The Democratic Party has to change if it wants to win
Waiting for Trump to fail is not a strategy. A platform for working people is.
By William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck
The 2024 election, though close, revealed trends that could undermine the ability of the Democratic Party to command a national majority anytime soon. The party’s problems extend well beyond messaging and communications to include policies and values. The Democratic Party needs to face these problems honestly—and to change course, as it did in the late 1980s and early 90s.
During the Obama era, many Democratic strategists assumed that a coalition of educated, mostly white voters and minority groups—Black, brown, Native American, Asian—would form a sustainable majority. To be sure, white people without college degrees had long since shifted to the Republican column, but they represented a declining share of the electorate. By contrast, college educated white and minority voters were increasing their share—a formula for long-term Democratic dominance.
But Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016 put this assumption in doubt, and his 2024 triumph blew it up. The results showed massive shifts toward him among Hispanics, Asians, and Black men. Republican support expanded from its white working-class base to include a more multi-racial and multi-ethic coalition. Trump’s share of the working-class vote rose from 51% in 2020 to 55%, and the Democratic share fell from 47% for Joe Biden to just 43% for Kamala Harris. This is crucial because working-class voters constituted 57% of the national electorate in 2024—and fully 60% in the swing states. In a similar vein, (because income and education are highly correlated), Harris’s share of voters making less than $50,000 annually was just 48%, down from Biden’s 55% four years earlier.
Meanwhile, efforts to improve Democratic performance in other parts of the electorate fell flat. Despite Harris’s persistent efforts to rally women around the threat to reproductive freedom, she fell short of Biden’s share, even among suburban women and even as the pro-choice movement scored victories in referenda across the country. Trump fought her to a draw on Social Security, Medicare, and threats to democracy. Her only significant gains came among Americans earning more than $100,000 — not a great look for the self-styled “party of the people.”
Post-election surveys left little doubt about the causes of Harris’s defeat. Working-class voters were hard-hit by inflation and high prices; they rejected Biden’s immigration policy; and they thought that Democrats focused too much on fringe cultural issues distant from working-class concerns. Overall, Trump was trusted over Harris on border security, crime, the economy, and the cost of living, while Harris was more trusted only on abortion and climate change, which weren’t the main drivers of the vote.
Their flight from the Democratic Party reflected ideological concerns as well. Fifty-eight percent of working-class voters though that Democrats were “too liberal,” compared with 47% who thought that Republicans were “too conservative.” The gap between the candidates was even wider: 49% thought that Harris was too liberal, compared with just 31% who thought that Trump was too conservative. Tellingly, only 40% of working-class voters thought that Harris was able to stand up to extremists within her party, while 65% thought that Trump could stand up to Republican extremists.
It is hard to exaggerate the collapse of the Democratic brand. Among working-class voters, majorities saw the Republican party as competent, in touch, on their side, patriotic, and strong, while Democrats’ ratings along these dimensions averaged just 36%. The tag line to Trump’s most frequently run ad “They’re for they/them, we’re for you” encapsulates the Democrats’ cultural problem. The Democratic Party’s insensitivity to widely held cultural values manages to block receptivity to whatever other policies it advocates.
These trends are altering the balance between the parties. Between 1991 and 2021, the adults who identified as Democrats consistently outnumbered Republican identifiers. But for the past three years, Republicans have led Democrats on this crucial measure. Not surprisingly, Republican voter registration is narrowing the traditional Democratic edge. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Democrats’ lead has fallen from more than 900,000 in October 2016 to 325,000 in October 2024. By early 2025, it had fallen further, to just 189,000.
This trend extends to the Electoral College as well. Since 2000, five states where Democrats were competitive—Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, and West Virginia—have shifted decisively to to the Republican column. By contrast, only two states—Virginia and Colorado—have moved in the other direction. Net, the Democrats’ ceiling has fallen by 44 electoral votes, the equivalent of the Blue Wall. And if current trends continue, they will lose another 11 votes after the 2030 decennial census.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump scored huge gains in many Blue states, reducing the Democratic victory margin from 16 to 6 points in New Jersey and from 11 to 6 points in New Mexico. If this erosion continues, Democrats could find themselves in a permanent Electoral College minority.
Turning these trends around will be neither quick nor easy. Many of the Democrats’ most committed supporters will resist the changes needed to increase the party’s appeal to working-class voters, especially on cultural issues. But the alternative is a Republican majority that pays little if any attention to Democratic concerns in areas such as climate change, criminal justice, and minority rights.
Between now and the 2028 presidential election, Democrats must think hard about the causes of their current plight—and listen hard to the core discontents that so many working-class voters are expressing. After the midterm elections, presidential candidates representing new approaches must step forward to participate in what must be a vigorous debate over the party’s future.
Waiting for Trump and the Republicans to fail is a hope, not a strategy. Change is hard, but the status quo is a prescription for failure. There is no choice: Democrats must take their future into their own hands.
Elaine Kamarck is the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program. William A. Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, where he serves as a senior fellow.
I fully agree with your last paragraph, BUT... let's not forget several items you have not mentioned.
First of all, ignorant voters falling for the PINO orange felon's lies hook, line and sinker. He fought Kamala to a draw on Social Security, Medicare, and threats to democracy? Unbelievably ignorant.
"Overall, PINO was trusted over Harris on border security, crime, the economy, and the cost of living, while Harris was more trusted only on abortion and climate change...?" Except for the border issue, MAYBE, the Democrats were better at all the other ones than the republicons, where PINO himself and many of his ass-kissers are the biggest criminals of all. Again, unbelievably ignorant.
Then there are the lazy Democratic voters who do a lot of complaining, but never get their asses of their sofas to actually vote. And the very many young people who can't be bothered to organize or vote. These last two issues are the crux of the matter - too many Democratic non-voters.
Finally, there is the fact that a very large percentage of American voters are sexists. Way too many men will never vote for a woman, and wayyyyyy to many American women will never vote for a woman.
This is another article that tells the Democrats that they are wrong because they lost. It also implies that in order to win they have to become more like Republicans.
Other commenters have already pointed out that this is misguided. Does the writer mean that since so many Republican voters are bigoted and misogynistic the Dems should be more like that? The Republicans, with a lot of dark money, especially from Musk, were able to make a big issue about trans people. They still are. This is the result of their new media, including X, Fox, and social media, constantly spreading lies and divisiveness.
The only way Democrats need to become more like the Republicans is they need to be more emotionally charged, and much more aggressive. They need to frighten people about the damage the new administration is doing, and also by showing clearly, in an understandable way, how the Dems would be different,
A couple of days a go, I received a message from a new group that promised to get out there with new ads that would take-on the Republicans. The ads made me sad. What they said was accurate, true, and exactly what someone like me would want to hear. They were much too reasonable. Not Good!
The Dems need to show hospitals being closed and people dying at the ER doors. They need to show floods ripping through NC, and Trump saying he wants to get rid of FEMA. They need to show foreign born mothers with protective status who are mothers of American citizens, who are also working necessary jobs like nursing, and paying taxes, being taken away in front of their children by ICE. These things are happening, and if there are’t videos, you can do dramatizations and put that in small print. They need to show how the billionaires in Trump’s cabinet live (yes, show their houses) while they are cutting your benefits and giving a bigger tax break to themselves.
The Dems have been given the gift of Elon Musk, who is mean and crazy, and show how he has been given possession of all of your data and that he intends to use it for his own profits. Also, how the cuts he is making are not money saving they are life-threatening to people who don’t make a million dollars. Show everyone the cartoons of billionaires dropping off $1 million each to Trump to protect their fortunes. Can you do that?
ALSO: Every Democrat in Congress has to find ways to go viral by attacking their colleagues across the isle. They have to ask if after allowing the FBI to be used as Trump’s attack dog, letting foreign government bribe government officials, and also allowing our Intelligence Service to be in the hands of a Putin sympathizer, will they stand up to Trump/Musk/Vance when they declare the Democrats a terrorist organization and then send in the goons from January 6 to drag the Democrats out in handcuffs, or worse. Show them what an authoritarian state looks like! Stop being gentile and reasonable!!! Tell the truth — graphically.