In election after election last year, Democrats had big wins everywhere. Voters who swung hard to President Trump swung hard back. These moments are incredibly rare. Trust me.
It may be discordant, then, to believe the party is still in crisis. It’s much easier to hope that the storm has passed, that the deep unpopularity of Mr. Trump and the MAGA movement and the mess they are creating will be enough to right the ship.
I certainly wish it were so. But to win races in politically unforgiving, even hostile, territory will require the party to overhaul its broken brand and stale agenda, by elevating new faces and new leaders who promise to chart a course enough voters believe in.
Why? Because to have any hope of fixing the root problems that plague our democracy and our economy, Democrats need a majority that lasts, like the New Deal coalition. At least three, maybe more, Supreme Court justices could retire over the coming decade. Without sustained Democratic political power and control during that period, a conservative 8-to-1 court is not out of the question.
That possibility should focus the mind. Right now, Democrats have no credible path to sustained control of the Senate and the White House. After the adjustments to the Electoral College map that look likely to come with the next census, the Democratic presidential nominee could win all states won by Kamala Harris, plus the Blue Wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and still fall short of 270 electoral votes. An already unforgiving map gets more so, equally so in the Senate.
I’ve helped lead three of the past five Democratic presidential campaigns, most recently for 107 days with Ms. Harris. There were fewer voters available to her and therefore fewer paths to victory in 2024 than in previous elections. That has to change. It can, but not with the same recipes, slightly warmed over. It has to be change people can believe in, to quote a slogan from not too long ago. The existential question now is: How do Democrats get back to playing and winning in more places?
First, make our unpopular president and his vassals own everything — higher energy and health care costs, higher food bills, war. The Republicans in Congress stood by meekly as Mr. Trump took a wrecking ball to our economy. They deserve the blame for it.
Democrats won sweeping victories in 2025 despite being less favorably viewed than the G.O.P. They overwhelmingly won voters who hate both parties, an echo of the double-haters cohort from 2016. Why? Because MAGA has complete control. Voters will usually choose a flawed alternative to a discredited incumbent.
That is Task 1. As important as it is, it’s far easier than Task 2. James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.” Democrats must face, honestly, where we are and how we are perceived.
That starts with offering a fresh agenda that voters believe can make a difference in their lives, not the same stuff they have heard from Democratic candidates in recent years.
Each candidate is different. That said, the ideas below should find a home most anywhere.
A plan to bring down costs. Just running against those who have caused prices to skyrocket gets you a lot of the way there, but not far enough. Democrats should promise to investigate and stop price-gouging. Get rid of Mr. Trump’s inflation-inducing tariffs. Build millions more apartments and homes. Establish universal child care. Expand Medicare to cover home health costs for family caregivers. The list of ideas that would save voters real money is long. Make choices, make it short and make it sing. If it can’t be communicated in an Instagram post or 10-second TikTok, go back to the drawing board. Make it about tangibly cutting the cost of living for people, not an ideological wish list.
A plan to create the jobs America needs. A candidate could be honest about their district’s shortage of nurses, police officers, teachers, auto mechanics and plumbers. Through tax incentives, training, tuition assistance and a relentless focus on what’s needed, candidates should call for specific numbers of people to be hired over the next four years. A specific job is more credible than a generic job. This is a national economic security urgency. Auto insurance rates are skyrocketing in part because repair costs are surging, because there aren’t enough mechanics. Many of these jobs won’t be displaced by artificial intelligence, at least not immediately. Candidates must make voters believe that every day they will wake up and work on adding these kinds of opportunities.
A plan for A.I. It will play a much bigger role in the 2026 elections than many people thought just a few months ago, and it could be the dominant issue of the 2028 campaign. A.I.’s role in our lives, society and economy is likely to only grow, especially since we are in a battle for supremacy with China. But we have to ask questions, create some guardrails and force tech giants to be more transparent about their data and algorithms, how they identify deepfakes and about their plans to mitigate the downstream negative effects of their products. Elon Musk has said A.I and robots will kill all jobs. That’s a pretty negative downstream effect.
Start with A.I.’s toxic stew of higher energy costs, job losses, chatbot mental health misuse and misinformation. Then, consider how the revenue from these activities will go to the wealthiest people on the planet. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress want to give tech companies a full green light and tell the country you’re on your own. Democrats should exploit that political opening. I asked ChatGPT to spit out an ad that captured the argument.
Visuals: Empty factory floors. A family sitting in the dark as power bills pile up. A young man staring blankly at a computer screen. A rocket launches, symbolizing billionaire wealth soaring.
Narrator (serious, urgent tone):
“Politicians told us A.I. would make life better. But what did it really bring? Lost jobs. Sky-high energy bills. Mental health in crisis. And the billionaires? They got richer — while we got left behind.
Every time they side with Big Tech, they’re choosing profits over people.
It’s time to ask: Whose future are they building? Because it sure isn’t ours.”
Tagline: “Hold them accountable. Say no to A.I. greed.”
Not bad. Add political consultants to the endangered occupation list.
A plan for reform. There is valuable ground to occupy highlighting where the political system, regardless of which party is in power, is hurting the American people. Candidates should create an ambitious reform agenda. Term limits and lifetime lobbying bans for members of Congress. A ban on stock trading. Rules for elected officials and their crypto holdings. Guardrails for prediction markets. Maybe even consider a constitutional amendment banning presidential pardons. Mr. Trump’s corruption makes such proposals more relevant and powerful. Too many Democrats still stand in the way of cleaning up government. You can’t go far enough in this lane if you are an outsider candidate challenging the broken status quo.
Democrats have come to be seen as the defenders of institutions seen by voters, especially young ones, as badly broken. It’s a deadly political place to be. The party can win a debate about how to reform and modernize government when it’s up against a MAGA worldview where there are no rules at all, especially for the powerful. But not if they remain seen as the standard bearers of a broken status quo.
Hold your own leaders to account. The Democratic establishment too often folds when it should fight and is too in love with process. It wants to perfect the world, but is not maniacally focused on improving the lives of those living in it right now. Too often, it doesn’t apply the same rules to itself that it believes the other side should follow. Candidates should challenge those instincts: Call for new leadership, and say that, if elected, they wouldn’t support the current crop. We saw in 2024 the hunger for more independence from the Democratic status quo. People want change, everywhere.
Candidates should blow the whistle on a poorly performing program or a law or regulation that’s outlived its usefulness. See how Zohran Mamdani captured in his halal cart video the pain that poor licensing rules cause entrepreneurs and consumers. If Democrats get better about focusing on results, cutting red tape and getting things done for people, on time and under budget — what’s become known as the abundance agenda — it makes the populist call for higher taxes on the wealthiest even more powerful.
Swing voters, much like the Democratic base, believe the richest should pay more. But they don’t think the proceeds will be spent well. If Democrats convince them otherwise and follow through, they will avoid being trapped in a debate about whether to choose populism or abundance. Both strategies could work together to deliver results.
The hole Democrats are in is deep. But so is MAGA’s. And it can’t dig out while Mr. Trump is astride the project. It’s a gift in any competitive arena to have your opponent stuck in place. It gives you a chance to improve your position while they are trapped in theirs. This asymmetry won’t last forever. It needs to be seized and maximized. And it all hangs in the balance.
David Plouffe was the campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and a senior adviser to Kamala Harris’s 2024 bid.
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