In 2004, life as a Democrat was fairly bleak.
The celebration misplaced a presidential election to George W. Bush for a second time. Including insult to damage, Democratic nominee John Kerry misplaced the favored vote. The celebration was seemingly dropping floor, after having gained the favored vote in 2000 and dropping the Electoral School thanks solely to an exceedingly shut (and contested) loss in Florida. It was a special world again then, however Democrats sensed that voters resoundingly had rejected what they needed to provide — even whereas working in opposition to a Republican candidate broadly thought of susceptible.
In 2024, life as a Democrat is fairly bleak in lots of the identical methods it was twenty years in the past. Ballots are nonetheless being counted after the presidential election, however the Democratic presidential nominee is on observe to lose the favored vote for the primary time in 20 years.
That widespread vote loss has compelled a broader reckoning: Profitable the favored vote “acted as a sort of salve: Sure, the Electoral School might have delivered Bush and Trump the presidency, however on some degree, their administrations have been illegitimate, unsanctioned by the favored will,” mentioned Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt College targeted on media, conservatism, and the presidency.
With out a “however the widespread vote” fallback, Democrats are confronting a harsh actuality. “For the primary time since 2004, this election felt like an embrace of conservatism, albeit a a lot completely different sort of conservatism than the one related to the 2004 winner,” mentioned Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball on the College of Virginia Middle for Politics.
Now, as in 2004, Democrats are participating in what could be generously seen as introspection (or, much less generously, a “round firing squad”) to chart a brand new course again to energy and assess what went so very flawed this time round. The blame for that’s up for debate: It could have been the financial system, Democrats’ embrace of “wokeness,” President Joe Biden’s determination to run for a second time period, the truth that many Individuals really favored what Trump was promoting, or any variety of different components.
Although it could take months for what particularly went flawed to change into clearer, the 2004 election and its aftermath would possibly present some perception into how Democrats can transfer ahead.
In any case, 4 years after the Bush-Kerry debacle, Democrats gained the 2008 election in a landslide, with Barack Obama beating John McCain by almost 10 million votes and getting into the White Home with huge congressional majorities at his again.
What Democrats at present can study from the celebration’s loss in 2004
There are apparent variations between 2004 and 2024. The aughts election was dominated by 9/11 and the International Conflict on Terror that adopted. This 12 months, these subjects barely registered, whereas Trump and Biden’s respective information, the financial system, and the tradition wars took heart stage. Additional, Kerry’s marketing campaign began with successful a really aggressive main, whereas Vice President Kamala Harris took over after Biden stepped apart and gave her his endorsement.
However the vibes amongst Democrats are comparable, and what they do subsequent might decide whether or not they see a revival within the 2026 midterms and the elections that observe.
General, Democrats took three classes from 2004. Whether or not one believes these classes apply to 2024 relies upon, largely, on what one believes went flawed for Harris in her loss to Trump. However, given Democrats’ profitable restoration from 2004, it’s a historical past lesson price taking.
1) They pursued a 50-state technique
Following the 2004 loss, a well-liked meme rocketed across the (nonetheless considerably nascent) web: a map that depicted the Democratic “United States of Canada” as current alongside the coasts and a Republican “Jesusland” encompassing the overwhelming majority of land within the US.
If that appears reductive and problematic on a number of fronts, you’re not flawed, however the map, aforementioned issues apart, served partially as shorthand for declaring Democrats’ turnout drawback. Sure, Kerry had turned out 9 million extra votes than Al Gore had 4 years earlier than, however he nonetheless fell virtually 3 million wanting Bush.
That hole revealed a vulnerability for Democrats: their incapacity to mobilize a broad coalition in swing states and past that might translate into an Electoral School victory. Kerry couldn’t summon the sort of voter enthusiasm essential to match Bush’s sturdy efficiency in rural areas and outer suburbs.
To goose turnout, Democrats appeared to Howard Dean, who ran a populist main marketing campaign however misplaced to Kerry.
Elected as chair of the Democratic Nationwide Committee in 2005, Dean turned a proponent of a “50-state technique.” The concept behind this technique was that Democrats have to attempt to compete in each state, maximizing turnout in Democratic areas whereas slicing into Republican margins the place doable.
This 12 months, former DNC chair Donna Brazile, like Dean, believes a part of the answer may very well be the return of the 50-state technique. They’re not alone: “We can not run in simply the few states that we want,” mentioned Claire Potter, a professor emerita of historical past on the New Faculty. “The Democrats have, in some methods, actually backed off that technique, and I feel they’re flawed to have finished so.”
The Harris marketing campaign — for very comprehensible causes — didn’t make the most of Dean’s methodology. With only some months to marketing campaign, Harris targeted on swing states and choose demographic teams. She largely didn’t go to traditionally “secure” Democratic states. Whereas it’s not clear that she might have stanched the bleeding in these locations, there have been important rightward shifts from New York Metropolis to Southern California.
And it’s not clear how nicely the 50-states concept has aged. In any case, Hillary Clinton ran up the favored vote whole after successful huge in solidly blue states, however she obtained to function president for precisely zero days.
That technique was later credited with serving to Democrats make positive aspects within the 2006 midterms and with serving to to place Obama within the White Home in 2008.
And after 2024, the place Democrats misplaced floor in nearly each county within the US, a plan to spice up the celebration’s reputation nationally isn’t one it will probably afford to disregard.
2) Democrats reevaluated their messaging
In 2004, Democrats didn’t have a response to the rise of the right-wing weblog Drudge Report and Fox Information’s consolidation round Republicans. Kerry was usually forged as an elitist with an costly haircut, and right-wing commentators efficiently turned one in every of his strengths as a candidate — his army service in Vietnam — right into a legal responsibility by viral assault adverts.
“There may be this type of disingenuous assault on Kerry because the Harvard boy, as anyone who’s faking having actually fought in Vietnam,” Potter mentioned. “Bush is ready to play the cardboard of being an outsider, regardless that he’s an incumbent, regardless that he went to Yale, regardless that his father was president.”
In response, Democrats sought to reevaluate their general messaging technique. The influential e-book Don’t Consider an Elephant! by the cognitive linguist George Lakoff served as a guidebook for reframing debates in their very own phrases and for explaining their coverage positions by evoking values of empathy, equity, and neighborhood with out adopting the language of conservatives. Additionally they embraced Dean — dubbed by the Washington Submit in 2005 as an “outsider rebel” who wore beat-up footwear and flew coach, spending most of his time outdoors of DC.
In 2024, Democrats have been once more outflanked by a new Republican media machine — this time, together with the likes of Joe Rogan and Theo Von — to ship their message. Harris, for her half, declined to seem on Rogan’s podcast, reportedly for concern of how it will be perceived throughout the celebration.
3) Democrats sought to change into a celebration of concepts
Kerry marketing campaign adviser Kenneth Baer mentioned that, in 2024, Democrats repeated their mistake in 2004 of defining themselves as being the other of Republicans.
”Sensible individuals appear to have come round to the thought that you may’t simply say Trump’s horrible,” Baer mentioned, arguing that Democrats had the identical problem in 2004, when Kerry spent a lot of his time on the marketing campaign path criticizing Bush as an alternative of defining affirmative causes to vote for Democrats. That known as for Democrats to “rethink all our insurance policies and our approaches,” Baer mentioned.
Baer went on to discovered the journal Democracy: A Journal of Concepts as a platform for these concepts. That’s the place Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), then a Harvard Regulation Faculty professor, revealed a 2007 manifesto about how monetary merchandise like mortgages and bank cards ought to be regulated by the federal government. That concept would later give rise to the Client Monetary Safety Bureau.
Immediately, some Democrats say the celebration nonetheless must higher join with the working class, however Baer famous that there’s disagreement about what meaning and whether or not that ought to contain an financial or cultural strategy.
The bounds of political technique
Democrats would very very similar to a silver-bullet technique that ensures them a post-2004-esque restoration. However the fact is, political technique and planning can solely go to this point. And which may be one of many greatest classes from twenty years in the past.
The celebration’s return to energy in 2008 was principally pushed by two components: Obama was a generationally politically gifted politician. George W. Bush was a generationally horrible president whose second time period featured a bungled and lethal response to Hurricane Katrina; an much more disastrous and lethal dealing with of the Iraq Conflict (the false pretenses of which got here totally to gentle throughout Bush’s second time period); and the 2008 monetary disaster and ensuing financial meltdown.
“The circumstances that might collapse Bush’s assist in his second time period have been already in place when he gained reelection,” Hemmer, the political historian, mentioned.
So how Democrats do in 2026, 2028, and past will seemingly have so much to do with Trump’s efficiency throughout his second time period.
Immediately, preliminary exit polls counsel Trump is unpopular, his proposed tariffs may very well be disastrous for the financial system, Democrats might mobilize in opposition to his insurance policies as they did in his first time period, and he might solely have a really slender Home majority to work with, doubtlessly hampering his agenda.
If such a collapse occurs, nonetheless, Democrats additionally should be ready to grab on it.
