No one believed us.

Or at least no one we needed to persuade.

We told them Donald Trump represented an existential threat. We told them the Supreme Court had removed guardrails that existed in his first term. We told them even more women would lose their ability to make decisions about their bodies. We told them that giving Trump control of Congress would enable him to strip away health care. We told them his tariffs would explode our economy and his affection for dictators would destroy global security alliances. We even told them he was a fascist.

No one believed us.

They did, however, believe some other things. They believed that Democrats were responsible for runaway inflation. Despite historic investments in manufacturing and construction, they believed Democrats were against working people. They thought Democrats were consumed with cultural issues. They took as gospel that Democrats were for open borders. They never believed that Joe Biden had the capacity to lead them for another four years.

So as the political druids seek answers in the entrails of exit polls, the rest of us can see what happened here. For the second time in three national elections, and despite a valiant effort by Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party surrendered the White House to a deeply flawed, venal, profane, shambolic figure who has been allowed to shape a grievance movement into a political order—with his lone close defeat made possible only by a global pandemic. That’s astonishing.

This loss is the result of Democrats’ diminished credibility across issues and is clear across constituencies. No amount of bankrupt finger-pointing by campaign staff in petty hot-take stories can explain the scale of this failure or help us to escape the gravitational pull of Trumpism as it fuels new voting habits in the youngest citizens. Conversely, the attempts to rally for the future fight with claims about our organizing prowess can also be dispiriting when they boil down to that same old talking point of every losing campaign: “We did better in the places where we organized!” Well, one would hope so, after an unseemly drop of $1.5 billion over just 15 weeks.

This is also a moment when acid-penned opinion writers will gain momentary altitude with columns about the dragons they hope to slay within the party. We heed them at the peril of our coalition. While this is a time for hard truths, we have to understand that we won’t win durable majorities in the future through excommunications from our tent. Speaking across our differences with humility and the extension of some grace is the only path back through these darkening woods.

The Instincts of Insurgents

I don’t know that this election marks a realignment for America. But I do know that the center-left had better act with an urgency as if we think it does.

We should recognize that the results in the United States cannot be disaggregated from historic downturns for governing parties across the world. The pandemic environmental trends are indisputable—but Trump’s proclivities presented a unique opportunity for a narrative shift by Democrats that might have overcome these headwinds.

Inflation has a powerful pull on our psychology, and we just haven’t experienced it enough in our recent history to appreciate its overwhelming chokehold. It really fractures people’s lives. I was part of the team that helped to reelect President Obama despite near-double-digit unemployment. We did so on the strength of a competence argument and a contrast to an institutional Republican who never seemed like a champion for workers. Inflation is a different beast, one that’s everywhere all at once and feels impossible to tame.

And Donald Trump is of a different political species, with a gift for pulling on the thread of one crisis and weaving it into his broader narrative of security: economic security + personal security = cultural security. He has a centering story of “strength,” and winds up most everything that happens into that narrative.

Democrats, on the other hand, always seemed to elide the inflation issue over three years of industrial economic reassurances that didn’t deal with its simple reality. Even the tactically named Inflation Reduction Act was not taken up in a graspable story that could feel at all like a confrontation with the thing itself or with the interests who were seen to be exploiting the supply crisis. The Biden Administration’s inspiring legislative accomplishments across climate, health, and infrastructure all were part of what seemed like an Adhocracy with no talent for pulse-taking, as the operation careened from interminable Capitol Hill vote counts to “something, something, democracy.”

I do think there is a deepening battle between open and closed society models playing out in an increasingly unequal and dislocated world. The United States is not alone in reckoning with this tension. However, playing defense on behalf of a broken status quo can’t be our strategy. Liberal democracy has to show it can deliver results on the things that matter most to people in a system increasingly prone to capture by business and special interests. Otherwise, empty promises built on othering and resentment will always find mass appeal.

When we have governing moments in the majority, we need to move with the instincts of insurgents within institutions. When we’re out of power, we need to be alert to the tendency to fall into comforting resistance instead of discomforting renewal. These are moments when lazy thinking can congeal into consensus. Everybody will restate their priors in the recriminations. This is a time for Democrats to extend hospitality to the heretical.

What might institutional insurgency look like, inside and outside of governance? The same truth holds in either universe. Politics is a simple business that tracks across 1) demography, 2) geography, 3) economic trends, and 4) the bullhorn.

The first two are easy to anticipate and to shape activism toward, particularly with the outdated Electoral College, which reduces our focus to a brutish math. The third pillar, the economy, is also an organizing agent if one’s mission is always driven by the values of fairness, opportunity, and dignity. The bullhorn is of course the operative townhall mechanism of the day—which is now fully unruly social media. Each of these pillars are open to insurgent agency and renewal of the rules of the road.

Be Bold, Democrats

In or out of government, the center-left must insist on investments to build nimble membership organizations on the ground—of, by, and for the working class—that are connected to material goals. There is far too much reliance on short-term tactical messaging and electoral door knocks as substitutes for actual organizing. Campaigns and their leaders are mercenary by necessity. As a former labor hand, I wince at how loosely the term “organizer” is thrown around by well-resourced campaigns that leave little behind in their wake. Without that deep non-electoral infrastructure in key states, we are well and truly doomed. We know that workers in organizations who are tied together by economic outcomes are a totally different force than atomized people at home watching Fox News and getting sucked into online rabbit holes.

This true organizing should come with forward-looking, relatable policies to match rapid economic, demographic, and technological change in the face of a Trump presidency inevitably dominated by culture battles and the tax tug-of-war.

Trump says he’s going to deport 15 million undocumented immigrants (never mind that there most likely aren’t 15 million to deport). Even in the minority, Democrats must offer a meaningful, responsive immigration management approach that doesn’t painfully fall back on rote D.C. talking points about the need for a “bipartisan bill.” It’s imperative that they get out of their defensive crouch and lead with a plainspoken vision to disrupt a busted asylum system, invest both in stepped-up border security and integration in receiving communities, and make damn clear that they will relieve the enormous stress on local public services. Voters need to know that Democrats hear them on immigration problems before they can hear them on solutions.

Even in the minority, Democrats need a frame for the family economy, with an unapologetic push for policies that lower the cost of big-ticket items like homes, elder care, and health care.

Once they determine a story to which they can tether their policies, Democrats must leave their scripts at home and dive without harness into social media. And when they arrive, they need to act like, well, people. In order to build credibility, they need to do stuff that isn’t politics—like play video games with Hasan Piker and talk about everything from music to Ozempic with Theo Von. They should have honest conversations on controversial topics, because voters want leaders who can acknowledge nuance.

From here on out, Democrats need voters to catch them trying. Trying means fighting with bold ideas on the affordability crisis, like massive public investment in housing or universal long-term care for seniors. Trying means doing so on podcasts and livestreams and YouTube. Trying means grounding democracy rhetoric in reforms the public can rally to, like term limits for an undemocratic Supreme Court and innovations in voting systems in both red and blue states.

Let’s grow some believers.