The 2024 election shattered—or should shatter—illusions that sustained Democrats’ hopes. Demography did not save the party, nor did Dobbs. And neither did fear for the future of democracy. Donald Trump is continuing to build a multiethnic, working-class party, while Democrats are left with a coalition of college-educated whites and Black women (24 percent of Black men voted for Trump!) that will not yield reliable majorities.

Since I cast my first vote in 1968, the Democratic Party has undergone several setbacks. 2024 strikes me as a combination of 1980 and 1988. In 1980, we encountered a new Republican coalition that reached deep into our base. In 1988, we learned that this coalition was powerful enough to outlive its founder. We had to change, and we did. Starting in 1992, Democrats won the national popular vote in seven out of the next eight presidential elections, and an Electoral College majority in five out of eight.

Not this year. One fact that carries particular sting is that Donald Trump will end up winning not only the Electoral College but the popular vote. In 2000 and 2016, Democrats could blame the Electoral College “tilt” for their losses. Now they are out of excuses.

The Harris campaign spent hundreds of millions more on paid advertising than did the Trump forces, and Democrats had a much more extensive field operation as well. These tactical advantages did not come close to closing the gap. The fundamentals—dissatisfactions about the economy, immigration, and the Biden presidency—drove the outcome.

I hope that the familiar circular firing squad will quickly give way to the honest and searching analysis the party so desperately needs. Here are some issues we must ponder.

Four Hard Questions

First: In this new phase of American politics, class—defined as different levels of educational attainment—has a greater impact on voters’ choice than does race, ethnicity, gender, or age. But there are nearly three voters without four-year college degrees for every two college graduates. Running a large deficit among non-college voters makes every national election an uphill battle for Democrats. Whence an urgent question: What can the party do to improve its standing with an increasingly multiethnic working class?

Second: The phrase “people of color” is an ideological construction, increasingly detached from reality. Hispanics are not African Americans; they are immigrants, with the classic immigrants’ trajectory. As my co-author Elaine Kamarck and I have long argued, they are the Italians of the twenty-first century. They are focused on a future of upward mobility, not a past of white oppression, and they will reward policies that help them move up. More than two-thirds were born in the United States, and many see illegal immigrants as threats to their hard-won economic and social gains. What can Democrats do to stem their losses in this large and rapidly growing share of the electorate? (And while they’re at it, they might ponder the exit polls that show a plunge in support for Democrats among the disparate groups that pollsters typically lump together as “Asian.”)

Third: The effort to mobilize women on the issue of reproductive rights was a major disappointment. Early polls suggest that Vice President Harris was able to raise women’s share of the electorate only marginally while receiving a smaller share of their votes than Joe Biden did four years ago. At the same time, her support among men was only 42 percent, down 8 points from Biden’s showing in 2020.

It’s an easy reflex for Democrats to decry sexism, and no doubt that is a part of the story. But we should ask ourselves some harder questions. Did Harris’s emphasis on abortion send the message to men that she was less concerned about their problems? Has the tendency to attach “toxic” to “masculinity” sent the message to men that we regard them as a problem? Have we paid enough attention to the fact that the new, education-based economy has worked to their disadvantage over the past four decades? Do we believe that working-class men can or should adopt the norms and beliefs toward which many college-educated men have moved during the past two generations? Are Democrats willing to make room for cultural diversity in gender relations?

Fourth: From time to time, Democrats stumble badly over cultural issues, and the past five years were the latest iteration. Harris never quite recovered from the positions she espoused during her first run for the presidency in 2019, and the Trump campaign used her endorsement of taxpayer-funded operations for incarcerated transgender individuals (including immigrants in the country illegally) at that time to portray her as outside the moral mainstream.

Whatever one thinks about the merits of Harris’s stance, it became a significant liability for her campaign. By 2012, the movement for marriage equality had moved public opinion to the point that both Joe Biden and Barack Obama could endorse it without paying a political price. This would not have been the case even a decade earlier—probably even four years earlier. As our greatest presidents have recognized, timing is essential in politics, and not even the boldest leadership in the White House can force the pace of change. Moral leadership is important, but it is not omnipotent.

Getting too far from the public on contested cultural issues can be costly. Defying one of his party’s most influential advocacy groups, Donald Trump wisely refrained from endorsing a national abortion ban and eventually pledged to veto such a measure if it reached his desk. Had he not done so, he might have lost more votes from suburban Republicans. The Democrats’ interest groups exert constant pressure on the party to adopt their positions in full; the party’s leaders and candidates must learn how to resist their demands when acceding to them would be politically counterproductive. For example, immigration is a cultural as well as economic issue, and the Biden Administration’s failure in this area left Harris with no effective response to Trump’s charges. Democrats cannot allow this vulnerability to persist.

Choosing Our Battles

Working through these and other matters will take years of hard work—and ultimately a primary contest where different visions of the future will compete for the party’s endorsement. Meanwhile, with Congress and the executive branch unified under Republican control, Trump’s second term will pose urgent challenges on multiple fronts. Here are my recommendations for the strategy Democrats should pursue.

First: Abandon the language of “Resistance,” which suggests that they do not accept the 2024 elections as representing the will of the people. Democrats and their affiliated groups and constituencies are the opposition, not a guerilla army, and they cannot win political battles with demonstrations, no matter how large and loud. Nor can they win by impeding the implementation of lawful policies, no matter how misguided they may be.

Second: We must distinguish between policies that are unlawful or unconstitutional, on the one hand, and those with which we disagree, on the other. We should oppose both, of course, but only the former represent a challenge to constitutional democracy. If we expand the idea of democracy to include everything that we believe to be right and good, we will weaken our hand by turning democracy into a partisan concept. For example, transforming thousands of federal workers protected by civil service laws into political appointees who can be dismissed at will is a bad idea, but it is probably permissible under existing statutes. It may impede the effective operation of government, but it is not per se undemocratic. The remedy for illegal or unconstitutional measures is litigation supplemented by organized public persuasion, and Democrats should be prepared to challenge them.

Our greatest challenge may well be an unfettered chief executive who is prepared to press his powers to the hilt. President-elect Trump’s early move to bypass the Senate with recess appointments would facilitate the selection of senior officials whose only visible qualification for office is unswerving loyalty to him personally. Credible reports suggest that he is preparing a purge of senior military officers. And to slash outlays, he is reportedly planning to overturn the 1974 law that prevents the President from “impounding” (that is, refraining from spending) funds that Congress has appropriated. Congress has spent decades transferring discretionary power to the President, moreover, and the Supreme Court’s expansion of presidential immunity makes matters worse. The country is facing the largest peacetime expansion of presidential power in its history—and a dangerous erosion of the constitutional system of checks and balances.

There is no short-term answer to this danger, to which both parties have contributed. We should do what we can to prevent the worst abuses while resolving to cabin presidential power the next time we have the opportunity to do so. For example, we should throw a spotlight on the choice about appointments that the new Republican Senate majority must make as soon as Trump takes the oath of office. If they agree to surrender their core constitutional right to advise on and consent to presidential nominations, we should subject them to an organized drumbeat of criticism.

In the meantime, finally, we should focus on defending the institutions that sustain our constitutional order, such as a free press, an independent judiciary, a diverse and vibrant civil society, free and fair elections, a military that is loyal to the Constitution rather than any individual or party, and rights for individuals and minorities that are insulated from the vagaries of popular majorities. We should sound the alarm at the first signs that the Trump Administration is attacking any of these pillars, and we should be prepared with specific plans to protect each of them.

I conclude with a plea for realism. The arc of the moral universe does not move inexorably toward justice; history records innumerable examples of regress as well as progress. Nor, regrettably, does history have a “side,” or take sides, so it makes no sense to say that Donald Trump is on the wrong side of it. He has been able to mobilize dark passions—above all anger, fear, and the desire to dominate—against everything we stand for.

I suspect that our own errors have helped open the door for him. But this is no time for recriminations or regret. The task before us is to defend what we can while regrouping our forces and developing new strategies to guide the next advance.

As we do, we should remember that human affairs are above all mutable. Right now, Republicans are triumphant. But their standard-bearer has made sweeping promises that will be hard to keep. If the American people expect a broad-based decline in the prices they pay for goods and services, they are certain to be disappointed. The housing shortage has taken more than a decade to develop, and it can’t be eased overnight. Huge increases in tariffs could rekindle inflation. The tactics necessary to carry out mass deportations may well outrage a majority of Americans, as did the separation of children from their parents during Trump’s first term. The Republicans’ congressional majorities, especially their narrow House one, may not last beyond two years.

If we keep our heads and choose our battles wisely, we can limit the damage and regain the people’s confidence while preparing for the next Democratic administration.