The History Lesson Democrats Can’t Afford to Forget

Well, that was a thumping, wasn’t it?  Even optimistic MAGA fans didn’t see Donald Trump winning the popular vote, taking control of the Senate and the House, and sweeping all seven swing states. He came within five points of taking New Jersey! Exit polls showed more than half of Latino men voting for him! 

The results are devastating for Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the Democrats: They lost the nation. So what on earth do they do next? 

One approach would be to repeat what they’ve been doing. Resist! It’s what they chose the last time Trump won. In the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory, America was stunned. There had never been a president so immune to normal analysis, and, as such, so unpredictable. Each time he opened his mouth, Trump exploded political norms—and Democrats responded in kind. Being an opposition party was not enough, they believed. Instead, they would fight his very legitimacy. They built this idea of resistance into their very fabric, and it infected every aspect of progressive society—from raging late-night talk show hosts to left-wing prosecutors determined to put Trump in prison.

But while the Democrats won in 2020, the resistance ultimately failed. Democrats spent nearly a decade telling Americans that Trump was an existential threat to the republic. And what happened? Americans from all walks of life voted for him in overwhelming numbers. The Democrats wanted to erase Trump from the political scene; instead he now controls it. 

Perpetual outrage was not the path to power. Let’s be honest, it was a total disaster: The resistance pulled on pink hats, and hollered about fascism—and then gasped with shock when the nation chose Trump again. 

Democrats Have Recovered from Worse Defeats

So the party is in a pickle. If the Democrats want a shot at winning in 2028, then they need a new direction. Losing parties survive by figuring out why they lost and trying something different next time. In the meantime, they take incremental wins when they can. They act like an opposition, not a resistance. 

The good news for Democrats is that they’ve been here before. Forty years ago, a few centrist renegades mapped out a course that eventually saved the party from oblivion. If you are devastated over last week’s electoral blowout, well, Trump’s victory was a squeaker compared to Ronald Reagan’s landslide over Walter Mondale in 1984. The Democrats were not just in disarray, they were on life support. 

It’s hard to overstate the scope of that Reagan victory. Mondale, who was vice president during Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency, lost everywhere except his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Reagan swept up everything else. A conservative Republican won Massachusetts, New York, and Hawaii, for God’s sake. 

And yet only eight years later, the Democrats found their savior, a young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton. 

Democrats Were Backed by Special Interest Groups, Not Voters

Mondale’s loyalty to interest groups inside the Democratic party was his Achilles’ heel. Gary Hart, a senator from Colorado and his chief rival in the primary that year, summed up the problem as follows: “You have to reach [those voters] who don’t feel represented by the AFL[AFL-CIO], the NAACP, NOW [National Organization for Women], or the Sierra Club.”

But Mondale could not see beyond the demands of the noisiest factions in his coalition. His campaign attacked one of Reagan’s most innovative initiatives—research into space-based missile defense—claiming “killer weapons” would send the arms race with the Soviets spinning out of control.

And Reagan countered with one of the most effective ads in American political history. 

Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it’s vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who’s right, isn’t it smart to be as strong as the bear?

Al From, one of the men who would eventually remake the Democratic Party, watched all this with dismay. In one sense, Mondale was an effective candidate. He unified all the special interest groups in the party. 

Except for one thing.