SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Exactly one month after losing to Donald Trump in every battleground on the map, Democratic leaders across the country have decamped to one of the states that have rejected them and are trying to extricate themselves from the situation.
At the Hilton Hotel outside Phoenix, where Christmas carols blared through the lobby, state Democratic Party chairmen gathered for their annual winter meeting. They weren’t as enthusiastic as they were after Trump’s first surprising victory. They are exhausted. Even after Trump appointed figures like Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his government staff, they still weren’t ready to protest in the streets or join liberal networks.
But as they gathered in the ballroom and exchanged theories about what went wrong, they were inching their way into the anger phase of the mourning cycle. They accused them of being overpaid consultants, expressed despair that working-class voters of all stripes had abandoned them, and lamented that they had lectured rather than listened to their constituents.
“We need to get our homes back, not fund consultants who want to buy new homes!” Ken Martin, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, said in a speech to hundreds of attendees:
Judson Scanlon, the PAC’s political director who made a “White Dudes for Harris” hat while waiting for pizza after hours of meetings, is one of the Democrats who stopped watching MSNBC after Trump took office. I took it upon myself.
“Since 2016, all we’ve heard is the crazy things this guy does when he’s president and when he’s not,” Scanlon said. “I’m sick of that.”
The meeting was one of the first major gatherings of top Democrats since last month’s disastrous election. They once hoped they could finally celebrate the end of the Trump era here. Instead, amid continued criticism, they urged each other to put on a brave face despite losing the White House to a felon and being locked out of both houses of Congress.
The liberal network’s ratings have plummeted since Trump took office. It’s one of several signs that Democrats are in some sort of retreat as they try to get their bearings, combing through reams of data and hot takes to figure out what caused the loss. A referendum was held for the first time in 20 years. Many progressives have left social media platform X and are not planning the mass marches that followed Trump’s initial victory.
“Why don’t you watch the march? Black women are tired right now. They’re really, really tired,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison, who announced after Trump’s election that he would not run for re-election. “Many of them have given everything they have to this race to see themselves elected President of the United States.”
Perhaps because they don’t have the energy, Arizona Democrats also aren’t in the mood for the relentless ideological battles they’ve waged since 2016.
That was clear from the way the four men running to lead the Democratic National Committee persuaded state party leaders to vote for them in next year’s election.
In their speeches, none of the candidates for DNC chairman argued that the Democratic Party needed to undergo a major shift in its worldview. Unlike some progressive parts of the Democratic ecosystem, no one argued that Trump’s victory proved that we needed to adopt bold, concrete promises like Medicare for All. Focusing on transgender issues.
Instead, most promoted themselves as competent managers and presented technical solutions.
Martin, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party leader, said he helped lift Democrats in his state out of the slump after the 2010 midterm elections, which then-President Barack Obama called a “bombshell.” He argued, “There is no need for our party to be torn down to its foundations and rebuilt.”
He entered the race as an early favorite, securing about half the support he needed to win. In Arizona, his fans chanted “YES WE KEN!” Pushing the button, he set up a makeshift war room called “Kenquarters.”
Like Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler told the crowd that he has righted the ship in his state. There, “we’ve been able to win seven of the last 10 statewide elections.” He called for a “permanent campaign” with a national organization.
When DNC chair candidates called for change, they talked more about changing tactics than reforming ideology.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said in a speech that his party must act differently if it wants to win. But he said, “The good news is that the change is really just a return to who we are, to be the party of working people across America.”
And O’Malley, too, said he was a “proven operational transformation leader,” noting that when President Joe Biden nominated him to head the agency, he believed he would overhaul the agency.
James Skoufis, a little-known New York state senator representing a Trump-loving district, has been at the forefront of changing the DNC. But he spoke more about strategy than ideology when he said he would appear on Fox News and Joe Rogan’s podcast. This was a reference to Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to boycott the show, whose interview with Trump boasted 52 million views on YouTube.
He also promised to end “sweetheart deals” and “contracts with vendors that have periodically ripped off the DNC.”
Some high-profile Democrats who could shake up the DNC chairman race, such as U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, may still decide to run.
At times, some Democrats have argued that they should continue to take a stand on cultural issues.
In a fiery speech, Harrison lashed out at critics within his party who wanted to move away from ‘identity politics’. Democrats began their meeting Thursday with a “land recognition,” a symbolic gesture acknowledging that the land a person stands on was previously owned by Native Americans, a move that conservatives derided as “woke.”
As Democrats try to find a way forward, there is a quiet recognition among some that they won’t be out of power for long. This was a stark contrast to others in the party who feared the realignment could cost them years of power. Ultimately, these Democrats reasoned, Americans had voted for Trump before and quickly tired of him, as evidenced in the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. They took solace in the fact that voters this year supported liberal ballot initiatives and Democratic Senate candidates in states Trump won.
“It took something for Ruben Gallego to win his Senate seat against the Trump sycophants on the side of Kari Lake,” Harrison said. “Such mixed results do not mean this is a landslide. “It cannot be said to be an existential crisis for the Democratic Party,” he said.
Peggy Grove, vice chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said the party has a “high chance” of winning the House in the midterm elections.
“Yesterday was a bad day,” she said. “Reconstruction began today.”
