After last year’s election, I wrote about beginning to untangle the thicket Democrats find themselves in post-2024. The core recommendation I focused on in the immediate aftermath was not to extrapolate too broadly in favor of any single ideology or read into the election much more than what we’ve always known: the candidate perceived as closer to the median voter and how voters feel about the economy are both issues that matter much more than any selective niche focus like the size or type of social media following, amount of money, or particular policy issues.

But, as I’ve started to consider the modern environment and opportunities for each party from the ground up – agnostic to history, broadly focused on their approach to the campaign and the parties’ candidates – I’ve developed a more cohesive theory. Beyond the fundamentals of the race, one particular post-election piece has stood out to me – not for its prescription (it offers few), but for its simplicity, a mere description of the state of affairs: The Economist’s “Democrats need to understand: Americans think they’re worse.”

The last clause of that headline is less clear and definite to me than the first. A majority of Americans did not vote for Donald Trump. In fact, considering turnout, only about 32% of eligible Americans voted for Donald Trump – compared to about 31% for Kamala Harris. Nevertheless, the sentiment seems about right: Democrats failed more than Republicans succeeded, and Americans were disappointed or unmotivated as a result. That this was a surprise belies why I find the first part of that headline more instructive: Democrats do need to come to a better understanding. But of what?

What Are Democrats For?

For starters, Democrats need to understand what they are for. A throughline of Democratic messaging over the last two years – or, in fact, the last ten years – seems to be a general inability of their presidential nominees to substantively and specifically describe what they’re for. Even if you agreed with her policies, Kamala Harris’ stump speeches tended to be broad, generic, feel-good, and platitudinal. You might leave it inspired and comfortable with the Democratic coalition, but hard-pressed to identify more than two or three particular proposals – even if you got to see Beyoncé.

Compare that with the other side. Even if you disagreed with his policies, I think you’d acknowledge that a Trump speech – even if it was less rhetorically coherent – was relatively illuminating. There’s no question what he’s for: deportation of immigrants, tariffs, lowering prices, and cutting taxes for workers and businesses. As I’ve written, this is to some degree a reflection of the parties’ respective coalitions. Democrats need to cater to varying, disparate groups within their coalition, whereas the more homogenous Republican coalition is more ideologically united. But it still suggests a problem for Democrats

This isn’t exactly a new problem, either. Hillary Clinton suffered from a similar crisis of generality, focusing broadly on Trump and coalition maintenance instead of specific policy proposals. Many may feel the same way about Biden, but I’d actually argue Biden’s 2020 campaign was able to adeptly thread the needle here – espousing plenty of concrete and memorable policy proposals, while motivating an expanded coalition and targeting Trump directly.1I’ll even out myself: I suggested what could have been a plausible path forward for Biden after the debate that ultimately fell back on this same approach, tying it back to issues and to what the party is for. Circa 2019 or 2020 Biden probably had the goodwill, emotional resonance, and ability to thread this needle; his ability to empathize and talk up to voters, rather than talk down to them, is and was a deeply underrated quality in his general approach to politics. You can read Michael Lovito’s recent, more personal essay on this to get a better sense of why I think Biden often succeeded in this approach better than Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, or even Barack Obama. Of course, sexism likely played a role here. So did Biden’s good fortune of running against an unpopular incumbent as a net-popular national figure and the fact that he closed in on the nomination sooner and with a far more united party in 2020 than Clinton or Harris in their respective years. 

Nonetheless, Democratic performance in 2018 and 2022 suggests the same issue and solution. In those cycles, Democrats running for Congress and state offices overperformed, and notably ran on clear issues like health care and abortion rights. By and large, centrist candidates were responsible for significant wins in both years, buoyed – particularly in 2022 – by antipathy towards fringe right-wing candidates that secured the Republican nomination in competitive races. 

Consider this: even in 2024, the bright spot for Democrats seemed to be running on abortion. It was a clear, concise, relatable, and effective subject that clearly favored one party’s position. But on its own, no matter how salient the issue may be, it was not enough. Democrats fell short on a clear economic or immigration message, and those were also – or perhaps more – salient issues. Further synthesizing the initial groundwork of my last article, the fundamentals may have set the stage for what issues mattered and why voters were primed to punish Democrats… but Democrats can still do better, and the doom and gloom is short-sighted. There is a path forward.

The Babysitter Problem

As a lifelong watcher of Democratic politics, I’d distill all of this to a relatively obvious starting point: Democrats need to stop being the party that wants to take things away.2It’s so obvious, in fact, that the Harris campaign did seize on the general idea, if not the particularities. Put another way, Democrats need to stop presenting as babysitters – it’s not just that they think they know better than you, it’s that their instinct is to take things away rather than present alternatives.

Reflecting on the last decade, it seems clear that at some point in the last six years, Democrats became the babysitter party. I hesitate to make the easy leap to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns as the point at which this materialized, but it seems like the intuitive place to start. Democrats went from rebuking Trump on matters of liberty, decency, and the everyday, to a reflexive drive to check in, condemn dissenters, and assert their own responsibility on matters of the pandemic. 

To be clear, this is not to say it was not understandable, or was even necessarily unwise. Even if the duration of lockdowns, school closures, other restrictive measures, and outright public shaming exceeded its usefulness at some point, it certainly did make sense originally. I completely understand and sympathize with people who think lockdowns and more should’ve ended earlier, or even later. What I am emphasizing is that at some point this became a policy choice rather than an emergency solution. In 2020 and 2021, Democrats made the policy decision to keep restrictions to protect those most vulnerable to COVID. Whether right or wrong, this was decidedly more paternalistic than the Republican alternative. These policies regulated how you acted, where you went, and how you spoke, either by law or by social norm. This was a far cry from presenting an alternative to Trump on policies like family separation at the border, the judiciary, the rule of law, and on feminism – all issues that dominated 2017-2019.

After Biden won, this instinct within Democratic circles evolved into something more complicated. Early attacks on the Biden administration criticized his coronavirus restrictions, to be sure, but they also focused on vaccination requirements, banning menthol cigarettes, actions against vaping, and the regulation of fuel emission requirements. Soon, a narrative began to emerge that made it easier for claims that Biden would ban gas stoves (not true), hamburgers (not true), or gasoline-powered cars (also not true) to stick regardless of their veracity. 

It also made it easier for Biden and the Democrats to bear the brunt of frustration over things like banning TikTok – even if just three years earlier, Biden undid his predecessor’s own TikTok ban. Again, sticking truly to what Biden actually did, there are sensible policy choices at hand which you are welcome to agree or disagree with: TikTok, cigarettes, vaping, gas-powered cars aren’t all exactly known for being “good” for you. But as the sticking power of nonetheless false claims about what Biden was trying to ban (gas stoves, gas cars) demonstrates, public perception became clear: Democrats thought they knew what was best for you and were going to take away things you liked.

This isn’t a new problem for the party. For decades, Democrats from Barack Obama to Beto O’Rourke have been wrongly or rightly attacked for wanting to “take” your guns away, for example. But it seems manifest that the preachiness and scope of this narrative reached a new apex in the coronavirus era.

Don’t mistake my narrow point for a broader one: there need to be adults in the room, there need to be regulations on some things, and there is a need to drive society and the economy in a forward direction. That comes with sensible restrictions, and by and large Democrats have been on the right side of that tug-of-war by acknowledging climate change, proposing sensible phased-in approaches to counter carbon emissions and public health crises, and supporting more prudent public safety measures, among other things. But, with rare and truly calamitous exceptions (the Great Depression, the Financial Crisis, COVID-19), the assessment is largely that voters are looking for the “chill dad” more than the overbearing babysitter. Put in more relatable terms: they’re looking for Bill Clinton, not Al Gore. 

Reconciling the Public With the Personal 

If Al Gore is representative of the Democratic Party’s superego – its tendency towards a technocratic and moralizing “I know better than you” attitude that Americans largely disfavor – Bill Clinton is closer to the party’s everyman. Clinton, certainly, has more character faults than Gore – but their comparative success speaks for itself. It’s not that the two substantially differ in their ideals or intelligence, but their personalities and how they communicated and presented themselves were clearly distinct. If you had to say which of them were more likely to take your SUV, your gun, your fast food, and your cigarettes away, I’d surmise 90% of readers would guess the same person.

Let’s talk about that, because it’s an instructive place to put this analysis. Guns and SUVs both pose dangers to public health. But they are also both particular, pertinent, and personally resonant to their owners. Americans, by and large, like their cars – they feel emotionally attached to them. Are SUVs or guns sensible value-adds to society? For most people, not really. But neither is watching reality television, drinking, wasting time on Facebook, or eating fast food. And yet, most of us do one – if not all – of these things. And that’s okay; it should not, by and large, be the job of the state to make a value judgment on how we spend our free time and money, at least not with the clear direction that “you cannot have that.” 

To be perfectly honest, I’m a hypocrite here. I consider myself a pretty passionate urbanist – I’m a big fan of my local public transportation and I’ve railed against rampant commuting via car. I like to think I’m relatively socially conscious. And my degree in economics practically demands I embrace ideas like taxing things like alcohol and SUVs more. But I am always game for a happy hour, I eat at Chick-fil-a, and I throw money at an SUV I barely need. None of these things are strictly good for me or financially sensible. They’re rarely rational, but I like them.

The negative externalities, downsides, and problems presented by these substances or products or behaviors are not absolute. They reflect precisely the kind of societal trade-offs politics is supposed to solve rather than ban outright. These things provide utility to people – including me – in nonquantitative ways. If a drink with a friend is the most convenient way to stay connected to someone you otherwise might not be able to make time for, no one should begrudge you that. The same applies If you move to a big city and want to keep the car you’ve invested a lot of time into and have great memories with. Yeah, these things are expensive, but they’re not without value. Somewhere, Democrats have lost the emotional resonance on these issues and substituted the way they talk about them with what sounds more like technocratic paternalism. It’s no wonder that the hedonistic excesses of Trumpism, which, if nothing else, don’t seem to judge you for driving a big car or watching TV, have been attractive to many. The alternative just makes you feel worse, like you are being policed and prejudged by society.

A similar theory of the case has been extolled by a few politicos, notably James Carville, who has been preaching the dangers of Democrats’ overreliance on “wokeness” and “faculty lounge” politics for years. The gist of his concern was that powerful Democrats concentrated in academia, think tanks, and elected offices started to embrace progressive language (his examples in a 2021 interview were “Latinx” and “communities of color”) either intentionally or for fear of being canceled, ultimately creating a positive feedback loop and ecosystem that resulted in them sounding markedly different from the way most of the country sounded. This point was recently echoed in the wake of the 2024 election by Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who implored Democrats to start talking like “normal” people by exorcising the coded words used predominantly in liberal college-educated circles from the party’s discourse. 

Ironically, Carville – at least in his 2021 interview – actually applauded Joe Biden on this subject, saying that “his biggest attribute is that he’s not into ‘faculty lounge’ politics.” By 2023 and then clearly in 2024, Carville had soured on Biden and ultimately suggested Harris “decisively break” from him to win the election. But I don’t necessarily buy that this is because Biden embraced faculty lounge politics or the woke language Carville warned of. By and large, I think Biden’s communication by 2023 had slowed and become more controlled; Biden himself was unpopular, and that mattered more than the way he talked. If anything, Biden in 2020 actually did manage to materialize new parts of the Democratic coalition by adopting a distinctly different communication style than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, talking beside and among Americans rather than preaching to them.

Tim Walz was on to something when he injected “weird” as an insult into the political lexicon. Republicans are often weird; the problem is that Democrats can be weird too. For example, there are plenty of strange, cringey, and explicitly partisan businesses on the right. But the scale is different: making eating at Chick-fil-a (one of the most popular fast food businesses in the country) a purity test is more alienating, and therefore broadly weirder than, say, starting a “100% woke free” catered-to-conservatives winery.

Nonetheless, whether it’s what we buy, how we spend our time, or how we talk, the notion that Democrats are shaming you for it is an easy one to reach, and it is alienating, even if it was or is well intentioned. We, as individuals, are welcome to make our own choices, make or withhold judgments, and express those feelings. But when a quasi-state entity like the Democratic Party and its representatives do it, it can put the public against a person. That’s a hard place to be if you’re struggling to win over voters.

The Next Four Years

What can Democrats do about this? 

In the short term, it is plausible that Trump 2.0 propagates the same sort of chaos, mismanagement, and disorder that thrust voters towards an adult in the room during his first term. If tariff wars spiral into inflation, checks and balances designed to restrain Trump (and, ironically, probably keep him more popular!) start breaking under pressure, turmoil abroad spills over into unease at home, public health crises flare up, basic government services are hobbled by efforts to downsize or purge the bureaucracy, and blatant unscrupulousness creates a perception of lawlessness, voters may just go for a babysitter candidate after all.

But Democrats should not plan on that. They need to present a better brand, not just in the next four years, but the next twenty. A brand that can expand their appeal without compromising core values. This may take time, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. 

I would start with this: as they attempt to find a unifying principle, Democrats should err away from the instinct to reprimand or preclude actions. They should eschew any notion of banning cigarettes, vaping, gas-powered cars, gas-powered stoves, guns, red meat – pick your poison. Though any recent claims that Democrats truly do want to ban any of these things are predominantly made in bad faith and/or are clear exaggerations, Democrats need to do more to push against why these attacks stick. Or, if you want to be blunt: if Democrats are explaining why these attacks aren’t true, they’re already losing.

Democrats and their base should disavow any kind of notion that they will ban things, and instead focus on how to improve public policy to ease over the negative externalities they present. Let’s start with the easy ones: though there are Democrats who do want to ban all handguns or abolish the police, they are a clear minority in the country, and these issues should be obvious nonstarters for the party. 

The stickier issues are those where policy solutions are popular or sensible, but the perception of paternalism is still a problem. Here, something like “libertarian paternalism” – a concept laid out by economist Richard Thaler and law professor Cass Sunstein in a paper on behavioral economics and public policy published in 2003 and later popularized by their book Nudge in 2008 – hint at a better direction. It should never be a question that you can keep what you like, have what you want, and not be judged by the state for it. Nevertheless, the state has a role to play in offering options, such as providing subsidies for electric vehicles, public transportation, and health insurance. The state also has a role to play in facilitating an open market environment that will independently nudge Americans by their own choice towards better options. Solutions like this fit within the current long-term policy aims of the party, even if they seem unambitious.

Ambition can go elsewhere. Republicans may have won on this messaging of late, but they have also left open ample lanes for Democrats to paint them as paternalists. Abortion is an obvious one the party would be negligent not to continue seizing on, but Democrats can expand on this pro-choice mindset concerning sexuality at large. Hit Republicans – who have shamed Americans for sex, for porn, and for their relationships for decades – on it. There are opportunities to hit Republicans on drinking, too, as some high profile Republicans have suggested curbing access to alcohol, their standard-bearer has a complicated relationship with booze, and the industry is nervous about the more temperate movement by the party of late. Moralizing about alcohol is not new for the conservative movement at large, but semi-recent polling suggests that about a quarter of Republicans and conservatives said drinking was “morally wrong,” and should be illegal – about twice the rate of Democrats and liberals. One need not look too far into the “manosphere” or right-wing influencer culture to find a spattering of anti-drinking sentiments being promoted, frequently expanding beyond the context of their personal choice and towards a societal judgment. 

Anywhere Republicans are shaming people for what they buy, what they like, or how they live their lives, Democrats should pounce. More priority should be aimed at things Americans engage with on a weekly basis, like Starbucks or Target; less so defending Disney, Taylor Swift, or Lin-Manuel Miranda. Good Democratic messaging should focus on how Trump will make it harder to do the things you like – such as getting guac at Chipotle or enjoying a glass of wine – and how he is taking things away from you.

The way Democrats talk can certainly change too. There is an undeniable momentum in the party towards mixing up the forum for communication and creating a more organic media landscape for liberal ideas. That “talking about sports” with voters is some sort of novel approach meriting a New York Times headline shows there’s probably quite a bit of work to do. So, getting comfortable with ruffling some feathers could probably do the too-careful party some good, and they should more consistently run like they’re behind rather than repeat banal stump speeches designed to be as boring as possible. 

Democrats Are For You

Admittedly, this is all a little “bro-ey”– suggesting Democrats should be cooler about beer and trucks, talk about sports, and take themselves less seriously – and perhaps even a little self-serving. Still, two points are worth stressing: I’m not the first to suggest Democrats have a problem with men, nor are these issues exclusive. A lot of the misplaced, if well-intentioned, Democratic messaging that suffered in the last several years was in shaming men towards a destination. To paraphrase a post-election assessment on the role of masculinity from Michael Lovito, the folly of Democratic messaging in 2024 was often that it suggested men needed to overcome their worst impulses to make the right decision, rather than treat men as stakeholders in the development of the party and its policies. This is not about appeasing men at the expense of women, it’s about recognizing the needs of a big tent and earning their vote.

There’s reason for hope. The capacity for change is far greater in the Democratic coalition than in the Republican one – look no further than the party’s multifaceted and distinct approaches to taking on Trumpism over the last ten years, while Republicans were so incapable of recognizing electoral problems in their party that they stuck with an unpopular former candidate who plausibly cost them several Senate seats in an otherwise more winnable cycle and locked them into a loc single-term presidency.

Where Republicans have wed themselves, at least for the foreseeable future, to a particular term-limited and mortal individual, Democrats have the opposite problem: no leader at all. I’d argue that’s a better problem to have, as Democrats have no dearth of talented, appealing, and effective aspirants who are primed to enter the arena, each of whom has their own unique vision for what the party should be.

Maybe the party needs to embrace a technocratic libertarian of their own, or a so-brazen-it’s-almost-refreshing politico, or someone who can effectively communicate to conservative audiences, or someone with a proven record of winning voters who seem to be moving away from the party. Some options are surely worse than others, and that’s okay; that’s how the party can figure out which direction to go. I don’t know that we have a specific answer for what Democrats are for yet, even if I just spent about 3,500 words trying to provide some lodestars. 

But, what should be obvious is that voters don’t want to be shamed for what they like, and there’s little electoral gain to be found there. Voters don’t just want policies they can live with, they want politicians they can live alongside, who resonate with them. They’ll always prefer a friendly face over a finger-wagging one. If Democrats really want to be the adults in the room, it’s time for them to send the babysitter home.