Opinion What should the Democrats do now?

“Eugene Robinson: Focus on upward mobility“

The math is dispositive about what the Democratic Party needs to do. A bit more than 60 percent of U.S. adults do not have a college degree. According to exit polls, 56 percent of these noncollege voters chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. So if Democrats want to build a durable majority, they have to find a way to reconnect with blue-collar Americans — not just White voters but also Hispanic, who fled to the GOP on Tuesday in numbers Democrats should find alarming.”

Perry Bacon Jr.: Protect immigrants and trans people

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People attend an event for LGBTQ+ voters in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 1. (Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) 

I’m already seeing comments from Democratic members of Congress saying the party needs to distance itself from transgender Americans. I’m very worried the second Trump administration is going to demonize college professors and students, transgender people and undocumented immigrants in particular — and that Democratic politicians are going to go along with it (or not object much), thinking it will electorally help the party.

That’s not the right moral stance. And I don’t think it’s politically savvy either. The Democrats had some of their best recent electoral performances in 2018 and 2020, when they consistently attacked former president Donald Trump for being anti-immigrant and embraced the protest movement after George Floyd was killed. The governors who won in 2022 and 2023 in purple and red states, such as Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, opposed anti-trans legislation pushed by Republicans.

In contrast, look at what Vice President Kamala Harris did in this campaign. She walked away from many of her pro-immigrant stances, bragged about owning a gun and refused to attack Trump’s mass deportation plans. She lost resoundingly — while also saying a bunch of things I doubt she really believes.

Democrats are never going to outdo the Republicans in terms of being mean to minorities. Rather than moving to the right on social issues, they should focus on economic ideas that actually resonate with people. Most people don’t run or aspire to run a small business. So it was strange that one of the few economic ideas that Harris harped on was a small-business tax deduction.

Trump is telling a compelling story with a clear villain — essentially, “Hardworking Americans are paying taxes and having that money go to services for illegal immigrants.” Democrats need their own story — something like, “You can have good health care and a steady job and not pay exorbitant prices for groceries and child care if we start making the billionaires pay their fair share and stop allowing them to take all of the profits from your hard work.”