Progressives are at odds with one another over how to hone their message to voters after losing the White House again to President-elect Trump.
There’s little disagreement that things need to change. Democrats’ most recent electoral strategy has been rendered ineffective, delivering Trump back to Washington with his party’s full control of Congress.
But there’s no consensus about what the left should do next.
One camp says the future is with economic populists, a group that puts financially disadvantaged voters of all demographics at the forefront. They believe that if Democrats prioritize class struggles over culture wars on the national stage, they will alienate fewer people and have a shot at winning again.
The other group of progressives sees room for several top-tier priorities, with shifting orders of importance. They believe their wing can emphasize all aspects of identity politics, while also standing up for democracy, the rule of law and a brighter economic future all at once.
“The idea of economic populism being the actual patriotic lane is really good,” said Pete D’Alessandro, a former senior campaign aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from Iowa.
The distinction, some argue, is very subtle. The progressive wing is in agreement that class and identity are intersectional and there’s a deep belief that no group should be sacrificed at the expense of another.
However, fault lines are emerging within progressive circles over the order and magnitude of each topic, foreshadowing a debate that’s likely to play out as Trump is sworn into office and as Democrats prepare to govern and reshape their party in the minority.
Progressives who came of age in the Sanders wing have started conducting their own autopsies post-Nov. 5, hoping to get out ahead of various narratives that place economic realities low on the list of reasons why Vice President Harris lost to Trump. A grassroots group formed after Sanders’s first presidential campaign, Our Revolution, polled 12,000 progressives and found that 91 percent said “the party has long neglected the multiracial working class.”
“The neglect of working people, the failure of the Democratic Party, the late switch from Biden to Harris and the campaign’s misguided focus on Cheney Republicans and celebrities” were key reasons for defeat, according to their poll of progressive respondents.
Sanders has been on his own path after Harris’s campaign loss, trying to steer the conversation among progressives back to economic strife that played out in exit polls explaining part of Trump’s victory. He’s taken to legacy media, from cable news to The New York Times, to explain why a working-class agenda should be core to Democrats’ DNA.
In recent discussions, the senator has emphasized that identity is inherently tied to struggles of different diverse working-class segments. “You can say, ‘We are going to fight for a bigotry-free America’ — that’s an ongoing struggle. We made progress, got a long way to go,” Sanders told the Times’s podcast “The Daily” this week.
“But at the same time we can stand up for the working class in this country, which by the way, happens to be significantly African American and Latino and women, who are the bulk of the working class,” he stressed. “It’s going forward in both directions. That is a winner.”
The ascendant Sanders wing — which progressives agree is in the talent search phase for new, younger leadership — is also sharply critical of the notion that the composition of voters who supported Trump are inherently prejudiced.
“Some of the Democrat pundits say, ‘Well the problem is all of these Trump people are racist and they’re sexist and they’re homophobes.’ Well no doubt that some of them are, and that’s true. Most of them are not,” Sanders said. “They are, in large numbers, working class people, and we’ve got to speak to them in an economic perspective that is clear and straightforward.”
Stevie O’Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, said a key problem is that “most Democrats have failed to present themselves as a credible voice for working people.”
“For the first time in years, the Democratic nominee lost the votes of households making less than $100,000 and won those making more than that. This is the cost of decades of policy and rhetoric from Democratic leadership that has allowed Trump claim to be the champion for working class and middle-class people,” O’Hanlon told The Hill.
While Sanders is making that case outwardly, others on the left who share his world view are tailoring the message to fit their personal brands. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a staunch Sanders ally and member of the “squad,” removed her pronouns from her bio on the social platform X this week.
“I think it’s a small thing,” said one source familiar with Ocasio-Cortez’s messaging.
Still, the use of pronouns as personal descriptors has been widely adopted among Capitol Hill progressives, who see issues of gender identity as critical to the Democratic Party’s bid for inclusiveness. Liberals have created space for communities that have faced disproportionate discrimination, including the LGBTQ population, to strike a contrast with the GOP.
While losses for Democrats were widespread, progressives added their first openly transgender member of Congress to their slate with Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who offered a unique perspective in a press briefing with Congressional Progressive Caucus leadership.
“What I was hearing was that the American dream is increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible,” McBride said about running in Delaware’s only congressional district, which spans throughout major urban and suburban as well as rural areas and crosses into the Philadelphia media market.
McBride said that being in that market exposed voters to Trump and Republicans’ attempt to divide over gender and identity, an approach that ultimately didn’t work. “I didn’t run on my identity, but my identity was not a secret,” she said. The millennial congresswoman’s X bio simply reads: “Delaware’s Congresswoman-elect. Working to deliver for ALL Delawareans.”
“When people can’t afford rent or food, they look for people to blame,” O’Hanlon said. “Trump and far-right politicians have told people to blame immigrants or trans people or people of color. That was a core part of Trump’s closing message: ‘Kamala Harris cares more about X group than you.’ Democrats need to stand up forcefully against these attacks and work overtime to show they are fighting to deliver for people.”
As a growing group focuses on economic populism, others in the progressive movement are interested more immediately in issues that may arise under Trump. They see threats to the judicial branch on the horizon that some believe can be minimized before the president-elect reclaims the Oval Office.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who many college-educated and affluent liberals credit for emphasizing cultural issues, outlined her vision for Democrats rooted in bulletproofing democracy.
“While still in charge of the Senate and the White House, we must do all we can to safeguard our democracy,” Warren wrote in a new op-ed in Time. “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must use every minute of the end-of-year legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators — none of whom can be removed by the next President.”
The Warren-aligned Progressive Change Campaign Committee circulated a petition titled: “Protect Democracy while you can,” asking for support for key legal structures.
Warren is poised to take on an elevated role within the Senate minority, where she’s pledged to uplift “working families” as the Banking Committee’s leading Democrat.
While the Massachusetts senator also promotes an agenda for low-income Americans, her use of “families” is another slight distinction from Sanders’s rhetoric about working class people, which does not necessarily specify a family unit.
Some populist progressives say it’s an easy bridge between the two camps, which are already in agreement that the drivers of income inequality are mass concentration among the country’s wealthiest individuals and the dominance of corporate influence to keep the status quo intact.
“I’m not as worried about them,” D’Alessandro said about the two approaches. “I’m more worried that the pendulum swings too far the other way and we get more of the Buttigieg, Ritchie Torres ’70s Republican kind of politicians.”
“I think with the Warren folks it’s an easier discussion because it’s tactics. Nobody is saying don’t stand for those things,” he said. “It’s more of what to lead with. If we fight each over tactics the corporate Dems like the guys I mentioned will just zip through the opening.”