After Trump’s show stopping return, powerless Democrats in US debate just how deep in the wilderness they are

Democratic lawmakers, activists and strategists across the ideological spectrum are engaged in a fierce debate over how badly damaged the 2024 election left the party’s brand, a consequential internal argument that is already shaping early efforts to rebuild.

While there is none of the denialism that gripped Republicans after President Trump lost in 2020, Democratic leaders are in sharp disagreement over how to interpret losses that not only returned Mr. Trump to power but also put Republicans in total control of the federal government.

The swiftness with which Mr. Trump has imposed his will on the government, and the nation, has only added urgency to the discussions, which are playing out in closed-door gatherings on Capitol Hill, at retreats for donors and strategists and in the intramural campaign culminating in this weekend’s election of the next leader of the Democratic National Committee.

Many loud voices in the party are demanding a reckoning, and a reinvention. But others envision less an overhaul than a wait-and-see approach, hoping to harness what they expect will be a backlash of public opinion against Mr. Trump’s ambitious White House agenda to capture the House of Representatives in 2026.
The divide does not fall neatly along ideological lines. Some of the most moderate and progressive Democrats alike are aligned in seeking a sharp course correction to reverse the party’s erosion of support, especially among working-class voters.

“We need deep changes and hard conversations, not nibbling around the margins,” said Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat who represents a swing district north of New York City and who outperformed the top of the ticket by one of the wider margins in the nation. “At the core, the brand is weakened to the point that, without members running against it in tough districts, we can’t get to a majority, which is structurally untenable.”

Democrats who share this bleaker outlook see statistical signs of the party’s decline everywhere: Blue states are ceding population to red states. Voter registration figures are mostly headed in the wrong direction. More Americans are identifying with the G.O.P. than with Democrats. And Democrats lost ground last year among core constituencies including lower-income, Latino and younger voters as Mr. Trump swept every battleground state.

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Yet, there are a number of glass-half-full Democrats, too.

That more upbeat group tends to focus on the narrowness of the G.O.P.’s current 218-to-215-seat advantage in the House, the extraordinary circumstances of the 2024 race — Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt and Democrats switched nominees over the summer — and the fact that political pendulum swings are as common as they are predictable.
Almost no one is suggesting Democrats should simply stay the course. But the differing diagnoses of the party’s affliction could lead to wildly different treatment plans — on policy, on personnel and on political priorities. One early focus has been on whether the party’s message or its difficulties in delivering that message is more to blame.

Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, who served as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2024 and is staying on to oversee the party’s efforts to take the majority in 2026, noted that House Democrats “actually gained ground in 2024.” She blamed an unusual Republican redrawing of congressional maps in a single state last year for her party’s continued minority status.

“Except for North Carolina doing a gerrymander, we’d be in the majority,” she said of a remapping that prompted three Democratic incumbents to abandon hopes of re-election.