The Democratic Party’s Pivotal Crossroads

Whichever path we choose, the terrain is uncharted

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

In the wake of Harris’ loss in the 2024 election, many Democrats have struggled to grapple with the upset. There are any number of explanations for why it happened, but there seem to be two primary camps that have emerged. There are those who believe that the loss owes to Harris going too far — that she became too closely aligned with the progressive wing of the Democratic party and lost out on huge swaths of middle-of-the-road voters as a result.

Then there are those who believe that she didn’t go far enough, and that each internal criticism leveled against leaders on the Left is a detriment to our greater cause. Some in this camp think that we should set aside all talks of long games and strategy — that we should each become activists today and protest for change despite the possible consequences.

I can see sense in nearly all stances. Sometimes, I feel that if Harris had only distanced herself from all of the identity politics — if she’d only been a less vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ — that she may have won the election and appealed more to middle America.

There’s honor in the idea that we shouldn’t sacrifice our values to win political races. That the leaders we want are the ones who would stand up for what’s right regardless of whether it’s politically advantageous. And yet, it only takes a realist to see that our politics are an honorless enterprise, and going high when others go low will only get us so far. Taking the honorable road has continually proven counter-productive for Democrats.

So often it seems that we’re forced to make a choice between becoming hypocrites by rolling around in the muck or forfeiting all chances at winning future elections. We can play political games and continue propping up a system fewer and fewer of us believe in, or we can do what’s right and run the possible risk of losing everything.

It’s rare for people to look toward the leaders of the past and argue that they should have simply kept women’s rights or the abolition of slavery out of their platform when they had close elections at stake. There’s an inherent gaslighting in the idea that civil rights should take a back seat; trans people are real, face greater threats than ever before, and deserve representation. And yet, history is written by the victors, and we’ll never know all the names who were lost to time simply for standing up for the right thing. All of the congressmen and senators who would have gone on to fight bigger fights in upcoming years but had their careers prematurely curtailed.

I can’t unsee the possibility that if Harris had simply been less outspoken in the interest of embattled minorities, those same threatened populations would be safer today as a result. If she’d won her election — and turned her back on causes that I myself support in the process— she may have spared them from so much of the jeopardy they now face under this new administration.

Maybe it’s unhealthy for our party to stay mired in its divisions — to continue debating over who did what right and wrong in the election. But maybe it’s useful to learn what happened and design our future strategies around those lessons.

Maybe we’ll never know if Harris even had a chance in her race. Maybe the tides had shifted so much by November that there was simply no possibility she could pull off that win, and all of our speculation is meaningless. We’ll never know for sure how Biden may have ultimately fared in the election. Had he stayed in the race, it’s possible that momentum could have shifted, and the immediate months leading up to November would have told a completely different story. We’ll never know just what would have happened if, instead of handing the baton to Harris, his party had allowed an open convention to play out, however controversial or chaotic it may have been.

Just as there’s little agreement among Democrats about where things went wrong, there’s next to no consensus about what right looks like today. Those who believed Harris didn’t go far enough want to see their leaders do everything in their power daily to impede Trump’s agenda, risks to their families be damned. Maybe it falls on our leaders to take those risks. But I can’t say I envy their positions.

Those who believe Harris’ loss owed largely to an error of strategy want to see a more diplomatic game played. Maybe the moment at hand is too pressing, and diplomacy simply won’t cut it. Maybe we can’t keep playing politics and it’s the time for people to take to the streets as revolutionaries. And maybe being strategic is the only path forward.

So much of the difficulty in determining our battle plan stems from what a bizarre crossroads we’re currently standing at as a country.

We’re so trained to view every issue through a binary lens that we fail to consider when there are no innately correct answers. We view one side as right, and the other as wrong. We see one approach as viable, and the other dangerous. But I don’t think it’s often enough that we do ourselves the courtesy of sitting with just how unprecedented this moment is —and how complicated it might be to find our way out of the fog.

What movements will spawn what counter movements is impossible to predict. What news stories will inflame the country and become a part of our greater cultural narrative is anyone’s best guess.

We can find some solace when we look toward other countries that have faced similar upheavals and prevailed. We can even look at the strife that our own country has endured in the past. But a hard truth is that we live in a more mercurial world than ever before; the patterns in history books can only offer so much insight into our current scenario.

We don’t know how to deal with a felonious, insurrection-inciting leader retaking office, nor what the appropriate course of action is when a non-government appointed CEO commandeers the nation’s pocket book — when he buys and weaponizes social media platforms to sow misinformation.

None of this is to say that all strategizing is null and void, nor that hope is lost. There’s plenty of cause for optimism. The Trump administration has done a great deal of damage, but it’s faced more and more rebukes and lost much of its early momentum. How we can and should handle their continued incursions in the years ahead is an ongoing question to which there are no definitive answers.

There’s no one correct path ahead, and no leader who will satisfy every vision of what the future should look like. But as we debate, mourn, and strategize, we’d do well to remember that this moment demands not just conviction, but compassion. The road forward will be uncertain and often bitter. And if we can’t extend empathy to even our allies, if we see enemies in everyone who diverges from our ideology even slightly, we risk losing more than just elections.

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