People, Not Groups: How Democrats Can Retool Their Message

It sounds odd, but the scale of Vice President Kamala Harris' defeat may double as a silver lining. By losing all seven battleground states, suffering their first popular vote loss in two decades and, most importantly, watching President-elect Donald Trump prevail with a working-class coalition that was once their own, Democrats have an opportunity to turn despair into action.

Unlike 2016, when they won the popular vote while losing by a sliver in the swing states, or 2020, when they rebounded and won both, Democrats now have a mandate for change. And not just on tactics or points of emphasis: the breadth of their defeat, and the number of voters who abandoned them, present the party an opening to rethink their orientation around affinity group politics.

The question is whether they'll be emboldened or cower when one of "the groups," as identity-based organizations are invariably called, speaks up.

But the reward is alluring. Whoever can retain the party's traditional commitments to the most vulnerable and appeal to those voters who just rejected Harris will emerge as the Democrats' strongest 2028 nominee and perhaps the next president.

Let's be clear up front, the best tonic for any losing political party is still the inevitable excesses, overreach and failures of the opposition. For all their skills, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were also the beneficiaries of good timing.

In a country this polarized, though, the next Democratic standard-bearer will bear an even heavier burden than those generational talents, because there are simply fewer swing voters available. And if Democrats don't change their appeals, they'll face the same cultural barriers with vast swaths of the country they have in every recent election.

First, they must recognize that they unwittingly seeded the ground for Trump's revival. Their leftward acceleration under his presidency handed him the fodder he needed to portray the opposition as radical.

The shift was well-meaning and even understandable — Democrats wanted to redouble their commitment to those under duress at a time of threat — but it was political malpractice. Look no further than Harris' now-famous support of trans surgery for prisoners. That was a commitment she made in 2019 because she and her advisers thought core Democrats wanted such purity. In truth, they simply wanted to beat Trump — which Joe Biden wisely recognized — but most others in the party misread the moment.

So the more Trump targeted vulnerable constituencies, the more Democrats sounded like campus faculty members attempting to placate radicalized students for whom identity is central. Yet that only further alienated those voters who don't see the world through the same prism. Which was one thing when those voters were blue-collar white people.

"But now there is contagion," as Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) put it.

Boyle, who is white, recalled meeting a Black Democrat from Texas, Rep. Marc Veasey, in the House cloak room in 2015 and, after realizing they had a good bit in common, decided to eventually start a blue-collar caucus.

"I'm an Eagles fan and he's a Cowboys fan, but we have working-class backgrounds," Boyle told me. "We realized if we don't do better with working-class voters we're going to have a real problem. And we both expressed fear it wouldn't just remain a white working-class issue — and now it has spread."

Veasey said the party can't "be so dogmatic" and especially can't live in fear of their intra-coalition enforcers.

"Every time some group tells us to use some language, we get scared or worried we're going to get canceled or primaried so we clam up and look stupid and out of touch," he told me.

Veasey said he wasn't going to seek a caucuswide position in part so he could speak his mind. "I'm just done with the nonsense," he said.

The two House Democrats are hardly alone.

Seth London, an adviser to Democratic donors and veteran of Obama's campaigns and White House, has written a blistering memo aimed at the party's elected officials pleading with them to learn the lessons of this election.

"Parts of the Democratic establishment accepted as gospel the myth that elections are won by mobilizing the 'base' through appeals to group, not individual, identities," London wrote in the 31⁄2-page memo, which I obtained.

Calling for a new cadre of "Common Sense Democrats," London said the reform movement should "begin with a complete rejection of race- and group-based identity politics and a wholesale embrace of a politics centered on delivering the American dream through simple, concrete action."

Already singing this tune is one of the most recognizable names in Democratic politics: Rahm Emanuel. Though still technically the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Emanuel has been his typically unsubtle self since Harris' defeat, venting from across the Pacific to friends and reporters alike about not just her mistakes but his party's structural challenges.

It's unclear what office Emanuel could run for — Illinois governor should JB Pritzker not seek a third term, DNC chair or president would each have their appeal — but his message for Democrats is unmistakable.

"Identity politics did not work electorally and it failed miserably strategically," Emanuel told me.

As a confirmed moderate, Emanuel also has concerns over the party's policy positioning. But here's what's striking: while he and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) may disagree on substance, they'd surely find common ground on the need to deemphasize Democrats' affinity group culture and uplift a focus on economic opportunity.

Which leads to another, crucial point: Stop saying things like "uplift."

Any Democratic autopsy should consider including a what-not-to-say guide of campus and insider lingo to be banned. Much has been made, and rightfully, of Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego's (D-Ariz.) denunciation of "Latinx," but the problem runs deeper.

"Use words that everyday Americans use," urged Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), who significantly outran Harris in her Queens-based district, adding: "If I can't say it to my grandma, I'm not going to say it to my constituents."

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who twice defeated a proto-Trump Republican opponent in her sprawling state, added: "We've got to talk about pocketbook issues and get over the identity politics — that's in the past, I think — and get rid of the buzzwords."

No prominent Democrat has warned the party about the perils of being the language police more than Barack Obama himself. He recognized the risk well enough that he even included a few (sadly forgotten) lines about the matter in his convention speech this summer.

"If a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don't automatically assume they're bad people," Obama said. "We recognize the world is moving fast, and that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they'll extend to us."

That is, Obama continued, "how we can build a true Democratic majority."

The challenge for Democrats, though, is mere vocabulary isn't just at issue.

Too many of their leaders thought for too long that so many voters were animated by bigotry.

"Instead of making tough choices to recalibrate on culture, many Democratic message-makers have hand-waved away our [working-class] erosion under the convenient assumption that most blue-collar whites must surely be primarily motivated by anti-Back racial animus that should never be excused," said Democratic pollster Zac McCrary, who worked on the campaigns of North Carolina Gov-elect Josh Stein and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio).

Then it wasn't just white voters — and Democrats were caught flat-footed.

As former Rep. Filemon Vela, who represented a South Texas district that shifted heavily toward Trump, told me, part of his party's challenge stems from interest group leaders who are more liberal and identity-obsessed than the rank-and-file they purport to represent.

"Their viewpoint is from the Hispanics they know in Boston and Brooklyn, which is totally different from people here," said Vela.

Thinking about Hispanics as a single voting bloc at all is mistake, said former Rep. Joe Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat.

"It's akin to thinking of a white vote," said Kennedy. "We'd never think of white vote as monolith."

Mills said Democrats are seen as for "transgender this and that, every multicultural person," which only hurts them when they're perceived to be "forgetting a whole bunch of other people who don't view themselves falling into that pigeonhole."

They'll also have to make choices on substance. And that will prove more difficult.

Look no further than the backlash Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) drew last week by questioning whether people born as boys should participate in girls sports. But Moulton wasn't alone in questioning perceived orthodoxy and the more who join his ranks, not just on this issue but broadly speaking, will eventually find safety in numbers.

Or at least they ought to.