The Democratic party fears risk more than it fears Trump
Good thing the Democrats told me not to panic. I’m certainly glad that with a couple weeks to go before the election the Democrats kept sending me emails, insisting they were confident of victory (despite shaky polls) and urging me not to worry because they had multiple paths to victory—whereas Donald Trump had to win almost all the swing states.
David Plouffe, grand master of Democratic strategists, even gave an interview in October where he caviled against Democratic “bed-wetters” who were panicking about the election. He remained confident in the strength of the Democratic ground game and predicted victory in all seven battlegrounds, expressing nothing but disdain for those who lacked his confidence.
In other words, with the election on the line, a top Democratic campaign poohbah bragged about his plan for victory and then criticized his rank-and-file party members, told them to shut up, and refused to change his strategy.
Good thing nobody panicked.
Somehow, ten years into the Age of Trump, the Democratic Party still—still—doesn’t know how to run against him. It is not a failure of candidates, of policy, or of local Democratic leaders and activists. It is the failure of the Democratic party leadership—the unelected Democratic strategists, fundraisers, and lawyers, like Plouffe.
Democratic strategists set the agenda and run the campaigns; they raise the money and advise the candidates. And repeatedly in the last ten years they have refused to budge from their standard approach to Trumpism: Stay calm, don’t do anything rash, and wait for Trump to implode.
This has not worked—and it has not worked because it is fundamentally unresponsive. Rather than address problems, this has been a strategy of making fun of the opposition—and therefore implicitly telling Americans that everything is not that bad. It is not a strategy to employ when things are really bad. And for the last ten years, they have been.
Case in point in non-reaction: I canvassed the great town of Columbus, Georgia for weeks before the campaign, knocking on doors, making phone calls, being sure folks knew where to vote—just what Plouffe and his associates asked me to do. About four weeks before the election I saw a host of yard signs pop up everywhere in Columbus—on highways, at shopping malls, in private lawns. You saw them too, if you were (un)lucky enough to live in a swing state.
They read: Trump: Low Prices. Kamala: High Prices. And Trump: Safety. Kamala: Crime. And so on. There were six or seven varieties. Best political advertising I’ve seen in years.
Surely, I thought, surely the Harris campaign is going to counterpunch with signs of their own. How about Trump: Jan 6th. Kamala: Truth or Trump: A million Americans dead from COVID. Kamala: Kinda Unknown, but not one-million-dead unknown? (We could tweak the wording. I’m not a marketing guy.)
Democrats could have made other signs, pointing out that inflation grew worse when Trump dumped money into the economy during COVID (extra cash + no extra products = prices go up), or that violent crime was actually higher under Trump.
Instead, the Democrats did nothing. No signs came from Harris HQ. No strategy changed when Trump’s publicity team made a bold move to boil down the election to simple, clear message blasted through signage to every swing state. Instead, Democrats stuck to their strategy, which includes the line I’ve heard too many times to count in the last ten years: “Signs don’t win elections.”
This nonsense has been going on for years in the Democratic party. Democratic strategy is based on voter contact and voter turnout targeted to specific areas. Volunteers call and knock on doors to get as many voters out to the polls as possible. To make this happen, Democrats fundraise wildly at the national level.
Somehow all of this doesn’t work—and it doesn’t work repeatedly. Worst of all, it did not work in 2024, when the Democrats were awash in campaign cash. Democratic planners and strategists took that money and focused it on seven swing states. Just seven. They picked states with big cities that they felt they were likely to win. In other words: They did not feel like they needed to convince any voters. They only wanted to win those states, for the most part, that they had already won in 2020. They did not even try for Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, or Florida—to say nothing of the incredibly cheap media markets in places like South Dakota or Alaska.
Meanwhile, when local Democratic activists try something different, they are howled down. The message I received while trying to organize and build the Democratic party in my (red) home county was: Don’t make waves. Sit on your hands. Wait for the grown-ups in the think-tanks to work it out. At one point in the first Trump presidency, I told a Washington strategist about working to build the Democratic party in rural Alabama.
He laughed at me.
Despite what Republicans say, I don’t think the Democrats are out of touch with American people and American problems. People like NATO. People like voting rights. People dislike book bans and Christian nationalism. A number of states that voted for Trump also voted to protect abortion rights in their state constitutions. The problem is that Democrats never seem to communicate any of this to the public. They are never acting, they are always reacting. They never seem to take action. Instead, the dominant Democratic mantra is, “Wait for the problem to solve itself.”
My guess is that Democrats inherited this tendency from the conflict-averse Obama administration—which also followed this policy to a narrow win in 2012 (and disastrous losses in 2010 and 2014). But waiting for the problem to solve itself is not governing. When inflation peaks, Americans do not want to hear that the administration expects it to go down. They want to see someone doing something about it. Spend money putting more products into the market to reduce prices! Change trade policy! Raise taxes on companies that pay their CEOs millions instead of keeping eggs at $4 a dozen!
And yes, I know it’s hard to get those things through Congress. I know it is easier to try and win narrow elections by doing nothing. But that isn’t what governing is. Governing involves making hard calls, and enacting policy through law—not through agreements and meetings with business leaders and lobbyists. At the very least, have the president call Congress back into session seven days a week, and all summer long—which the president does not need congressional authority to do.
Instead, the Democrats wait. They still think the Republicans will implode on their own. There is a Democratic strategist now chuckling, “Well, how did YOU plan to win South Dakota?” And the answer is: I don’t know. BUT I WOULD HAVE TRIED.
The strategists at the DNC and in charge of state parties and the people who make commercials for the Democrats finally cannot claim any more that they can win against Trump. They can no longer claim as they have since 2016 that it is either them or Trump. We relied on them, and they failed. And frankly, they haven’t really won a big electoral victory since 2008.
They all need to be fired. Whoever inherits the mess of the Democratic party in 2025 needs to wipe the slate clean.
Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Professor of History at Auburn University. He is the author of Audible’s anniversary series, The Hidden History of the Boston Tea Party and, most recently, A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom.