This past Saturday, I found myself at breakfast with a close friend of mine. The conversation started normally enough — what’s in store for the weekend, how’s the family doing, anything interesting happen in class this week? It didn’t take long for my friend — who happens to be a conservative Republican — to bring up politics. Of course, being the firebrand debater I am, I was able to retort his arguments with a quick succession of ad hominem attacks and straw man fallacies with a few facts sprinkled in from time to time. Eventually, however, he criticized my Democratic party, claiming that we don’t stand for anything — that we are solely the party of anti-Trump.
I paused. Sipped my coffee. Thought for a minute.
He was right.
It doesn’t take a political genius to understand the reason the Democrats lost in 2024. Our message didn’t resonate with voters. Simply put, Donald Trump was able to present a more compelling case than Kamala Harris, enough to convince the nation to look past his felony convictions, historic disapproval and attempted coup d’etat following his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Regardless of what one thinks of Donald Trump, his message was simple and clear: deport illegal immigrants and lower prices. In the absence of a viable alternative, that message spoke to people.
Of course, the president has had paltry success in fulfilling his campaign promises, with his immigration enforcement campaign leading to the murders of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis and war in Iran causing prices to continue to skyrocket. Even though Trump 2.0 continues to spiral, the effectiveness of the MAGA political project cannot be ignored as the Democratic Party approaches the midterms and the 2028 election. Democrats will do well to learn from their mistakes in 2024 by building a message predicated on values rather than reactions, lest they doom themselves to a future of perpetual minority status, forever living in the shadow of the MAGA right.
And that’s an existential threat. In a letter to the editor responding to my latest column, Sam Marchand, on behalf of the College Republicans, claimed that “we will now do anything necessary to save the republic, unhindered by Democratic abandonment of the rules.” The MAGA movement is so popular in part due to its single-minded commitment to victory. The MAGA right will stop at nothing to achieve its goals, regardless of how abhorrent or ineffective those goals may be. And they admit it. Ultimately, they stand for something, a reality that voters have continually rewarded. They may fight dirty. But they sure will fight.
I’m not attempting to claim that all Democrats are feckless, nor do I seek to admonish the multitudes of dedicated public servants who have spent careers fighting for the American people’s best interests. Rather, I seek to criticize the idea that Democrats need to moderate themselves or to try to mimic Donald Trump’s brand of politics. Voters truly desire candidates who stand for something. In our case, the Democrats should retake their throne as the people’s party — the party of the working man. Instead of pursuing the strategy of tepid centrism exhibited by the Kamala Harris 2024 campaign, Democrats must assume the role of the genuinely liberal party.
In retrospect, perhaps the party’s greatest mistake was failing to nominate Bernie Sanders in 2016. He consistently polled far ahead of Trump in comparison to Hillary Clinton, and there is evidence that hundreds of thousands of would-be Sanders voters defected to Trump in the general election, perhaps delivering Trump his victory. Much ink has been spilled by Democratic pundits wishing that the Democrats could find “their Trump.” In reality, the democratic Donald Trump was here the whole time, yet “the powers that be” determined his message was too radical to stomach.
Full stop, the Democrats can no longer seek to be the buttoned-up institutionalists that have delivered the United States two terms of Donald Trump. Rather, the party must seek a genuinely liberal lane, learning from (but not emulating) the populism that has so deeply captured the hearts and minds of the American people.
Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner recently recognized the Democratic Party’s dearth of values, urging Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to “Stop having a problem with the illegal wars we’ve been starting simply because the paperwork wasn’t done properly. You should be against them because they’re fundamentally immoral, unethical and illegal.”
In essence, Platner has explained my argument more succinctly and eloquently than I ever could. The Democratic Party has an aura of ineffectiveness, which causes the MAGA right to succeed with its narrative of lies. The Democrats need to stop merely opposing Trump’s actions because they are illegal — they need to oppose them because they are wrong. And with that opposition, there needs to be an alternative message. Something that voters can get behind. An idea. A value. Not the lack of values. Not just anti-MAGA.
The constitutional order is at its breaking point. MAGA Republicans don’t care. We should care, but we need to show people why they should care. If the system doesn’t serve the American people, they will seek alternatives. And they have.
Whichever Democrat can capture the spirit of Trump without playing down to his level will deliver the United States into a new era, rebuilding from the ashes the liberal order that made America the greatest country in the world.
Grayson Beckham is a freshman living in the Coyle Community in Zahm Hall. He hails from Independence, Ky. When he's not publishing woke propaganda inThe Observer, he studies political science and eloquently uses his silver tongue on the mock trial team. You can send him relevant hate mail at gbeckham@nd.edu.
