So why does it seem that Democrats are fumbling a winnable midterm cycle?

Two recent developments within the past few weeks reveal the party’s fundamental problems leading into the fall. The first demonstrates the real limits of Democrats’ ability to fight back against Trump. And the second shows that the party’s refusal to admit its mistakes prevents it from unifying around a coherent strategy to win.

Consider how badly Democrats lost the redistricting war with President Trump over federal congressional seats. Last year, Trump coordinated a sweeping national redistricting effort designed to lock in Republican control of the House. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger decided to “fight fire with fire” by gerrymandering their own states to counterbalance Republican gains in places like Texas. But this response made things worse.

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In Virginia, the state supreme court struck down the new Democratic map, ruling it violated the 2020 voter-approved redistricting reforms. Worse, Newsom’s California plan — which could create five new Democratic-favorable seats — gave Republicans exactly the rationale they needed to escalate their own gerrymandering efforts in states where the GOP initially showed reluctance to do so. North Carolina Republicans explicitly cited Newsom’s redistricting as justification for their own maps, saying the Golden State was “blocking the efforts of blue state Democrats to take control of Congress.”

The math is daunting. As of now, Republicans stand to gain roughly 13 House seats from their gerrymandering efforts nationwide. Democrats, thanks to Newsom, may gain five. That is a net gain of seven seats for Trump. In sum, Democrats’ attempt to fight back didn’t stop Trump’s redistricting efforts. Rather, they normalized a sleazy policy and gave hesitant Republican-led states the push to escalate the effort.

If Trump’s redistricting efforts hold, Democrats could fail to retake the House this fall. Without at least one chamber to create institutional leverage, Democrats would be unable to access critical tools to reach voters before the 2028 presidential election, such as investigative power, subpoena authority, and a platform for high-profile hearings. Instead, they would be forced to continue their symbolic protest and opposition for the remainder of his term. 

But the real fumble of Democrats leading into 2026 and 2028 comes not from losing the redistricting fight or any of the other defeats to Trump, but from the party’s ongoing refusal to honestly examine why it lost the 2024 election. 

This institutional failure has come into focus with the Democratic National Committee’s recent release of its much anticipated 2024 election post-mortem, a report that was supposed to answer hard questions about why the party lost, but instead highlights the insularity and self-protective tendencies of the small professional class of Democratic operatives who influence the party.

The timeline of the report’s suppression and eventual release illustrates this problem. In February 2025, Ken Martin, the then chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, won the election to become the next DNC chairman. He defeated Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair, who had the backing of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and other top Democratic leaders.

Martin’s strategy to win the most votes from the 448 DNC members, the majority of whom are state party representatives, was straightforward. He promised a “50-state party strategy,” pledging to invest more money in state parties across the country, including the least competitive ones. This stood in contrast to Wikler, who wanted to concentrate resources on media and battleground state elections. Not surprisingly, the candidate promising money to more of the voting constituency beat the candidate advocating for strategic spending focus.

But Martin had to do more than promise money to win. He also had to appease the numerous Democrats angry about the 2024 election defeat. Many of these critics weren’t voting DNC members, but their voices and donations mattered. For them, he promised an independent autopsy conducted by an outside auditor that would rigorously examine why the party lost and tell the truth.

But something changed once he got into office. 

Instead of an independent process, Martin put one of his close friends, Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, in charge of the report. Then, in December 2025, Martin announced that the DNC would not release the final report after all. He justified the decision by saying it would distract from the party’s 2025 wins and take focus away from the midterms.

It was only when CNN was preparing to expose details of the report’s drafts in late May that Martin abruptly changed his position, releasing the complete report on May 21, 2026.

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Much of the fallout has focused on the draft report’s shocking lack of quality, which included factually incorrect claims and missing sources. But the real problem is what the report deliberately avoids. Most strikingly, the report never addresses the simplest, most obvious explanation for why Harris lost: the Biden administration’s record was unpopular, and Harris was not a credible alternative. On immigration, inflation, and governance more broadly, voters rejected the first Biden term. By the time Harris launched her campaign, President Biden’s approval rating had collapsed to 36%, and Harris was unable to credibly distance herself from his record. The autopsy avoids both of these truths.

Instead, the report downplays Harris’s responsibility for the loss, arguing that she was not properly armed for victory. Its key finding: “the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch.” This is absurd. It was never the plan for Harris to run in Biden’s place during his first term, nor was it the plan when he announced his withdrawal from the race abruptly in July 2024. The White House had no obligation to spend four years grooming Harris as a successor, because Biden was supposed to be running for reelection. Any lack of preparedness of the Vice President should be blamed on herself and the dozens of Democratic operatives who opportunistically asserted her name as the natural successor to Biden in the hours following his announcement, thus shutting down the efforts of former President Obama to create a process for new candidates to be selected by the party (and of course, to avoid having Harris be the nominee). A former prosecutor, attorney general, and senator ought to be able to demonstrate her capability to be an effective leader without the handholding of an entire team. If Harris needed more prep time to be a good presidential candidate, it means she was unfit for the position. 

And the reality is that many Democratic operatives knew this simple truth about Harris and either endorsed her bid or hid their hesitation and got behind her. But what can be said about the judgment and character of the Democratic operatives who did this, knowing full well of her ineptness and dysfunctional managerial style, one that resulted in a 91.5% staff turnover rate while she was vice president? They all knew about it but looked the other way. This includes Ken Martin, who was a vice chair of the Harris-Walz campaign before running for DNC chairman.

For many Democrats, the autopsy’s silence confirms their suspicion that a small network of operatives is suppressing a report that would examine their own conduct. Many of these same operatives ignored or hid President Biden’s cognitive decline while prioritizing their own positions over the risk to the country and party. They then helmed a campaign so financially chaotic that it blew through $1.6 billion in roughly 100 days and left the party $20 million in debt. And now they are using the DNC chair to ensure that the most obvious truth about the 2024 election is not stated by the party itself. Namely, that it was the Democratic professional operative class that were the primary drivers for creating a disastrous first term for Biden, and choosing an unfit replacement candidate to succeed him.

Ken Martin was installed as DNC chair to keep this problem from being named. Instead, he and many Democrats want to pretend the party’s current leadership ecosystem is capable of mounting a serious effort in 2026 and 2028, without acknowledging the role many of these operatives played in hiding Biden’s decline, downplaying Harris’s unfitness, and suppressing honest examination of the party’s candidate selection. 

A party that cannot be honest about its own mistakes is destined to repeat them. And in both the gerrymandering fight and the handling of the election autopsy, the party chose to do the expedient thing rather than the right thing — both decisions that have been disastrous. Democrats know these truths about themselves. Until they admit them, they will keep losing winnable elections. 

Now the race for the next leader of the Democratic National Committee, to be elected on 1 February, is an opportunity to confront the party’s utter collapse in Middle America and chart a new course. Whether the Democrats will seize the chance turns on the resolve of the winner to buck the party’s subservience to donors and allocate resources to fresh candidates in former swing states.

The two most prominent contenders — Wisconsin party chairman Ben Wikler and Minnesota chairman Ken Martin — are workhorses adept at the art of coalition management. As Midwestern white guys, Martin and Wikler could help the party stanch the hemorrhage of Democratic support among their own demographic. But while they have sounded populist notes, their appetite for a shake-up has yet to be tested.

The backdrop is bleak. Progressives are demoralized over The Squad’s diminished size. Red-state Democrats are reeling from the loss of Sens. Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Bob Casey. And establishment liberals such as Chuck Schumer have rationalized defeat by explaining that workers “didn’t realize” how much Democrats “care for them”. Party activists can’t spot any would-be saviors in the distant horizon.

The job of the next DNC chairperson won’t be easy or glamorous. He or she will face the daunting task of rebuilding the Democratic coalition in nearly every part of America. Not only are Democrats on a backfoot in the Rust Belt and former Sun Belt strongholds like Florida, they must reckon with Trump’s surprising inroads among working-class voters and people of color in deep-blue areas.

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To be effective, the DNC leader will have to intervene forcefully in big debates over ideology and strategy. Grassroots activists, Left-wing intellectuals, and labor leaders such as Shawn Fain of the United Autoworkers are urging a showdown with the donor class and corporate power to compete with Trump’s GOP. Others who are close to the party elite are proposing a “common-sense” approach to economics, which some suspect is code for a Wall Street-friendly tack.

As the DNC’s 448 members gear up to vote, it’s far from certain that the victor will have a mandate to court the working-class voters who have defected to Trump since 2016. Still, there are hopes for serious change following the hapless tenure of Jaime Harrison, a friend of elite lobbyists who staunchly defended the party’s embrace of identity politics after critics blamed it for November’s humbling results.

At first glance, Martin and Wikler, the two frontrunners, seem well-positioned to oversee a “reset”. Each boasts of having overhauled his respective state party. Each enjoys the backing of labor unions, grassroots organizations, and reform-minded establishment figures. And both have bluntly stated that the party lost the working class this past election.

The basic assumption is that either of these two middle-aged white men from the Upper Midwest is suited to reconnecting the party with Gen-X and Millennial men without a college education — a demographic group that extended its shift to the right in November. A victory by either Martin or Wikler, the thinking goes, would install a competent leader bent on revamping the party’s message and cultivating down-ballot insurgents in states that have swung to the GOP since the Obama era.

Yet there are reasons to doubt the Democrats will be so easily led out of their morass. Most centrally, there is no obvious basis for a truce between the party’s Left flank and its more centrist members. Many progressives are unwilling or afraid to discipline “the Groups” — the professional advocacy organizations that are widely seen as responsible for the party’s unpopular and outré positions on race, immigration, gender, sexuality, drugs, and criminal justice. This reputation has overshadowed progressives’ support for a strong welfare state, consumer protection, and workers’ rights, limiting their appeal among workers who lean Right or simply hold mainstream views on cultural questions.

The “moderates”, meanwhile, comprise two factions that generally disagree on economic priorities: Rust Belt populists who shrink from the excesses of the “woke” Left, and neoliberals who once exploited identity politics but are now willing to muzzle “the Groups” if that means regaining control of the party.

Although both moderate factions have recently stressed the importance of tackling high prices, they are divided on tariffs, corporate oversight, and the need for long-term re-industrialization. Team Biden’s gamble on industrial policy failed to stir the electorate, leaving populists who supported such efforts without a clear framework to move forward. And they diverge from progressives on key questions such as border security, the pace of the green transition, and the economic threat posed by China. This impasse has emboldened neoliberals backed by major donors to discourage a push toward populist economics.

Bridging these divides while preventing a return to neoliberal orthodoxy will require clearheaded leadership. An effective DNC leader must bend progressives and neoliberals on the issues where they are most vulnerable. Given Martin’s and Wikler’s Midwestern backgrounds, it is reasonable to wager that both would favor the pragmatic populists. Neither contender, however, seems terribly inclined to force hard choices on the party’s dominant factions.

Take Wikler, whom pundits have depicted as more likely to excite the progressive base and who just garnered the endorsements of seven Democratic governors. While some high-profile commentators see him as bolder than Martin, he has embraced the same naked appeals to identity politics that have backed his party into a corner. Wikler has also been credited with “nationalizing” elections in Wisconsin to make them more competitive for Democrats. This involves attracting major media to lesser-known contests and mobilizing party activists behind local candidates whose election could have a decisive impact on Democratic priorities.

In the right context, this strategy can generate momentum and pool resources for progressive challengers to Republican incumbents. But as disastrous races elsewhere have demonstrated, it can also exacerbate perceptions in places typically ignored by Democrats that the party elite is only interested in flashy contests that fill up campaign war chests.

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Martin, meanwhile, may be too mild-mannered to forge meaningful compromises. A leader possessing sangfroid still must be able to throw a punch, particularly in the age of Trump. Avoiding gaffes that reinforce perceptions that Democrats are as much in the pocket of Wall Street as the GOP is also crucial. In a recent candidate forum, Martin appeared to astound himself when he blurted that Democrats will take money from “good billionaires … who share our values,” but not from “those bad billionaires”. Oops.

Still, there is some evidence he has more of an independent streak than Wikler. Martin has focused on strengthening the autonomy of local party branches and irritated the elite by establishing a group of state leaders that is separate from the DNC. For the sake of rebuilding local trust, such a strategy might be worth the price of angering consultants and grandees from the Northeast and California. Democrats are in desperate need of someone willing to clean house and keep the liberal establishment at arm’s length.

Whoever prevails, however, must do more than hone a new image. For Democrats to have any hope of winning back the working class, they need to recall the policies but also the party vision that gave succor to struggling Americans from their party’s founding in the Jacksonian era to the New Deal and the Great Society.

Egalitarianism, the vitality of a free society, and a belief that active government could spur national progress: these were the ideas that the Democratic giants of the past masterfully combined in their appeals to ordinary people. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman could denounce injustice in plain language while arousing the spirit of optimism once considered inherent to the American experience.

In more practical terms, that meant adapting the original progressive tradition of the Midwest, predicated on reining in monopolies and forging alliances between workers, small businesses, and farmers. For decades, this approach to coalition-building was embraced by Left-leaning Democrats, from populists like Oklahoma’s Fred Harris to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. It flourished until the end of last century, when Bill Clinton’s commitment to globalization sundered his party’s ties with small towns and fading industrial regions.

Biden, to his credit, did draw on this older progressive tradition through his administration’s antitrust policies. Despite stark obstacles in the heartland, rallying the party once more to the anti-monopoly banner is probably the best way to revive its fortunes. The alternative is to court America’s wealthy suburbs — an approach that would close the door on New Deal liberalism for good and that may not even be worth the candle, judging by Harris’s campaign.

Yet with the exception of Howard Dean, a former presidential candidate who pursued a 50-state strategy in the mid-aughts, all of the party’s recent leaders have been careerists beholden to the donor class. This has deepened the sense among disenchanted activists that the obstacles to major reform also run through the DNC. To rebuild the Democratic coalition, the DNC will have do more than serve as the gatekeeper of critical campaign funds.

The overarching task of the next four to eight years, then, is to build the bridge to a new era that Biden himself couldn’t deliver. That demands identifying future leaders who speak to the common interests of American workers, while encouraging stances that serve America’s long-term security.

It also means resisting pressure to cede control of the party’s direction to powerful presidential aspirants. The 2028 field is already anticipated to feature ultra-wealthy players such as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and celebrity tycoons like Mark Cuban. A party leader intent on protecting democracy from oligarchy would do well to act as Martin has and defy efforts to centralize power in patronage networks that resemble Trump’s.

No matter how ambitious the next DNC leader turns out to be, stoking an anti-donor insurgency won’t come naturally. Democrats in the Trump era have become the party of institutions — so much so that they can’t see the powerful interests that have suffocated reform in the cradle. But if the party has a soul, its salvation begins with a revolution against its own monopolists. A venerable tradition calls out to those willing to take up the gauntlet.