I’ve been struggling with this question for a month.
It’s been that long since a Democratic state legislator rose during the Q&A after a speech and asked me a deceptively simple thing: What should Democrats do now? What should their message be?
I had no idea how to answer that, nor even any confidence that I was the one to do it. It seemed to me it was a question not for a professional kvetcher uninterested in the nuts and bolts of political machinery, but, rather, for some high-powered operative like Donna Brazile or James Carville.
But then, it is high-powered operatives who’ve led the party into its present cul-de-sac.
Indeed, as internecine fighting loudly fractures the GOP, Democrats quietly struggle with a civil war of their own. Largely shut out of power at the state and federal levels, the party is torn between pragmatists who want to chase Donald Trump’s voters with a centrist economic agenda and insurrectionists like Bernie Sanders who want to move hard to the left. What should Democrats do?