ECB
To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.
The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.
Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.
Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.
The Dems should definitely move more central on social issues, as the US election system has a huge built in rural bias.
Then focus on more broad-reaching progressive economic topics. Less focus on legislation targeting specific marginalized groups and more on policies which would impact everyone directly. As a potential example, Universal Basic Income (“Freedom Bonus” or whatever it was called) was one such policy which was floated a couple elections ago.
Sure, that didn’t help, but she also was a “more of the same” candidate (she’s rhe current VP!)
As much as I wanted her to win, she was always a stupid choice in at a time where voters can essentially all agree on one thing: they want change.
Status quo politics is dead, the dems just haven’t realized it yet. As braindead as Trump and a most of his policies are, people like that he doesn’t give a shit about disrupting things to achieve his goals.
Status-quo politics is dead, many major western parties just haven’t realized this yet. People want firmer political leadership that promises fundamental change and isn’t afraid of breaking things along the way.
It’s just fucking unfortunate that (in most countries) it’s only the far right who are ahead of the curve at realizing this.
Center to left parties need to reinvent themselves and focus less on pleasing everyone or fighting losing battles. They also need to present a much clearer vision.