appear ready to pull their own version of Trump, sidestepping electoral reality (downplaying but not denying their loss) and hoping that negative partisanship and hatred of the other side will galvanize new Democratic majorities across the country. With the House of Representatives so narrowly divided, any “thermostatic” reaction to the next two years of a Trump administration could be enough for Democrats to regain control of at least one branch of the legislature. But the outlook in the Senate and in many states remains incredibly grim. Democrats will need much more than a technocratic repair job to fix their national brand, improve their candidate pipeline, and create plausible electoral paths for governing majorities nationally and in the states.

Looking ahead to 2028, the Democratic Party will need wholesale party rebuilding based on what successful Democrats throughout the party’s history have done best—defending basic American values of liberty and equality for all, fighting for the rights and opportunities of working people, and offering a hopeful vision for America built on economic growth and shared prosperity in all parts of the country.

The easy path of trying to hold the disparate Democratic coalition together through negative partisanship coupled with frontline and swing-state Democrats running away from the party brand and ideology is surely tempting. It doesn’t require any change in approach.

But the harder path of building a successful and sustained majoritarian party is worth the additional time and effort. This will require three major structural changes:

(1) The Democratic Party must create institutions fully committed to core American values. In the aftermath of Citizens United, Democratic politics is now like the “Wild West” of nuttiness with unlimited private money fueling radical politics, ineffective Super PACs, and a non-profit, “shadow party” infrastructure that is completely out of touch with the lives and values of working-class Americans. Think “anti-racist” racism, far-left gender ideology, “climate justice” extremism, police defunding and decriminalization, pro-Hamas activism, open asylum policies, and non-stop identity politics.

This infrastructure must be upended and replaced with groups and institutions dedicated to core American values.

Notably, the effort to rebuild the progressive movement and Democratic Party in response to the George W. Bush administration in the 2000s did not center on these extreme ideas but rather on developing big-tent organizing models and pragmatic policies like the Affordable Care Act and “all of the above” energy solutions to steadily improve the lives of Americans while respecting people’s cultural differences. It worked—and helped to produce two successful terms under Barack Obama who embodied these basic values.

Every effective movement in the Democratic Party’s history to advance civil rights and civil liberties, enact universal social programs, and increase workplace opportunities for working-class Americans has been grounded in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and FDR’s “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear. In contrast, unsuccessful radical movements that attach themselves to the party have consistently rejected these basic American values and, consequently, ended up costing Democrats elections while fueling the rise of the right.

Democrats need more institutions dedicated to the former approach grounded in basic American values, and none from the latter approach grounded in ideological extremism.

(2) The Democratic Party elite needs to be replaced with normal Americans and more working-class leadership. You can’t build a majoritarian party in touch with working people if your current party is entirely run and represented by out-of-the-mainstream cultural elites and college-educated weirdos. The Democratic Party is controlled by rich people, lawyers, and “social justice” activists. They make the decisions, set the priorities, and devise the election strategies. Unlike in the glory days of the FDR coalition, their focus is not on working-class economic advancement but rather on promoting cultural ideas that are wildly unpopular with mainstream voters who are concerned about their finances and stability in life.

Instead of plowing more money into losing strategies devised by out-of-touch party elites, Democrats should take some of the billions of dollars spent every cycle on national elections to fund efforts to recruit, train, support, and publicize more candidates with good old American jobs and regular backgrounds. Rather than spending huge sums of party money on research and messaging projects that treat blue-collar and non-college voters like an endangered species, Democrats should make working-class Americans the central actors in party decision-making and policy development.

This approach certainly wouldn’t be any worse than what is on offer now from credentialed elites and would likely produce more of what working-class Americans actually want in life—increased economic security, safer and more enjoyable neighborhoods, better opportunities for their kids, and the freedom to live by their own values and beliefs.

Democrats are obsessed with diversity so perhaps they should apply these same principles to recruit more Americans who do the hard work of keeping the country running—more small business owners; more military members and veterans; and more Americans who grow the nation’s food, maintain the roads, run the offices, stock the stores, build the houses, develop key energy sources, deliver goods to people, care for our kids, and provide for the sick and elderly. No more rich people or lawyers.

(3) The Democratic Party needs to remake itself into a more democratic and participatory membership organization. “The Democracy” as a political entity is essentially outsourced to a few high-profile leaders, campaign committees, elite party organizations given national status, private consultants, and unaccountable outside infrastructure groups controlled by monied interests. It’s not particularly democratic. Regular party members vote in primaries and participate in general elections. They get hit up constantly for “small dollar” donations and other hysterical spam emails about impending doom if they don’t contribute. Various interest groups and coalition members get a seat at the table. But there is almost zero input from—or even outreach to—regular party members at the state and local level on everything that really matters for building a cohesive party: shared values, policy priorities, agenda setting, local and regional electoral strategies, candidate recruitment, volunteer duties, election spending, and voter communication.

With this time in opposition, Democrats should rethink their top-heavy approach controlled by wealthy interests and try something novel: become an actual membership party with dues, responsibilities, roles, and decision-making authority granted to all members at the local level within a federated structure. The Democratic Party has huge lists of all those who are currently registered officially with their states as party members along with anyone who has ever donated money to a party candidate or cause. Party officials know where they live and how to contact them. Invite these core supporters and others in all 50 states to “join the Democratic Party” with a dues-paying membership card to help fund collective efforts plus explicit directions to help organize local party membership groups with regular meetings and deliberations augmented by regional and national conferences to determine party strategy and agenda items. Let the people run the show.

Rather than continuing to maintain a patchwork quilt of various interests held together loosely for elections every two years, Democrats should become the party they imagine themselves to be—a party of regular working people with political agency joining together to build better lives for themselves and their families.

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Democrats are surely down in the dumps by their electoral flop this year. But rather than ignoring the facts about why they lost and retreating into a defensive crouch of “anti-MAGA” hatred, lay party members and elected officials should take the time before the 2028 primaries to make their party worthy of future support and increased participation by new voters.

Democrats need to build a party grounded in core American values, dedicated to the rights and opportunities of all working people, and committed to an optimistic and hopeful vision for American economic growth and success.

They’ve done it before and—with genuine effort and commitment—can do it once again.