Reinventing the Democratic Brand

Jon Gingerich

Was anyone really surprised that Donald Trump won the election? In the inevitable post-mortem period of finger-wagging that’s ensued since, Kamala Harris has been criticized for everything from failing to connect with middle America to not distancing herself from Biden’s policies regarding the economy and immigration. The war in Gaza was to blame. She was too far to the left. Or not far enough. Some of these points have merit, but no autopsy would be intellectually honest without discussing the larger underlying issue that doomed Harris’s campaign from the start.

We’re currently witnessing the greatest realignment of our major political parties in more than a half-century. One factor that contributed to Harris’s loss is that we live in a country with perilously low trust in institutions, and the Democratic Party is now seen as the party of institutional loyalists. And these views aren’t entirely unjustified.

For decades, Democrats were the disruptor coalition. They confronted prejudice and fought for free speech and due process. They moved the country forward on issues like income inequality, gay rights and reproductive rights. (Who could forget when Democrats were assailed by conservatives in the ’90s for their “moral relativism?”) Republicans, by contrast, were stodgy killjoys stuck in the wrong era. They were uncultured and intellectually incurious. They were—and are—famously anti-science, supported a tax agenda that favored the wealthy and had retrograde views on anyone who wasn’t a white man. They also didn’t realize the electorate was growing increasingly diverse, and as a result, their ranks shrank. Reflecting this, the popular vote in almost every presidential election between 1992 and 2020—with the exception of 2004—went to a Democratic candidate.

But somewhere, the roles flipped. The Democratic Party went mainstream, then became increasingly coastal, increasingly elitist, emblematic of the very bureaucratic establishment it fought against. The party’s working-class base saw its concerns sidelined in favor of academic nuttery that appealed to ten percent of the party. Shaming campaigns and language policing became the order of the day. (So much for free speech and due process!) Working people fled in droves. And when a wave of populism hit the country, the right begrudgingly embraced it with Trump. When it arrived on the left, in the form of Bernie Sanders, the Democratic machine shut it down. In an odd twist of fate, Democrats effectively became the status quo, and Republicans found themselves in the default position of being the party to disrupt the new order.

It can’t be overstated that Trump benefitted from the most diverse coalition of voters in recent memory. He drew more support among Black Americans than any Republican candidate in 48 years. His support among Latino voters effectively tripled in some parts of the country. Nearly 60 percent of Teamsters supported him, which was unthinkable a decade ago. In fact, the only demo to move deeper into the Democratic column was college-educated whites. What does that tell you? A Pew Research Center study reveals that 50 percent of U.S. adults now think the Republican Party represents the interests of “people like them,” an 11 percent increase from just a year ago. Meanwhile, only 43 percent said the same about the Democrats, a four-percent decline from 2020 and an eight-percent decline from 2016. The takeaway is clear: The country moved in one direction, and the Democratic Party moved in the other.

The Democratic Party isn’t the only institution on the chopping block. Consider what role our media landscape played in the election’s outcome. Digital platforms are where an increasing percentage of Americans are getting their news these days, with independent media sources like podcasts boasting audiences that now dwarf shows on major TV networks. These outlets set the news agenda while “legacy” media brands—besieged by layoffs, closures and dwindling readership/viewers—struggle to keep up, often by recycling news that first broke on digital platforms. Trump benefitted from this informational divide, connecting with audiences on siloed, fact-free digital outlets that reinforce viewers’ hermetic worldviews, while Harris largely relied on reaching the masses via a gate-kept media machine whose influence is a shell of its former self, reaffirming the former’s standing as an “anti-establishment” voice and the latter as a member of an “elite” class that fails to recognize where most Americans get their news these days.

Trump went on Joe Rogan’s massively popular podcast, a move that was allegedly turned down by the Harris camp. Harris instead relied on interviews with “60 Minutes” and Fox News’ Bret Baier. It’s clear whose strategy won out. Harris’ Fox appearance garnered 7.8 million viewers and her “60 Minutes” spot earned 5.7 million viewers. By contrast, Trump’s appearance on Rogan received 47 million viewers. Consider it our version of the 1960 TV debate between Nixon and Kennedy: Trump won, in part, by meeting audiences on the margins outside of mainstream media influence in a digital ecosystem that’s quickly becoming Americans’ primary source of news.

All these factors underwrote the narrative that the Democratic Party is a dying brand that has grown out of touch with most Americans. My guess is the Democrats will get a chance to claw their way back to relevancy soon (leave it to Trump to make the country yearn for an alternative). The Party would be wise to start prepping for this comeback now by confronting the public perceptions that put them in this position in the first place.