Surfing the Waves of American Politics
Next steps for Democrats in a time of exile
US political parties regularly suffer electoral wipeouts. They stagger to shore, dry off, mourn, refocus, surface new leaders and messages, attract new supporters, and fight back. Nothing is automatic or guaranteed about this process, but after a few cycles, you notice the rhythm. You understand Mark Twain’s claim: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
In the coming years, Democrats will again dance to the deep rhythms of American elections. We will be forced to make common-sense policy corrections and update our political tactics to connect more consistently with voters without college degrees. Ready or not, we will rally around new leaders.
Let’s take a closer look.
The Rhythm of Presidential Politics
Presidential election cycles follow a familiar three-act plot.
Act I: Voters toss out parties during a crisis or after two terms. Since World War II, Americans have only once given the same party three consecutive terms in office. George HW Bush won in 1988 after eight years of Ronald Reagan. Voters tossed him after one term.
In sixteen of our past twenty elections, Americans voted out the party that had served two terms. The exceptions other than 1988 involved a severe and well-timed crisis. High inflation defeated Carter and Biden. The global Covid pandemic defeated Trump in 2020.
Down ballot victories are part of the cycle. In seventeen of the past twenty presidential elections, voters added more Senators, Congressional representatives, and usually Governors from the president’s party.
Act II: Exile. The party defeated for the presidency rethinks its positions and tactics, finds new leadership (or, more rarely, doubles down on defeated leaders), and prepares for midterm elections. It’s depressing – and it’s the time when exciting changes happen. Democrats, welcome to Act II.
Act III: The Midterm. Midterms correct general elections. Since the Second World War, we have held twenty midterm elections. In seventeen, voters punished the incumbent president by voting out senators, representatives, and governors in the President’s party. Only a severe crisis breaks this rhythm. For example, the September 11 attacks in 2001 meant that voters did not punish Bush during his 2002 midterm. He took this as a vote of confidence and invaded Iraq four months later.
Other countries have different patterns, but Covid-induced inflation led 2024 voters in almost every modern democratic country to dump incumbents. Voters in countries as different as Japan, South Africa, South Korea, and Britain have rejected incumbent parties. John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times illustrated how historically unprecedented this reaction has been.
Covid shaped the 2022 and 2024 elections in more subtle ways. Democrats expected a retaliatory red wave during the 2022 midterms but barely got a ripple. The ongoing pandemic and a strong reaction to the Supreme Court repeal of Roe vs Wade meant that we lost only nine House seats and gained a Senate seat. For the first time since 1934, the president's party lost no state legislative chambers or incumbent senators. For the first time since 1986, an incumbent president gained governorships in a midterm.
Hooray, right? But because the red wave was so small, Democrats entered 2024 convinced that “Dobbs and Democracy” could persuade voters to oppose Trump. Surely, voters would overlook high inflation, a porous border, and an obviously aging candidate. Nope: we handed Republicans their first popular vote victory in twenty years.
Election dynamics are not set in stone, but these electoral patterns have important implications for Democrats in 2024. Absent a significant crisis, we can expect US voters to smack Trump hard in 2026. Republicans will face severe headwinds in 2028 when Trump will be older than Biden is now and voters will treat the GOP as though it had served two terms.
It is easy to see how this might play out. Trump is appointing comically unqualified cabinet officers. He has promised political retaliation, mass deportations, sharp tariff increases, deep cuts in taxes and the federal workforce, and restrictions on the independence of the Federal Reserve. His supporters will punish him if he fails to deliver on these promises and are equally likely to punish him for inflation and overreach if he carries them out.
Common Sense Course Corrections
Democrats are entering Act II, licking our wounds and debating our future. Like most parties in exile, we need to reassert practical, common sense measures demanded by our core constituents. We should avoid fads originating in faculty lounges and double down on foundational ideas that have served us well for decades. Democrats should reaffirm that we care more about equal rights, working family wages, health and retirement insurance, education, and housing than Republicans do. We fight pollution, business fraud, corruption, and street crime. And we defend our overseas allies.
Matt Yglesias published a Common Sense Democrat Manifesto that captures this well. I reproduce it below with comments to specify steps that Yglesias only implied.
Economic self-interest for the working class includes both robust economic growth and a robust social safety net. Reject the de-growth ideology of many environmental and NIMBY nonprofits. Defend Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The government should prioritize maintaining functional public systems and spaces over tolerating anti-social behavior. Address theft, vagrancy, opioid abuse, and public disorder with social services where possible and law enforcement where necessary.
Climate change — and pollution more broadly — is a reality to manage, not a hard limit to obey. Bring down the price of energy — because cheaper energy is greener energy. Repeal the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which does more to restrict housing construction than protect the environment. Develop robust environmental scorecards to encourage and reward states like Texas that generate and transmit more cheap, clean energy.
We should, in fact, judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin, rejecting discrimination and racial profiling without embracing views that elevate anyone’s identity group over their individuality. (Matt’s words, my emphasis).
Race is a social construct, but biological sex is not. Policy must acknowledge that reality and uphold people’s basic freedom to live as they choose. Keep the government out of gender transition decisions, just as we wish to do with abortion and marriage. Require women athletes to have two X chromosomes.
Academic and nonprofit work does not occupy a unique position of virtue relative to private business or any other jobs. Prosecute corporate fraud, pollution, and discrimination, but do not demonize businesses for being large, profitable, or successful.
Politeness is a virtue, but obsessive language policing alienates most people and degrades the quality of thinking. End land acknowledgments and mandatory preferred pronouns. Acknowledge that “Latinx” and “LGBQT+” do not describe coherent groups and remove the phrases from public discussion.
Public services and institutions like schools deserve adequate funding, and they must prioritize the interests of their users, not their workforce or abstract ideological projects. Strengthen public capacity by substituting reasonable severance payments for job security in public employment, even if doing so limits public employee bargaining rights.
All people have equal moral worth, but democratic self-government requires the American government to prioritize the interests of American citizens. Immigration to the United States is like college – available only to those who apply, are admitted, and register. You cannot just show up in class unannounced.
Become a Worker-Friendly Party
OK, but how do we do these things? By updating our political tactics to reach, motivate, and turn out non college voters, especially men. Last week’s election revealed Democrats to be the party of high income voters. This must change, not by deliberately alienating high-income Democrats, but by enlarging the tent to attract low and middle income voters.
Here are ten tactics to help achieve this. None involve social media and most are available to Republicans as well as Democrats. They will strengthen the party that most consistently and convincingly embraces them.
Face facts. Confronting reality is the first job of leaders and an absolute requirement of political parties. Denying crime, disorder, income inequality, housing costs, runaway illegal immigration, healthcare affordability, or inflation has never improved them. America has a working class, but pretending that all working people feel solidarity with an abstract “class” is an especially unhelpful delusion.
Hire staff and run candidates who have held jobs not typically performed by college graduates. Democrats cannot be a worker-friendly party with staff and candidates drawn entirely from coastal professionals with elite degrees. Democrats have increased the number of our candidates who are women, young, gay or lesbian, and immigrants. However, we attract fewer veterans, men, and people without college degrees. These are large and valuable groups.
Only a tiny fraction of Democratic candidates have done work that does not require a college degree. Those who do are often very effective. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez operated an auto repair shop with her husband before running for Congress as a Democrat in a Washington district with five percent more registered Republicans than Democrats. Voters just re-elected her to a second term.
Build successful states and cities. Last week, urban counties moved 11 points right compared with 2020 because too many are badly led. No mayor or blue state governor unable to deliver affordable housing and reduce homelessness will be a credible presidential candidate. Gavin Newsom cannot brag about California if Texas remains the new Golden State.
Fight inflation, even at the cost of higher unemployment. Gallup, Pew, exit polling, and private campaign polls confirm that Americans hate inflation. Is it true? After all, economic sentiment polling is heavily mood-affiliated. People who hate Biden hate his economy and will love the same economy the day that Trump takes office. Nonetheless, voters respond so negatively to inflation worldwide that elected politicians ignore it at their peril.
Raising interest rates to fight inflation slows down the economy and can increase unemployment. Voters prefer unemployment to inflation because it affects fewer people. Persistent unemployment is hardly cost-free, however. It affects some of our most vulnerable workers and can badly diminish their lifetime earnings.
Promote and reform private sector unions. Well-constructed labor unions can raise pay, reduce income inequality, and provide a voice for hourly workers. Public sector unions do not count – they already represent 30% of all public employees and they fund the politicians they bargain with. The private sector employs far more people, is much more demanding, and is only six percent unionized. Worse, our labor laws make it impossible for private-sector unions to recover. I have written about this here, here, here, and here, so ‘nuff said.
Don’t classify voters in ways they do not classify themselves. Democrats too often cluster people into identity groups so meaningless that they lack a cuisine. Nobody eats at a “Hispanic” or “Asian” restaurant because these categories are abstract, not fundamental. Indeed, many people do not identify strongly with their ethnicity. They see themselves as accountants, Koreans, runners, mothers, Puerto Ricans, or murder mystery readers.
Attack wealthy companies and individuals who do not contribute their share. Building a political movement requires leaders to rally followers against a common enemy by inspiring righteous indignation against injustice. Populists know this, even if some days they don’t know much else. Successful presidents use populism as a tool but resist the temptation to make it their entire toolkit.
Look closely at Democratic congressional candidates who outpolled Harris and prevailed in tough races in red districts. Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico, Marcy Kaptur (probably) in Ohio, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington appealed to workers by condemning the behavior of economic elites—even elites who voted Democrat.
Promote high-wage jobs and high-quality public services. Democrats should never ignore how much pay matters to non-college voters. AP exit polls say that Democrats earned 43 percent of the non-college vote last week, down from 47 percent in 2020. We lost more men than women.
Delivering high-quality public services is important on its own merits and to build confidence in public initiatives. Gavin Newsom has worked hard to fix the DMV, which many Californians dread visiting. Today, the DMV enables most paperwork and payments online and manages visits far more effectively. Public schools, not so much.
Wave the flag. Kamala Harris ran an admirably patriotic campaign. In a world with plenty of centrifugal forces that push us apart, patriotism reinforces the civic virtues that unite us. We must affirm the value of high-quality public services for everyone and not try to advance some subgroups over others. Thoughtful patriotic messages help do this.
Shine a light on the “shadow party.” In their book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? John Judis and Ruy Teixeira describe the emergence of a “shadow party” of media figures, foundation leaders, nonprofit administrators, actors, activists, and advocates. Government programs that dispense grants of any sort make this unavoidable. At the Labor Department, I was stunned by the persistent swarm of nonprofits that attached themselves to any agency with grant money.
The shadow party is prone to corruption and to shaping the Party in its own image without leadership consent. Like Obama, Harris removed race and gender from her talking points. But the shadow party organized creepy events like “White Dudes for Harris” or “Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders for Harris” that placed ethnic identity front and center, regardless of campaign strategy. The ACLU gave Harris a questionnaire in 2019 asking her to share her views on free transgender surgery for prison inmates who were illegal immigrants. (Harris gave an unhelpful answer with no help from the ACLU). We need to disclose our shadow party and sharply reduce their influence (as do Republicans).
Recruit, Develop, and Expose New Leaders
Parties that lose elections experience a leadership vacuum. As a result, new leaders step forward, and some develop a national following. Media speculation about which Democrats are hot and which are not is one of the few things that will keep Trump out of the headlines during the next 18 months. This is a time to keep an open mind about new leadership.
Americans tend to elect Senators and Governors to the Presidency, especially if they have served as Vice President. Since World War II, we have elected thirteen men to the presidency (We have had fourteen presidents, but Gerald Ford took office when Nixon resigned and was never elected President.)1
Six were former senators. Nixon and Obama each served less than one term in the Senate; JFK served just over one term. Truman served almost two terms. LBJ served two terms. Biden served six. Most senators think that they would make fine presidents. Some do.
Four were former governors (Carter from Georgia, Reagan from California, Clinton from Arkansas, and George W. Bush from Texas). Governors have usually developed stronger executive instincts than legislators.
Three were neither (Eisenhower was a general, George H.W. Bush a VP and CIA Director, and Trump a celebrity).
Four had been Vice President. Ten of fourteen postwar Vice Presidents sought the presidency. Four won (Truman, Nixon ‘68, LBJ, George HW Bush, and Biden). Five were nominated and lost (Nixon ‘60, Ford as president, Humphrey, Mondale, and Gore). Two ran but were not nominated (Quayle and Pence).2
History suggests that Democrats will likely surface new leaders from current or recent Governors or Senators.
The senators mentioned most often are Mark Kelly of Arizona, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Chris Murphy of Connecticut. This is a solid but not spectacular bench.
The governors most mentioned are Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Wes Moore of Maryland, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, former Governor of Rhode Island. This is a stunning bench and represents the strongest pool of Democratic candidates.
The losing ticket. VP Kamala Harris has donor lists and name recognition. I’d be astonished to see Democrats nominate her again, but politics can be surprising. In 2020, I would have bet money that Republicans would never again nominate Donald Trump. Tim Walz is an unlikely candidate. Americans rarely nominate losing VPs for president. (One exception: FDR ran for VP and lost in 1920).
Three other categories of candidates receive extensive press coverage but are much less likely to earn a nomination.
Cabinet members typically need more electoral experience. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is a gifted communicator, former presidential candidate, and small-town mayor. I expect him to run for Governor of Michigan before he runs again for President.
Prominent progressives. Legislative leftists often struggle to gain traction nationally, but I would not rule out Brooklyn Congresswoman AOC or Bay Area Congressman Ro Khanna. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are shopworn. But so was Biden.
Celebrities, CEOs, and billionaires. Now that Trump has become a political titan, many celebrities or self-made billionaires (Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, tech billionaire Mark Cuban, and Morgan Stanley chief Jamie Dimon) are eying the White House. They are intelligent and articulate but inexperienced at national politics. Most have egos the size of their wallets and make terrible candidates. Ask Mike Bloomberg or Tom Steyer. Overall, it's not an inspiring category – unless Michelle changes her mind.
Democrats will now get to work. We will use our time in exile to prepare for the 2026 midterms. We will fight over manifestos and tactics. Irredeemable leftists will argue that Kamala moved too far toward the center and ignored Palestinians. Someone will shout racism. Better leaders will emerge. And we will stumble forward, as humans always do.
Weirdly, the US has had five presidents who were never elected. John Tyler became president after William Henry Harrison’s death just one month into his term. Millard Fillmore became president after Zachary Taylor’s death. Andrew Johnson became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Chester A. Arthur assumed the presidency after James Garfield was assassinated. Like Gerald Ford, none of these presidents were re-elected in their own right.
Surely you are curious as to which postwar VPs never ran for president. It was Truman’s VP Alben Barkley, Nixon’s VP Spiro Agnew, who resigned due to scandal, Ford’s VP Nelson Rockefeller, and Bush’s VP Dick Cheney. None had a prayer of winning.