What's Next For Democrats.

We Messed Up.

The Wrong Message For The Wrong Person.

At the root of the left wing movement in America, of which the Democratic Party at least ostensibly represents, has always been a worker oriented message in the fight against the establishment. You could think of the successes of FDR and ‘The New Deal’ or Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act. The are the movements, the moments, that defined the Democratic Party for generations.

Which is why it has always rubbed me as an odd decision for the party to drift away from this, both in policy and rhetoric. Now don’t be fooled, members of the Democratic Party are still the only congressmen and women pushing for these economically populist policies ranging from raising minimum wage to expanding healthcare access despite Republicans best attempts to masquerade as the new party of the people.

The problem is, those members and this message don’t represent what is at the heart of the party anymore. Which allows the avenues for Republicans to swoop in and sway these voters. As Democrats seemingly are more obsessed with pulling from the middle or from former conservatives who are feeling disaffected with the party than they are in securing their own constituency.

And as someone who wants to see left leaning policies win in America, as I believe the data and facts support them, it irks me to my core to see Democrats repeating these same easily correctable mistakes.

And the truth is this strategy has never worked. Which makes it even more frustrating. It didn’t work for Clinton, he won by virtue of Perot pulling more from Bush than from him. It didn’t work for Al Gore, nor John Kerry. Obama won more off the strength of his ability as a communicator and a probable boost from the potential of the first black president. And we all know how it worked for Hilary and Kamala respectively.

Former Democrats Who Ran To The Center

Which got me thinking, what does work for Democrats? Would it work now? Is it viable for the future?

And what I found was both interesting, and reinforcing to my initial feelings on the subject. Democrats need to center their message on economic populism, and stand strong in their defense of minorities on social issues.

These are two issues that both the majority of Americans are in agreement on, and that are already heavily associated with the Democratic Party. Together, they make up an almost unbeatable constituency in the electorate.

And more importantly, when Democrats focus on these two things they typically win. Or at bare minimum perform better on average.

So I’ve gathered a few pieces of evidence I thought were crucial to the argument of why Democrats need to run more left leaning, focusing on the economic messaging of old more than this new strategy of leaning right on multiple issues and focusing on moderate conservatives.

The Kamala Harris Campaign

My first piece of evidence is also the most recent piece of evidence, with that being the Kamala Harris campaign. Now, it is admittedly a small sample size being 100 days and unprecedented in nature but I do think the shifts we saw were pretty telling about the effectiveness of the strategies used.

As we can see from the chart above, courtesy of Jacobin, the populist messaging Kamala centered her rhetoric around early on faded out and was non-existent by election day. Terms like “livable wage” “taxing the rich” and the focus on holding corporations accountable quickly dissipated from the campaign trail, coinciding with the plateau she inevitably hit in polling and support.

Where she was surging early when focusing on the populist message, especially among younger grassroots first time donors. But once the corporate donors came in, the message shifted, and support began to slow up.

We even saw her shift away focus on a policy level, where early on the major focus was her $6,000 child tax credit plan, small business tax cuts and her plan to penalize price gouging. However, by the end of the campaign she had watered down the price gouging proposal, and made little to no mention of these more populist tax credits, instead only highlighting her housing assistance proposal to any meaningful extent.

This last graph on this I wanted to highlight is how overall the focus of her campaign lost its anti-elite rhetoric, focusing instead on the battle for democracy. Which I think was a major mistake, the democracy line is a much more niche attack line with far less people invested in it. Especially compared to the innate rage most people hold for the elites, the establishment and rightfully so.

I mean come on, how many people do you know who feared for democracy in 2024 versus those who thought their boss wasn’t treating them how they deserved? The messaging should’ve been clear, focus on tabletop issues.

Why They Failed

I think a major ground the Democrats failed on was not understanding a simple truth. Campaigning on “Trump Bad” isn’t effective for those who don’t already have a negative opinion of Trump, though there is admittedly a bit of nuance to this.

One of the reasons it isn’t effective I think speaks to an even larger issue in how the party operates, and that’s in the choices they make with media. Not only in the way Democrats long have shied away from going on these more non-conventional spaces, the Joe Rogan’s or the Adin Ross’s. But in how they have shied away from building up these same sort of voices on their own side, choosing instead to rely on mainstream media that consistently becomes more outdated and inefficient.

Which in today’s day and age of digesting media where disproportionately people are using social medias to source information. Sites like YouTube host independent media voices to a level not previously reached and even streamers and podcasters alike chime in with their political opinions. It truly is the digital age of the town square, and Democrats were just a step behind in controlling the field where it had shifted.

This allowed Republicans to have disproportionate control of the framing of issues. I mean when the world’s richest man buys a social media platform and uses it to amplify right wing voices and misinformation, its going to be a bit of an uphill battle on any issue. Framing really sets the initial perspective in which people are introduced to these issues, and of course the first impression is the hardest to break.

For example, its harder to convince American’s that minimum wage should match cost of living if they think it will cause grocery prices to shoot up. Of which data shows is not exactly true. Or that everyone deserves healthcare if they think profit should be prioritized in the health industry. Despite the fact were now almost the only developed country to not guarantee our people healthcare. This is why Democrats losing the framing battle, the new media battle are two devastating blows that led to this collapse in losing the presidency, senate and house.

Where Do We Go Now

I think its long overdue for the Democrats to go back to representing the interests of the worker. Under Joe Biden we saw surprising gains in unionizing, major NLRB rulings, and a president walking the picket line for the first time.

It can not be understated how massive this is for labor, yet Democrats barely articulated it on the campaign. This should be the focus, rather than allowing Trump to potentially steal these voters if they resonate more with the anger he stokes at economic issues than the threat Trump poses to democracy. And this election showed they most definitely did.

If Democrats were leaning into economic populism themselves there would’ve been a counter at every turn for Donald Trump’s attack lines. Lets imagine this together.

“Oh you’re upset about your wages? We are too. Democrats are the only party who has proposed a minimum wage raise, and annual earnings are higher under Biden than trump, does trump support higher wages?”

“You think grocery prices are too high? So do we, which is why our FTC works to prevent mergers that allow for price hikes and why we are pushing to penalize price gouging practices from these corporations, meanwhile trump wants to enact tariffs that will even further raise prices.”

“Are you in crippling debt paying for a life saving health treatment you or a loved one needed? Well Democrats think everyone should be guaranteed health care that actually covers your needs, and Trump thinks private companies should decide what healthcare you get.”

And to be fair to Democrats, there were moments where they attempted some of this. I think they were hindered in part due to not wanting to speak poorly of the economy under Biden, which kept them from being able to address peoples rage and concerns with it.

Where on a macro level under Biden the economy is strong. GDP has exceeded expectations regularly, inflation now under 3%, wages having outpaced inflation for multiple years.

But the reality is we’re a few years removed from a pandemic and people still feel those effects. Especially in a capitalist economy where situations like this exacerbate struggles to squeeze out more profit.

And truly only one party offers solutions to this. And its not the party wanting to impose tariffs that work as sales tax. Or tax cuts that lead to the need for cutting things like social security, which keeps over 60% of seniors out of poverty, or medicare and medicaid. Or the party that thinks minimum wage should stay at $7.25, but the Democrats failed by not making this election about that.

Instead choosing to make it about Donald trump. Where the reality proved nobody is better at making things about Donald Trump, than Donald Trump.