Commentary: The hard truths a Democrat must tell to win in 2028

Americans still feel betrayed by Democrats’ refusal to hold a primary when their nominee was clearly in declining health. Yet it would be a mistake to attribute the party’s current political irrelevance and obscurity to one problematic election.

The only cure is a full-throated and wholehearted confession, and it’s a prerequisite regardless of who their 2028 nominee is — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Josh Shapiro, LeBron James, Jon Stewart, JB Pritzker, Gavin Newsom or anyone else.

We need to take a journey into recent history to understand: When Democrats lamented the U.S. misadventure in Iraq and President George Bush’s reelection in 2004, Barack Obama appealed to those who acknowledged their party’s culpability in what he called a “dumb war.” Obama’s straight talk was painful for some Democrats, but it was essential to gaining trust not only with Democrats but all Americans in a landslide 2008 victory.

This playbook was repeated in 2015 and 2016: Donald Trump became a social media juggernaut and won throngs of supporters not because of his mere celebrity but because of what he was willing to say, including audacious critiques of and unspoken pieties in the Republican Party such as condemnations of George W. Bush, for causing 9/11; Jeb Bush, for supporting the Iraq War; and Mitch McConnell, for creating a campaign finance system of legalized bribery.

Both Obama and Trump stood up not just to their political foes but also to their friends. In 2028, a victorious Democratic candidate will be one who is willing to do the same. They must make a passionate confession to the American people — that what the Democratic Party has purported to represent hasn’t existed for decades — and then promise to light a new torch into the future.

It would sound something like this:

“We betrayed democracy in 2024 by not having a primary and sabotaged a fair fight in 2016. We gave lip service to Bernie Sanders, who earned the support of many in our historically loyal youth base, many of whom have since abandoned the party. I apologize and want to truly represent him and his voters. For too long, we’ve betrayed the accomplishments of the New Deal and Great Society. We’ve been afraid to invoke Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he lived in a racist era in which Southern Democrats were the norm and, likewise, afraid to invoke Lyndon Johnson because he ensnared the nation in the quagmire of the Vietnam War. These were our most successful and constructive presidents in modern history — and it’s no coincidence they were both Democrats. The programs they birthed live on and help real people every day. We don’t stop citing the Declaration of Independence or saying ‘We the People,’ because some of the Founding Fathers were holders of enslaved people. We can critique our history, but we cannot disown it. Instead, we must be proud of it.”

But that’s just a start. Democrats must be honest about the Bill Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden presidencies. None brought the populist vitality that had sustained the party for decades to their public policy, nor a genuine feeling of representation in self-government. The result has been decomposition.

In case it’s not obvious, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer are not the future. For decades, they’ve failed to convey a real, let alone assertive, opposition agenda. The only landmark policy that Democrats conveyed to the American people in a half-century is the Affordable Care Act. Even then, the result was enormous wealth for insurance companies and no universal public option.

Then there’s the elephant in the room, which any successful Democrat must tackle head-on: corruption. These days, nothing infuriates liberals more than to be lectured about the American plutocracy — not when Trump is perhaps the most brazenly corrupt president to hold the office in modern history. But the temptation to point fingers at Republicans and play whataboutism — instead of acknowledging what millions of voters perceive as the acquiescence of Democrats to institutional corruption — will be fatal.

So, let’s be frank: Pelosi’s unrepentant practice of stock trading while in government and refusal to entertain banning this practice is the culmination of the vast lobbying industrial complex and everything that’s been wrong with D.C. for far too long. Only since her retirement from leadership have Democrats felt free to criticize Pelosi for this practice.

This may seem like a small matter. But this behavior is the direct through line to Elon Musk’s bought-and-paid-for 2024 election, Trump’s cryptocurrency scams, Qatari Force One and general Nixonian “anything goes” governance. Only if a Democrat dares to speak about what opened the door to Trumpism will the party achieve the kind of credibility with voters that will allow it to defeat MAGA.

Similarly, the Department of Government Efficiency has focused on political vendettas instead of balancing the budget or solving real-world problems. Case in point: Neither Trump nor Democrats have done anything to fix the extraordinary mental health crisis on our streets.

Finally, Democrats need commonsense positions on immigration and sexuality. People who enter the country illegally are breaking the law, and immigrants should be eligible for state and federal benefits only after citizens receive them. In 2004, when Obama gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he reassured the country that we “worship an awesome God in the blue states. … We coach Little League in the blue states, and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.” What he couldn’t count on was a political reality in which pronouns and transgender women in women’s sports would become political poison. When even one Democrat supports these bad ideas, all are forced to defend them.

With this message, the party must choose charismatic candidates who can bridge its internal divides. No combination should be laughed at or dismissed as untenable. ChatGPT could not stand up a better ticket than Ocasio-Cortez and Shapiro to galvanize Democrats.

But far more important than the messenger is the message. Indeed, that’s what Obama and Trump’s rise can teach us. Americans, to their lasting credit and discredit, will listen to just about anyone with the right message for the moment — whether it’s an inexperienced senator with an African name or an inexperienced game show host.

And if those candidates have the right message for the moment, Americans tend to do something else: They elect them.

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Alexander Heffner is a broadcaster and co-author of the bestselling book“A Documentary History of the United States.” Since 2022, he has traveled the country to break bread with U.S. governors and senators on his Bloomberg TV and PBS series.

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