When a political party constantly portrays itself as a champion of democracy – and particularly when it has the word “democratic” in its name – one would assume that to gain political power, the party would listen to the voters and shape its platform around their wishes, aspirations, and concerns. What is democracy if it is not governance according to the will of the majority? Not that this is necessarily a good system, but it is how democracy is supposed to work. In the United States today, however – and perhaps for the last several decades – the Democratic Party, despite the claims of its members, has shown no real interest in doing things the way most Americans would prefer. Since the results came in from the 2024 presidential election, the party appears to be moving even further away from that core democratic ideal.
According to the official results, the election was not a landslide – not for Donald Trump and not for congressional Republicans. Nevertheless, Trump's victory in the presidential race was emphatic and marked something of a sea-change in American culture. The seemingly inexorable shift towards the progressive “woke” version of society in which individualism is sacrificed on the altar of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was stopped in its tracks when most Americans decided that it had all gone too far.
Not that DEI is finished, but it has suffered a major setback – at least in the US. The Democratic Party refuses to accept this, however. It has become radicalized to the point that analyzing the reasons for its defeat and making a course correction is no longer an option.
The Anti-Democratic Democratic Party
Instead, it appears to have adopted a mindset that could be considered the exact opposite of democratic. As already mentioned, democracy requires political leaders to bend to the will of the majority. In the recent presidential election, not only did Donald Trump score an Electoral College victory, but he also won the popular vote. That means that even if America was a democracy rather than a constitutional republic, Trump still would have won. Rather than graciously accepting defeat, though, a lot of Democrats, along with their allies in the media and within the left-wing activist community, blamed the voters.
The mindset of true Democrats would probably sound something like, "The people rejected our platform and our philosophy, and so we must change." Instead, the loudest and most influential voices on the political left took the opposite tack: The people rejected our philosophy, and so the people must be at fault.
Since the election, the establishment media, which is almost entirely left-leaning, has largely adopted the narrative that Donald Trump won because most Americans are uninformed, racist, sexist, or all of those things. It is quite literally an example of why democracy always ultimately fails. The elitist political class decides the people don't know what's good for them. Ironically, this is the exact mindset that leads to dictatorship and authoritarianism – which also always ultimately fails.
To be fair, there are people within the Democratic Party's circles – pundits, former campaign staffers, and other Democrat activists – who have acknowledged the shortcomings. They have articulated the reasons Kamala Harris' presidential campaign imploded. Some have addressed the wider problems of the party losing touch with basic American values. And yet, the party as a whole has thus far refused to change direction. It seems the agenda is still based on resisting everything Donald Trump intends to do, even if that resistance is detrimental to the American people. Rather than good governance, control has become the goal – and perhaps it always was.
The very fact that the one Democrat being mostly talked about as a 2028 presidential candidate is Kamala Harris indicates that not only did the Democratic Party learn nothing from the 2024 election, but, at least for now, it has decided to bend the people to its will, rather than the other way around.
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