Back to the basics: rebuilding the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party is in decay. It’s impossible to deny. But the decline didn’t start last November. It’s been a steady deterioration since the resounding victories of 2008, which swept former President Barack Obama into office and took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Since then, it has slowly ceded power, losing the House in 2010 and Senate in 2014. The exclamation point was Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election.

Many suggestions have been offered on how to rebuild the party. Some have proposed it’s best to push further left and become more progressive. This isn’t the answer.

If Democrats want any hope of stopping their backslide into political irrelevance, they need to reenergize the party from the ground up, focus on grass-roots movements and reconnect with voters who have become disillusioned with the often out-of-touch platforms of Obama’s party.

Democratic losses in the federal government are staggering and well-documented. In 2008, the party owned 57 seats in the Senate. In 2016, that number plummeted to 44. Similarly, after reaching a peak of 257 seats in the House in 2008, that number has now dwindled to 194. The party has also been reeling at the state level.

In 2008, there were 28 Democratic governors. Now, there are only 16. Furthermore, democrats have relinquished 958 seats within state legislatures, according to The Washington Post. Much of these losses were masked by Obama’s popularity and reelection. However, these results are a direct repudiation of his party’s policies. Voter discontent is evident.

Democrats are split between leftists, who largely backed Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, and centrists, who mostly supported Hillary Clinton. This clash recently crescendoed again after former labor secretary Tom Perez, backed by Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, faced Sanders-backed Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., in the election for Democratic National Committee chair last weekend.

Perez won, but his victory only affirmed the divide.

The Democratic Party should have one goal: win back seats in 2018.

Bickering over Perez’s victory by progressives needs to stop. The two candidates have some similarities, including common ground as civil rights attorneys. Perez began as a prosecutor for, and eventually headed, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He fought cases from police discrimination to voter suppression.

His victory presents democrats with a viable path to the 2018 midterm elections. And Perez’s appointment of Ellison as deputy DNC chair gives the shell-shocked DNC its best chance to unite against external political threats and, subsequently, to win.

Democrats need to regain power before they can implement policies for social change. If they want to push to expand civil liberties, it is imperative to first connect with constituents and reaffirm their identity as a party for the working class. A single parent worried about making ends meet isn’t likely to care about where Caitlyn Jenner goes to the bathroom. Social issues are important, but they don’t win elections.

Biden warned of the failure to appeal to blue-collar voters. This past election, a certain billionaire was remarkably able to position himself as the voice of the working class. How did this happen? It speaks volumes about the Democratic Party’s failure to touch base with the voters it claimed to be helping — the same ones it desperately needed.

To improve, the DNC needs to concentrate its efforts on state-level movements that focus on these workers. "The Democratic Party needs to make house calls," Perez told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "One of the reasons we lost in places like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania is we're not speaking to rural voters."

He’s right. Many of these people left to vote for third-party candidates. But they didn’t leave because the party isn’t liberal enough. They bolted because they felt the party wasn’t in tune with their struggles. Pushing heedlessly left without attempting to win them back only risks further alienation. Like Ellison stated after his defeat, “(Democrats) don’t have the luxury to walk out of this room divided.”

Brian Lee is a UF English senior. Alfredo Morales, a UF aerospace and mechanical engineering junior and former Alligator sports writer, contributed to this week’s column.