When it comes to gauging the public mood on issues of importance, we tend to be overly swayed by the results of high-profile elections. For example, when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, it seemed to suggest that the country was beginning the process of overcoming its deep history of racism. But other than those conservatives who argued that this showed that systemic racism was over, few were naive enough to think that it marked the end of racial discrimination, and that much still needed to be done. But the feeling was that there was a positive trajectory. Trump’s election in 2012 shifted the mood back towards darkness, suggesting that overt racism was indeed alive and well. Joe Biden’s election seemed to suggest a swing back towards more positive attitudes on a whole range of social issues. But the last election has made many people feel depressed, that we have actually regressed quite a bit, and maybe entering a period that has attitudes more reminiscent of the 1950s when it comes to issues of race, gender, and sexuality.
I think that this deep pessimism is mistaken. There are surface and deep changes that take place in any society at the same time and one must distinguish between them. The former are like the ripples on waves on the ocean that can change fairly quickly while the latter are the deep ocean currents that change slowly. The former are short term swings in attitudes while the latter are deep-seated. We have to remember that relatively small changes in voting patterns, of the order of a few percent, can produce huge swings in election results, and some of that swing may be due to ephemeral factors.
As Donald Trump gets inaugurated for a second term, right now there is considerable gloom among Democrats over the past election, with some arguing that the country will not elect women, and black women particularly, to high office. Meanwhile Republicans are hopeful about their reactionary views are gaining ground. This is a reversal from the mood after the 2020 election.
Democrats are harboring strong feelings of stress and gloom as the new year begins. And many are questioning whether their party’s commitment to diverse candidates – especially women – may lead to further political struggles as Donald Trump is sworn in for a second presidency on 20 January.
…While despondency is hardly unique for a political party after a high-profile loss, that finding reflects the deep depression that has set in among Democrats about the country and their party after Trump soundly defeated Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Such concerns may already be shaping the Democratic National Committee (DNC)’s search for a new leader. For the first time in more than a decade, the top candidates for the job are all white men.
And looking further ahead, the party’s pessimism is influencing early conversations about the contest for the 2028 presidential nomination.
“We knew men hated women. The last election showed, for some of us, that we underestimated the extent to which some women hate other women,” said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a Democratic state representative from South Carolina and former president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. “America is as racist and misogynist as it has always been.”
I think that is too gloomy a view. That the two leading candidates for the post of chair of the Democratic National Community are both white men is seen by some as the party backsliding on the issues of race and gender. But that may be reading things wrong. Women and minorities have broken through that particular barriers and become party leaders and shown that they can do the job. What is needed now is someone, of any race and gender and sexual orientation, who is best positioned to build the kind of nationwide organization that can win elections at all levels while holding fast to the basic principles of equality. This is because the nature of the job has changed.
The DNC job itself has changed over time, now less concerned with setting a vision for the party than the blocking and tackling of organization.
“It’s very much a COO kind of job,” said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran. “It’s making sure that the bills are getting paid, making sure people have what they need. But much more functional than it used to be. If you’re an elected official who wants to have a bigger role in the party, the way to do that is not necessarily by taking this job that is very much focused on, like, making the bureaucracy work.”
…The ideological schisms that existed in 2017 are also gone: This time, there is no candidate from the Hillary Clinton wing or Barack Obama wing or Bernie Sanders wing — a feature of the race that is indicative of the party’s larger leaderless moment.
“The forums in 2017 were a bit more exciting. I don’t say that as a knock on anyone who is running this year, but resistance to [Donald] Trump was a novelty in 2017. Now, it’s a slog,” Holdsworth said. “The conversation has moved on from resistance to how are we going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again? That’s not as sexy but it’s just as important.”
While the top line races went badly in 2024, Tatyana Tandanpolie writes that there were some good signs down ballot. These were the result of hard work by grass roots organizing groups.
Abortion rights enshrined in seven states
Ballot measures seeking to establish or protect abortion rights were on 10 states’ ballots this year as organizers fought to protect access and reverse bans enacted in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. Seven of those states — Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York — would indeed pass measures to enshrine a right to abortion access in their respective constitutions.
…Minimum wage hikes and sick leave
[A] significant majority of voters in four states also voted to tangibly improve the quality of life for workers by approving state ballot measures that will expand labor rights or raise the minimum wage.
Missouri and Alaska both saw voters overwhelmingly choose to raise the minimum wage up to $15 by 2026 and July 2027, respectively, and adopt laws requiring employers to provide up to 56 hours of paid sick leave for workers. Meanwhile, 54% of Massachusetts voters also secured unionization rights for rideshare drivers, empowering them to collectively bargain for improved wages, benefits and work conditions.
In Nebraska, a Republican electoral stronghold, the “Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplaces Act” passed with nearly 75% of the vote, creating a system that allows employees to accrue five or seven days of paid sick leave depending on the size of their workplace. Under the new law, which takes effect Oct. 1, employees will earn at least one hour of paid sick leave for every thirty hours worked. The act also prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for taking that sick leave.
…Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation defeated
As ads attacking Democratic candidates for supporting policies that protect transgender Americans flooded the airwaves this year, the American Civil Liberties Union also tracked nearly 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills making their way through state legislatures. Those bills often sought to limit transgender Americans’ participation in sports, restrict access to gender-affirming care and require educators to forcibly out transgender students in schools.
But the vast majority of those proposals failed. Of the 574 bills the ACLU tracked, nearly 400 have been defeated in state legislatures, including 46 of the 55 bills advanced during the 2024 session in Oklahoma, which had the greatest number of such proposals of any state.
Nearly 20 of the anti-LGBTQ+ bills were in Georgia, where organizers successfully worked to stall the progress of each proposal advancing in the state legislature. All were defeated by the end of the 2024 legislative session, which was one of the “highlights” of the year for Jeff Graham, the executive director of Georgia Equality, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy organization that lobbied state lawmakers.
However bad things may appear now, I think that we should not forget how far we have come. Overt discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality that were so pervasive in the past are now frowned upon in most circles, though it still goes on. While some people seem to feel that they can now openly express disgusting reactionary views, they are not the majority. Most people, even if they have similar views, tend to not openly say so. Let us not forget that there used to be actual laws that justified discrimination. Those are almost all gone.
A good case is gender and sexuality. There is no question that many people are still opposed to homosexuality and wish that gay people were not so visible in the public sphere. But the days are past when one could openly discriminate against them. The hate that is currently directed towards the transgender community is because the people with anti-transgender views seem to think that they can succeed in discriminating against them in a way that they cannot do as easily with the broader gay and lesbian community. The transgender community has become the channel through which to express bigotry. It is the classic bullying tactic, where the bully picks on someone whom they think is powerless. That is why it is so important to show solidarity with the transgender community so that while their numbers may be small, people realize that there is a very large group of people standing alongside them.
from the quoted source within OP,
I don’t think the democratic party understands yet that this is exactly the kind of thinking which makes the democratic party unpopular. Leaders provide vision and hope, and trust that the accountants in positions below them will let them know how the financials are doing. If the head of the party is more concerned with the financial welfare of the organization they will toady to the rich, and ignore those who cannot contribute to their coffers. The democrats outspent the republicans in the 2024 election, and the results show that money does not equate to votes. The promise of bettering people’s lives, even if it is an impossible task, gets more votes than trying to explain obscure policy positions. The point of a representative democracy is to elect people who will take the time to understand those issues so the average voter doesn’t have to.
The voters want change, because they see that their lives have gotten worse over the past 40 years. And they will vote for whomever will promise them a change for the better. Even if those promises are lies. Obama made those promises for eight years, and when it came time to replace Obama, the democrats offered a candidate who wasn’t able to convince the voters that she would change policies to help the citizens. Clinton didn’t offer the hope Obama did; she offered expertise, experience, and stay the course. Trump offered something different. Yes, there were many who noticed before the 2016 election that Trump would be a disaster, but not enough to elect an agent of stagnation over agent of change. 2020 was the electorate throwing Trump out. But for all Biden accomplished, and he accomplished a lot, the 2024 election was once more and referendum on stasis vs. change. Maybe Biden should have blown his own horn more, certainly Harris should have been a trumpet blast on how she would be different than Biden. But they didn’t, and in the end there was not enough interest in stasis to defeat change.
The democrats, to win elections, need to offer candidates who offer for change. They haven’t for twelve long years, and as long as they view their organization as a business they never will. The republicans are reactionary, the democrats are conservative, and there is no political party representing liberals any longer.
flex, when a party holds the presidency, the president is the head of the party. When a party doesn’t hold the presidency, but has a clear winner of a presidential primary, even if not yet nominated, then that person is seen as the leader of the party, even if they aren’t yet so officially. When a party doesn’t hold the presidency and doesn’t have a clear candidate for the next presidency, it is leaderless (though its caucuses in the house and the Senate have their own leaders). The head of the national conference isn’t the party leader, they are merely caretakers until a leader is elected. Nobody expects them to have a vision for anything because they are not going to fulfill a national leadership role of any kind. Who was leading the Republican party between McCain’s loss to Obama and Romney’s nomination? Or between Romney’s loss to Obama and Trump’s nomination?
As for the topic in general: The Democrats’ biggest problem is California. If California’s blue cities don’t solve their housing problems and the state keeps losing people, it is due to lose electoral votes after the 2030 census, which will make it very difficult for democrats to win presidential elections in a while.
Yes, quite right. An estimated 0.6% of the population but facing more overt hostility than at any time in history…
… including the 1950s!
Old newspaper clippings from the 50s show an accepting (albeit sensationalized) attitude towards trans people that definitely makes the modern attitudes of some look regressive by comparison. You wouldn’t think there would be social attitudes in 2025 that make 1953 look progressive but there you have it.
anat,
You’re right, of course, about party leadership, but even if the public don’t know who the party leaders, are the leaders need to be concerned about messaging, various on-going campaigns lower on the ticket, etc. This reads like the national democratic party has just given up for the next couple years. They are handing the running of popularity contests to the corporate board. The whole tone of the article is that, “We really aren’t going to do much for a bit. We going to hand the leadership to an MBA who will keep the lights on. They will run the party like a business. Don’t worry, they’ll start asking for your donations soon.” Even if all this is true, and the democratic party is lacking leadership (which it looks to be), it shouldn’t be said in an interview.
Short-term: Adjuciated rapists and fraudsters get to appoint judges and chiefs of FBI.
Long term: We die and don’t have to worry about the mess.
Really long term: Breed Stage Three Guild Navigators to avoid the worst disasters. The spice must flow.
Hope is good.
Gosh, don’t tell me that they’re taking the hint and learning from their mistakes? Say it ain’t so! (Although I see no evidence of the “black women particularly” thing.)
“Political struggles” is an interesting euphemism for “losing”.
Well at least she’s finally getting the message. Too little, too late to stop Trump becoming President, but baby steps, eh? Taking for granted that women (that well known amorphous mass with only one brain and opinion between them) would vote for women because women is the epitome of the complacency that’s brought us to President Trump again. Oh, women have a diverse range of opinions and might need actual convincing? Who knew?
Hang on, you’re surely not suggesting appointing someone based purely on competency? It’s not the 1990s, grandad, I’m reporting you to HR. There are QUOTAS, doncha know.
Yes! Yes! THAT is how Trump won the election. None of that “vision” nonsense, he made sure he was across all the details of organisation -- what was his mantra again? “making sure that the bills are getting paid, making sure people have what they need”. I mean, it was hard for him to fit that on a red baseball cap but by God it worked for him didn’t it?
They’re not even trying to pretend they’re interested in regaining power.
Maybe not today, January 2025. Let’s see where you people are in 2029.
@1 flex: “The democrats outspent the republicans in the 2024 election”
We don’t really know that; that’s only what’s reported based on public records. Thanks to Citizens United and related decisions, we have no idea how much “dark money” was spent, by whom, and to whom it was given. For all we know, it could’ve been considerably more than the amount shown in the public record. At best, all we can hope to do is count up things like ad buys to arrive at a gross approximation of public expenditures.
I wish I could feel even a smidgen of Mano’s hope but I am in the ‘it’s over’ camp.
As for spending on the 2024 election, that kind of money is just a drop in the bucket in the big picture. The oligarchs have created an entire alternate universe with cable stations, radio and local tv station empires, “think” tanks that inject right wing nonsense into the mainstream under the guise of being dispassionate academic research, they fund and groom young right wingers to go into the judicial system and… I will stop right there.
It is all about the oligarchs and if it is long term trends we are looking at, let’s look at the entirety of human civilization, where (almost) every single society winds up being dominated by pharaohs, kings, oligarchs or whatever they call themselves in any particular time and place.
The oligarchs have won and we have lost. Can we take back power? Let’s see the well-funded plan. The Dems are not up to the task -- what is left?
I feel like the Democrats are getting too caught up in their own discussions about involved political talking points. Sure, I care about immigrants and LGBTQ+ people getting villified because I either am those things, have friends and family who are, or both. But for Democratic leaning voters who aren’t those things and don’t know anyone who is, this is a minor issue.
When people don’t show up to vote it’s because the political parties have failed to reach them. They’re not hearing anything important to them when those politicians speak or they simply aren’t believable when theybdo talk about such topics.
I could talk about the things that are important to me for a silly amount of time. But if my audience isn’t already interested in those things, what are the chances they actually listen to me? Not very high. If I can figure this out and not bore most of the people I talk to even with my limited social skills why is it such a mystery to Democratic politicians? People whose livelihood depends upon their social skills?
100% of white women running for the job have also failed.
Ah so the loss is definitely because she’s a woman. Couldn’t be the almost immediate turn towards bland Democrat business-as-usual policy, could it?
Speaking of far ranging conclusions on from tiny sample sizes, at #3 Silentbob takes a single newspaper page as representative of prevailing opinion for an entire decade. Come on, man.
Mano seems right about the pessimism among Democrats and left-leaning people as even the comments here attest to. But are we going to acknowledge that Trumps win was actually very narrow and Dems still made gains in the state and local levels? Also, Republicans lost by far larger margins in 2008 and 2012 and pundits were droning about how the party is over but they clearly recovered. Ditto with Dems back from 2000 to 2008. And so on. Plus the fact that most governing parties throughout the globe have lost elections since 2020ish, often by landslides, it could have gotten worse. Dems are actually in a better position than what conventional wisdom suggests and the gloom we are feeling is understandable but should not be interpreted as sign of the decline of the party. Is leadership void? I guess but as another commentator pointed out, the GOP had the same problem not too long ago and the Dems have been here before as well during the Bush era. This really was an issue of so many external and even global factors working against the governing party. If the party was reversed in this situation, the defeat would of been similar if not worse. Can we all stop being so fatalist? Can we unite and march on? Trends are trends for a reason, it’s ever changing.