U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks during an event with fellow House Democratic members on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
It’s been more than a year since the 2024 election delivered Donald Trump a second term as President. The American left has been obsessed with figuring out what went wrong and finding a clear vision as to what they must do next ever since.
Democrats must win back young voters, the working class, men. Don’t betray the Black voters who remain the reliable backbone of the Democratic Party. Defend women’s rights. Find inroads to those red states that used to be purple. Restore the Obama coalition. Fight for democracy. Don’t make the fight about democracy.
Underlying the avalanche of thinkpieces and exit-poll analyses is a worry that there might not even be a next time. Mr. Trump recently conceded that he understands he cannot run for a third term, but the battle lines continue to be gerrymandered and the Supreme Court seems likely to upend the remaining protections in the Voting Rights Act. There’s also a legitimate fear that the National Guard deployment to Democrat-dominated cities, combined with ICE’s ability to racially profile and deport people – sometimes erroneously – will intimidate voters.
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An unavoidable fact of American politics is that there are only two parties, and so both must curate, convince, compel and maintain a coalition of strange bedfellows. While Mr. Trump’s cult of personality, authoritarian tactics, inner circle of ideologues and willingness to punish his political enemies are suturing an array of conflicting interests to the GOP mantle, the Democrats’ central question is whether they can make “Big Tent” politics work in a sustained way for the diverse, conflicting and sometimes adversarial set of voters that comprise the American left.
Possessing a strong dislike for Mr. Trump will probably win the Democrats some desperately needed House and Senate seats in next November‘s midterms, but that glue isn’t powerful enough to hold the patchwork of voters together for long.
The crux of the issue is whether Democrats must move rightward to win those voters they have lost to the Republicans. The way forward, a popular theory goes, is through a more moderate form of left-wing politics. What remains unsaid as part of that theory is the idea that the American left has gone too far to the left. The strategy would be to pitch a big-tent platform without emphasis on racial justice, women’s reproductive rights, Palestinian existence, environmental protection, economic equality, or trans rights, and once Democrats regain control of and stabilize American political institutions, the party could slowly, incrementally – perhaps even sneakily – return to these issues.
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This position is in keeping with the path well-trodden by the American left. The Democratic Party has long included an establishment that is only willing to align its interests with those with whom it disagrees so long as it is guaranteed to benefit disproportionately from the spoils of compromise and collective action. The moderates will always play to get more of what they want – and to get it first – in such an alliance. Once in power, the pendulum never swings back to build progressive priorities into the platform.
This is not a particularly good strategy for building solidarity. It is neither compromise, nor an ethic of care, but rather a transactional trade-off in which winning comes at the expense of your neighbour’s humanity.
Maybe that’s progress. For some, Democrats just need to find a way to win; once they do, they will be better positioned to dust off their usual offerings of modest reforms. But if the dominant forces of the Democratic Party win by shutting down voices from the left – those begging the U.S. government to do something about the pending climate catastrophe, to end the destruction of Gaza and the decimation of the Palestinian people, to revive the struggle for racial justice, to protect trans people and especially trans kids – there’s little evidence that the party will turn back to those issues.
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The Democrats would see a victory as evidence that the best path forward is the abandonment of the progressive causes, in both word and deed.
In order to win back the young, the men, the independents, the whatever, Democrats cannot just be transactional; they must be equal parts inspirational, principled and pragmatic. This is precisely where the left of left excels. Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York, with its lofty democratic socialist platform, was a masterclass in both; Mr. Mamdani spoke directly to the people about their key concerns, while maintaining a hope for a better New York.
Yes, democracy is at stake, but Democrats cannot be content to represent progressive inertia and decaying democratic norms. They have to stand for something, with a vision of America that brings people out, up and together – and won’t readily leave the most vulnerable behind.