What the Democrats Should Do

Jonathan Bernstein: “Collectively, my best guess is that the Democrats should do…nothing. At least, nothing as a direct response to the 2024 elections. Yes, they lost. Yet it appears that it will wind up being the closest presidential election since 2000 in the national vote, with Trump on his way to a lead of somewhere south of two percentage points. It turned out that this was a terrible year worldwide for incumbents (of any ideological position), with the US Democrats among the best performing incumbent parties. Between that, and the fact that the Democrats lost less ground compared to 2020 in the seven hotly contested states than in the rest of the nation, there doesn’t appear to be any good reason for the party to panic.”

“Besides, changing as a reaction to one election in order to win a future one is rarely the reason that a losing party recovers to win again. That’s not what happened for the Democrats in 1976, 1992, 2008, or 2020. Election-year recessions almost certainly had more to do with the most recent three cases, and 1976 had an earlier recession, a lot of inflation, and Watergate all going for them.”

“So change for change’s sake is probably a bad idea, as is change for 2024 electoral reasons.”

Related for members: The Unsatisfying Answer for Why Democrats Lost