Democrats need a rebrand and a new message, and they need it fast.

America is not ready for MAGA policies. In the face of the right-wing winning big this year, everyone left of the center-right needs to re-evaluate how to reach the average Americans they failed.

This election was far closer in the popular vote than it currently looks. Millions of ballots are still yet to be counted, but if we extrapolate the current trends when all have been counted Democrats will have lost many more votes than Trump gained, with Trump only receiving a single digit increase over 2020. This was not a massive shift towards Trumpism and MAGA, but a less successful and more geographically isolated campaign for Democrats.

In addition, according to focus groups and national polls a lot of Trump voters voted based on the thought that the economy was better the last time, absent of any policy or ideological reasons - low information voters. The Democratic Party failed to address them sufficiently and instead wasted time trying to explain the nuances of economic metrics and policies that voters did not care to learn about.

Multiple states passed progressive bills on the ballot like making abortion a constitutional right while voting for Trump. Florida even had a majority vote for it, though it needed a super majority to pass.

The Democratic Party has a huge branding and messaging problem. Trying to explain the realities of policies and economics does not work. Most voters are low information and don’t listen/care. Many also just vote against Democrats because of the name, while still supporting many of the policies.

The Democratic Party is also historically bad at promoting itself and its accomplishments. The Biden administration had many significant legislative wins that did not get enough attention and will likely be undone. Just last week airlines are now required to refund you if your flight is delayed. Those kinds of wins are small but incredibly important as well because they positively affect everybody. How many Americans who are not plugged into politics even know about that? Now consider everything else that was passed the last four years, I can personally say I only know about it because I follow this stuff constantly every day. What about for the average American voter that does not? Or the low information voter who only thinks about it during elections? We have to do a better job of reaching those people with short, concise, and relevant messages that they care about.

Now is the time we need to start getting shit done and not give up/turn off from politics. We need to be ready for the backlash that is going to come from Americans that voted only based on the feeling of the economy and nothing else.

4 years of Project 2025 is going to make democracy an insane uphill battle, but it’s also going to piss a shit ton of people off who either didn’t think it was a credible threat or were too disengaged to even know about it.

Banning contraception alone is going to be a wake up call for a significant amount of Americans who never even gave a thought that that was on the ballot. That is one of dozens of extreme and massively unpopular policies advocated by Project 2025 that MAGA now has the power to enact. Read it. Study it. Get ready for the real fight. 2024 was not the fight against MAGA we thought it was, it was a fight for reaching low-information voters on the single topic they cared about - how the economy feels to them. 2026 and 2028 elections will be the real fight. Even low-information and politically disengaged voters will feel Project 2025 bans, dissolution of mainstay public services and institutions, and the political impact of all this coupled with widespread tariffs.

The next couple years are going to suck don’t get me wrong, but we have the opportunity to absolutely shake things up for conservatives in the next two elections because they currently think most Americans support their policies from this win. The data says the opposite when asking voters about each specific issue detached from party names. This is a huge opportunity.

Many of the same Americans who support the ACA do not support Obamacare. They are the same thing. Democrats need to understand this.

USA is not majority MAGA, but the Republican Party did a much better job reaching voters on the issue they cared the most about - the economy.

They didn't talk about the policies, the causes and effects, the nuances. They ran on the economy feels bad and it felt less bad before Biden.

Most voters don't care that the economy was actually worse then by economic metrics, that national debt was actually worse, what policies were worse.

They need to completely rebrand and completely rewrite the message for the 2 year and 4 year elections as average Americans for average Americans. They need to elevate the Tim Walz's of American politicians who are just an average person you can get a drink with and importantly who is not super wealthy.

And to be completely honest, I don't know if they can do all that under the Democratic Party title. I don't know that they should. There's so much bullshit and baggage behind it that is easy for Republicans to smear or lie about. And there are too many old-guard DINOs both in terms of old life-long politician dinosaurs and Democrats backed by corporations they side with that do not support modern progressive and leftist Democrat policies.

The average American voter does not care that in 1860 the Democrats were the southern conservatives, or the way the parties have morphed over the last 100 years, or the politics of the Civil Rights Era and how that shifted the two parties. There is too much history to cover there in a short message to set the record straight. It is easier for Republicans to say Democrats supported slavery and fought against Civil Rights movements than for Democrats to explain the southern conservative origin of the party and how both parties changed political ideologies and geographic locations over the last 150 years. Most Americans do not know or care to learn about the Southern Strategy and how it created our modern political parties. Most Americans do not know the original party of Lincoln was named after the English Whigs party, the progressive party of its time, before renaming itself to the Republican Party. It is a waste of time to educate voters on these topics. I am personally guilty of this, wasting too much time trying to argue history with people who really don't care to learn and who are entrenched in their beliefs to look it up for themselves.

Democrats, progressives, and the intellectuals need to swallow their pride and hyper focus on the issues for average Americans now and in 2/4 years of Republican/MAGA policies and fuck all to everything else for right now. Otherwise MAGA will gain generational holds by fucking up education. There are a lot of things we all care about, but if we do not reverse this it all goes to shit for decades to come. We need to re-evaluate what hills we will die on and which we will quietly support to get a foothold until we have the power to make legislative changes again.

The clock is ticking now and we have a very narrow window to capitalize on this and the backlash that absolutely will come from Project 2025 policies.

The Democrats also need to go more progressive/left. So much time and money was spent catering to moderate Republicans to gain 5% of registered Republicans votes. Moderate Republicans already left the Republican Party between Trump in 2016 and Trump in 2020. Democrats need to really differentiate themselves more than just the "not MAGA" party that still jives with conservative values that even the Cheneys could get behind. Voters that already have negative feelings about the "Democrats" by name alone are not going to vote for them because they are Republican-lite. They will just vote Republican.

Again, many Democrat-backed policies are favorable to average Americans, but they do not trust the Democratic Party. The party either needs to give them a significant reason to trust it and try to undo the perception that has been baked in, or it need to start fresh and split from the existing bureaucracy, the old guard Dem politicians, the Clinton and Obama era strategists who led Harris’s campaign like it was during one of their eras, and become a party of average Americans for average Americans who uses the channels and strategies for modern average Americans and who specifically and most vocally addresses the most important issues for average Americans. Because as far as I can see, if they don't do that, the rest of their platform and ideology doesn't matter and will not matter again for a long time.

No causes they support will matter if MAGA stays in power.

We need to come to grips with that and decide which hills are worth dying on first so we have the power to make larger scale change. That is the dark reality of where we are right now.

MAGA is in control. MAGA has the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

Democrats, progressives, etc. need to do everything they can to claw back power from MAGA, and that means reaching average Americans, the ones who are not politically involved, on the issues they care about.

Because again, none of this matters if MAGA stays in power. None of the policies, ideologies, or the many hills they choose to die on.

NONE.

ZERO.

MAGA has the power to outlaw anything it wants, shut down any legal/constitutional challenges it wants.

We need to accept that. We need to accept that there is no good solution, no platform in which we can protect and help everyone in the next 2/4/6/8 year elections. But if MAGA stays in power, even the best possible platform for us in these elections will not happen and MAGA will actively fight against and hurt the people we want to help. Look at Project 2025 and tell me I’m wrong. Those are the people who have full control of the government now.

To circle back to the main point of this post - MAGA and Project 2025 is the not the majority of Americans and it is going to piss a lot of people off who did not realize it was on the ballot. Democrats and progressives need to be ready to capitalize on this in a big way as soon as it starts. The longer they wait or fight internally about what hills are worth dying on at this moment, the greater the generational hold MAGA will gain as it upends public education and rewrites curriculums and US history.

A second chance is coming quickly. It’s okay to take time to grieve what could have been and what we will lose over the next few years, but please come back and roll up your sleeves to get to work. Do not disengage and do not unplug from politics. It’s going to be a long uphill battle, but if we’re going to make a difference and if you still believe in positive change we need you now more than ever.

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What are your thoughts?

What do we do from here?

Is a new party a realistic option? Or is rebranding the Democrats more feasible?