The Democratic Party is still trying to fully understand what went wrong in the 2024 presidential election. They are torn between forces urging moderation and those that urge the party to embrace a populist message that will energize their base. To bolster their case, moderates point to expert polling that shows a larger percentage of Americans recoiling from the positions Kamala Harris took in 2019 and 2020, positions she could not fully refute given the brief nature of the campaign and her limited speaking schedule. Progressives can use the recently popular speeches of Bernie Sanders and AOC to bolster their own argument for what the party should do moving forward.
Both of these arguments have their own merits and should be drawn from in different ways. Many centrists and abundance liberals support the vast majority of the Bernie Sanders agenda. They have rejected elements of the social justice left that Sanders has inherently rejected over the past decade. There is a certain amount of common ground that can be found if both sides stopped sniping at each other and focused on finding places of agreement.
Such agreement needs to happen soon. With Trump’s poor polling and potential economic disaster on the horizon, Democrats have an opportunity not just to win the 2026 midterm elections but to conduct a sweep. Such a victory would be essential to ensuring that the party produces a majority that lasts long enough for them to implement their policy ideas.
Democrats need to win big
The American political system as it currently exists is geared towards conservative success. At least one house of Congress has shifted in nearly every midterm election dating back to 2006. This back-and-forth makes it difficult for Democrats to pass anything that needs more than two years to be fully implemented. Republicans can take over and sabotage efforts at either funding or implementation. They have the ability to cut spending and refuse to extend any policies that need positive actions.
Instead, Democrats need to do what it takes to unite behind a winning message that will allow for a sizable victory. That victory can be large enough to withstand the thermostatic nature of American politics. Democrats need so many seats that they can take a loss of 40 or 50 in the next Democratic president’s midterm and still hold the House. They can accomplish this feat with a landslide in 2026 and then a modest victory in 2028 with Democratic candidates riding in on their presidential candidate’s coattails.
The goal for the party needs to be victory in both the House and the Senate by as large a margin as possible. They need to support winning, viable candidates in every possible race. The party should expand the Senate seats they are targeting and make compromises with robust candidates like they did with Dan Osborn in Nebraska in 2024. Such achievements will help lead to the kind of enduring social legislation that will help the party win back its brand as the party that cares the most about average Americans.
Republicans fumbled the House in both 2022 and 2024. They should have acquired a durable majority that could withstand a significant loss in 2026. Instead, they now have the thinnest of majorities and are likely to give up control after only a few years in power. Democrats have the kind of opportunity they had in 2020 and may not have again for a decade. They need to take advantage of it.
