How does the Democratic party reinvent itself? | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: After suffering a devastating loss in last November’s elections, the Democratic party is at an inflection point. Having lost the backing and trust of the working class, how does it move on from the political desert it finds itself in and re-energize its base? Amanda Litman, Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director of Run For Something joins The Excerpt to share her take.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, March 23rd, 2025.
After suffering a devastating loss in last November's elections, the Democratic Party is at an inflection point, having lost the backing and trust of the working-class. How does it move on from the political desert it finds itself in and re-energize its base? Amanda Litman, co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, joins The Excerpt to share her take. Amanda's new book, When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, will be on bookshelves May 13th.
Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Amanda.
Amanda Litman:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
One big theme since the Democrats' painful loss last year is the question about the working-class. For decades, this cohort of voters was very much considered the Democrats' bread and butter of support, and then came Trump's second campaign for the presidency. And to many Democrats' surprise, the working-class went for Republicans. What's a new vision for reestablishing that trust and connection with America's working-class?
Amanda Litman:
I think for us it's all about the candidates. We need to give them candidates and leaders that they can genuinely connect with. Trump, for all of his bluster and all of his perceived wealth, and it seems like he wouldn't be an appealing candidate, he is aspirationally wealthy. He is what you, if you are working-class, you think you can become, given the way that he tells his story and the way that he portrays himself. What we need to do as a party is give people candidates and leaders who can genuinely and authentically connect to their lived experience and communicate specifically what you're going to do for them.
Now, I think Trump made a whole bunch of promises he can't keep about what he's going to do for working-class people, but he was promising something and was giving them a villain in their story. Again, even if it wasn't the actual villain in reality. He was able to tell the story and tell them how their lives were going to be better if he won.
Dana Taylor:
A recent essay of yours published last week in The Daily Beast with the title, "Democrats 'Play Dead' Strategy Will Be the Death of the Party." You were of course referring to Democratic strategist James Carville's recent op-ed in The New York Times, suggesting that in fact playing dead and letting Trump and the GOP dig their own grave with voters, so to speak, was the right way to go. Can you explain the strategic thinking behind your advice to not do that?
Amanda Litman:
So I think the most important political task for Democrats right now is to drag down Trump's approval rating as much as possible. One, to begin to level the playing field ahead of next year of the elections, both in this November and in Virginia and New Jersey, the local elections everywhere else, and then especially the congressional midterms in 2026. But two, we have to make sure that Trump is toxic.
We want Republican-elected officials and business executives and universities to feel like aligning with Trump is bad for them, because he is bad, he is not popular. And I think this is one of the problems of the 2024 election. He won the popular vote, so people think he is therefore a figure worth aligning with. That is not true. When people are asked how they feel about what he is doing, they do not like it.
So we have to draw attention to what Trump is doing to drag down his approval ratings for that political end. In order to do that, we need to create conflict. We need to create spectacle. We need to give people a reason to pay attention. That is what I mean when I say Democrats need to fight back. We need to draw people's eyes to the bad stuff that Trump and Elon Musk are doing in order to serve our political goals.
Dana Taylor:
A national poll by NBC News last week agrees with your strategy. Among Democratic voters, the poll found that two to one, they want the party to fight rather than compromise. But just in the past two months of Trump's presidency, we're seeing very little resistance in Congress, including Senator Chuck Schumer's decision to back the Republicans budget recently. Obviously the GOP holds power over both Congressional Houses. How might Democrats show voters they're fighting for them on the hill?
Amanda Litman:
I think it's things as simple as not giving the Senate unanimous consent to move forward with things, making every single nomination that Trump made for his cabinet a fight. Democrats should not have voted for a single one of his appointees. There are so many ways in which they could draw a spectacle to these moments.
Imagine if during the State of the Union or the joint speech to Congress, each one had individually done the kind of protest that Representative Al Green did. Instead of scolding him or calling him to task for raising attention to the cuts Trump wanted to make to Medicaid, imagine if each member of Congress, one by one, had called out that kind of cut and had made it a point of attention and had really derailed the entire evening.
Each of those would have moved the conversation to a place where, "Look, Democrats are, at the very least, trying." And I think that is the overarching theme of what I want to see from the Democratic Party. I want us to at least get caught trying. I know we don't have legislative power, but we can use the power of attention to make it clear to the American people what Trump is doing. When there is such a barrage of information coming at them, we have to point them to what we want them to see.
Dana Taylor:
There are almost as many opinions on what the Democrat should do as there are Democrats in Congress. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed columnist, Peggy Noonan, had a recent column offering advice. She wrote, "Stop listening to your consultants. They know the Democratic Party, but not America. They've always had the media in their pocket and it's made them lazy and lacking in insight." Do you think she's right?
Amanda Litman:
No, I'm not always inclined to blame consultants. I think consultants are not always the all-powerful puppet masters that people think they are. Candidates and elected officials have some agency here. The consultants are only as powerful as whether the candidates and electeds will listen to them. So I think, really, we need to make sure that the responsibility and the ownership of the problem we're in falls with the elected officials we've empowered to make these calls.
Yes, they should be ignoring consultants when they're getting bad advice, but they should also have a really clear point of view. I think this is the thing that we're talking about, should Democrats fight on foreign aid? Should Democrats fight on the destruction of the Department of Education? Should Democrats fight on DOGE?
It actually doesn't matter necessarily which one they're fighting. Pick the thing that the member of Congress feels personally most aggrieved by and channel that fury in as many public ways as you can, because that authentic rage is going to go much further and mean much more and connect more deeply to voters and to Americans than any kind of poll-tested messaging we could try.
Dana Taylor:
Amanda, as you know, age was a huge factor in the campaign for the presidency last year. Politico and other outlets reported late in 2019 that President Joe Biden had signaled to aides that he would serve only a single term and he would be a "good transition figure" to the next generation. Then he apparently changed his mind and decided to run for a second term before eventually bowing out last July. What role does age play in the remaking of the Democratic Party?
Amanda Litman:
I have been on the record of saying that every member of Congress, Democratic member of Congress over the age of 70 needs to make this their last term. We are at a moment where we need elected officials with both the skills and the stomach to fight in this environment. That is not to say that that can't come from some older members. We've certainly seen people like Senator Sanders and Senator Warren show up in a meaningful way, but there is a whole bench of talent of younger leaders who have governing experience; run for something, has helped elect. Nearly 1500 young leaders to state and local office all across the country who could rise in this moment.
We need them and we need more like them to take on the national stage, because they both feel the fury, they understand that the Republican Party is not on the level. It's not going to go back to the way it was before, because what it was before is dead. And they understand how to communicate all of that in this media environment. I've been joking a little bit these days, we need elected officials who have actually run their own Instagram accounts, who are a little bit online, in many ways, because they understand how people get information right now and they understand how to tap into it.
Dana Taylor:
There have been reports that GOP leaders are cautioning their congressional members to avoid town halls where they've been hearing quite a bit of criticism from voters. Is there an opportunity for Democrats in this setting?
Amanda Litman:
Oh, absolutely. And I think Indivisible has been doing amazing work on this, encouraging people to host empty chair town halls, call attention to the fact that these Republican members of Congress are afraid to face their voters. I think that is one of the key ways you know that what Trump is doing is unpopular. They don't want to have to defend it. But keep in mind, in 2026, Trump is not going to be on the ballot. All of those Republicans will be. And we have a chance to take them all out if we make it clear how they are also complicit in this work.
Dana Taylor:
In your op-ed last week, you also wrote that voters aren't seeing what they want to see from Democrats. What do you think they do need to see?
Amanda Litman:
It's like if someone tells you not to be so angry, just calm down, calm your pretty little head. We are mad. Democratic voters, Democratic Americans, most Americans are mad. We want to see elected officials that validate that fury and show us that we are not crazy for thinking this is abnormal and this is harmful and dangerous.
I think a lot about Senator Schumer's interview earlier this week where he pointed out he didn't think we were in a crisis yet. We would get there when President Trump disobeyed the Supreme Court, but we weren't in a crisis yet. That is not how most Americans feel right now. And hearing that from our elected official, from our party leader, in many ways is so insulting and so denigrating, and it makes us feel like we're being gaslit. We need leaders who can channel that fury, who can reflect our emotions back at us and can tell us what to do with them.
Dana Taylor:
Your organization, Run for Something, recruits and supports young leaders who want to run for state and local government. What kind of reception are you seeing since last November's election? What are they telling you?
Amanda Litman:
So we have had almost 33,000 young people raise their hands just since the November election, and about 20,000 of them just since inauguration. That is more, for context, that is more than Run for Something had sign up with us in the entire first two years of Trump's first term. It is an unprecedented, and honestly, I'm surprised, unexpected surge in people saying, "I want to fight. I want to lead. I want to solve problems in my community."
We're hearing candidates show up and talking about housing, about healthcare, about reproductive health, and about the fact if they're not going to fight for me, I'm going to fight for me. I'm going to fight for my neighbors, my friends, and my community. It's so inspiring, and it really makes me think that we are on the brink of some huge turnover in the Democratic Party.
Dana Taylor:
Obviously we're a bit out from the next presidential election. That said, what's the nomination process looking like from Democratic leaders? What kind of candidate do you think might get elevated for the 2028 election?
Amanda Litman:
I think we're going to have an open primary for the first time in a long time, since probably 2008, a genuinely open primary, and that's going to be so good for the party. Primaries are how we decide what we believe. They're how we determine where we are, what kind of policy positions we want to fight for, and what kind of leader we want to elevate.
I am so excited for that thing. It's going to be messy. It's going to be, on some days, nasty. But it's also going to be so helpful for us to make sure that our candidate is sharp, is prepared, is practiced, and I think it's going to give us a chance to really see the diverse bench and this incredible bench that we've built over the last, honestly, 15 years. I expect he'll be someone we don't expect, and that's the only prediction I'm willing to make.
Dana Taylor:
Amanda, thanks for joining us again on The Excerpt.
Amanda Litman:
Anytime. Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.