What a Bigger-Tent Democratic Party Could Look Like
Elected officials and operatives are rethinking old litmus tests.
CONNECTICUT SEN. CHRIS MURPHY’S CAREER in the upper chamber of Congress has largely been defined by a horrible act that occurred before he even got there. The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School occurred on December 14, 2012, weeks before Murphy was sworn in as a senator. It took place within the House district he had represented for the prior four years. And news of it reached him just as he was about to catch a train to New York City for a holiday trip with his kids.
Five minutes before he boarded, word of the tragedy began trickling in. He talked to his kids, got in his car, turned around, and drove north to Newtown. His life and career have never been the same.
Gun control became Murphy’s cause. It haunted him, not just when he had to speak to the grieving parents who had lost their children in that senseless act of murder, but also when he later spoke to constituents in Connecticut’s inner cities, who wondered why he suddenly seemed to care about the issue now that predominantly white families had been affected by it.
When the post–Sandy Hook efforts to pass stronger background checks failed, it gutted him. He’s spoken at length about his emotional connection to the issue, wrote a book about guns, and said that he will judge his career based on the progress he makes on limiting gun violence.
But in the wake of the 2024 election, Murphy has made adjustments, grown more reflective, and begun reconsidering what it means to be dogmatic about guns.
Speaking at an anti-monopoly conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday afternoon, Murphy told the audience that “the fastest-growing share of the electorate are socially and culturally conservative voters who are economically populist.” As he saw it, that would require his party, the Democrats, not only to embrace populist economic positions (he was, after all, speaking to a room full of anti-monopoly nerds) but to make room for candidates who won’t always echo the D.C. Democratic consensus on issues. That was particularly true, he added, on social and cultural topics. And if he was going to demand certain ideological compromises from others, he would have to offer one of his own.
“I spent a long time trying to apply a litmus test to my party on this issue that I care so deeply about. I’m rethinking the wisdom of that,” Murphy said, having just referred to gun policy specifically. “I think the future of our republic and the future of our party now depends on us building a big-tent party with economic populism and the unrigging of democracy as the two tent poles—and really being purposefully more permissive about who we let in on a host of other issues that matter to me and a lot of other Democrats.”
“Permissive” isn’t a word you would use to describe Democrats over the past few years. The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing. Litmus tests aren’t just applied to gun policy, but to policies on LGBT rights, immigration enforcement, policing, and other matters.
But losing power has a way of shaking up party canon. And there are some signs that Democrats are ready to move past this era of ideological purity and rigidity.
Aside from Murphy, leaders like Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego have stressed the importance of centering the Democratic party’s message on cost of living while also not shaming voters who listen to Joe Rogan or who want to own a “big-ass truck.” Earlier this year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a longtime advocate for LGBT rights, signaled an openness to restricting trans women’s participation in sports. And Maryland Gov. Wes Moore vetoed a bill to study potential slavery reparations—a far cry from 2020, when a number of Democrats opened the door to a larger national conversation about them.
“People finally realize that for the Democratic party to be a durable majority party, it has to change,” said Democratic strategists Lis Smith, who was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. “Candidates don’t need to check every progressive litmus test to deserve party support.”
While a number of top officials have signaled their desire for a more inclusive Democratic party, the real effort is already taking place quietly, and at slightly lower levels. Over the past few months, top operatives in the ranks have been launching political and policy initiatives designed to soften some of the party’s sharper cultural edges.
The central Democratic-allied think tank, the Center for American Progress, has put out a series of policy positions over the past year designed to reorient Democrats on issues like crime and immigration. The group published one such policy paper on immigration over the summer and its president, Neera Tanden, has urged Democrats to “demonstrate that they back real border security.”
Even leaders at prominent advocacy groups—which are often criticized for pushing the Democratic party too far left, particularly in the 2020 presidential primary—have told me that they’re rethinking some of their past approaches, including controversial questionnaires that compelled candidates to take definitive positions on hot-button issues that often placed them outside the political mainstream.
“Very shortly after the election, most of the people I work with reached a similar conclusion of ‘Oh shit, we don’t know how to talk to these people. We’ve lost the thread on how to reach these folks,’” said an official at a prominent Democratic-aligned advocacy organization. “I don’t really know too many Dems who think that we really nailed it on the culture stuff. People are pretty eyes-wide-open.”
Other progressive advocates and Dem strategists have told me that the party is largely aware that they need to be more thoughtful about where the electorate’s center of gravity is and let that drive their strategy—the implication being that those infamous candidate questionnaires will be a thing of the past. But the hard part, for some officials, will be figuring out how to make these changes without signaling to key constituencies that they are being left behind.
“My mindset has always been to run on your values and say what you say in an inclusive way. And I think that’s what the party has really lacked. It’s the ‘If you’re not 100 percent with me, you’re against me’ type of mentality that has gotten us to where we are right now, where we’re not expanding maps,” said J.D. Scholten, an Iowa state representative who has been urging the Democratic party to put more work into reaching rural voters who have drifted toward Republicans in recent elections.
It’s still unclear how useful of a test case the midterm elections will provide for this new approach. Typically, these cycles are referendums on the party in power. Democrats should, in theory, do well or struggle based largely on the electorate’s perception of the job Donald Trump is doing.
Still, the Senate map—which heavily favors Republicans—could provide opportunities for Democratic candidates to recalibrate their positions to reach more conservative voters. Whether the party’s base voters allow them to do it will be a big tell.
Beyond that, there are additional challenges. Despite Trump’s declining popularity, Republicans have seen their voter-registration numbers improve in some swing states since the 2024 election—a concerning sign for some Democrats. And the 2030 census changes, which will shift even more political power to red states, are already appearing on the horizon as Democratic officials continue trying to plot their path out of the wilderness.
On Wednesday morning, Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff to Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, launched a new think tank aimed at getting Democrats to abandon some of the left-leaning groups he believes are responsible for pushing the party to take toxic policy positions. His goal, he said, was to make his party viable.
“Liberals have become paralyzed by fear. Fear of each other, fear of disagreement, and fear of the American people,” the group’s mission statement reads. “Instead of building new coalitions and ushering in a realignment, we built a system that enforces purity and shrinks our tent.”
🫏 Donkey Business:
— In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile urged Eleanor Holmes Norton—the 88-year-old delegate for Washington, D.C. in the House of Representatives—to not run for re-election next year. “She is no longer the dynamo she once was, at a time when D.C. needs the kind of energetic representation in Congress she provided for decades,” writes Brazile, who managed Norton’s 1990 campaign. “It’s in her best interest, and the interest of D.C., for her to serve her current term but then end her extraordinary service in Congress and not seek reelection next year.”
Norton doesn’t have much power in Congress (she can’t cast any votes on passing legislation, as D.C. is not a state). But as Brazile suggests, Trump’s crackdown on D.C. has ignited a conversation among some residents about the type of representation that they deserve in Congress. Norton has largely been MIA since Trump took control of the city’s police force, leaving other Democratic leaders to defend the district’s autonomy. And there have been plenty of stories over the past few months suggesting that Norton is experiencing cognitive decline. Despite the little legislative power that she holds, her insistence that she will run for re-election next year has presented yet another opportunity for Democrats to reflect on its gerontocracy problem.
My open tabs:
— What Tennessee fans think of their old coach, Derek Dooley, running for U.S. Senate
— Joe Biden Is Struggling to Cash In on His Presidency
— Bernie Sanders makes his next moves to reshape the Democratic Party
Get back to FDR. Ditch Clinton.
The only concern one might have with this is that some of the centrist popularism wonks would accept discriminating against minority groups in an ill advised attempt to win ardent MAGA types. It’s never gonna happen. You’d be Diet Coke and they’re already addicted to the real stuff.
Don’t throw people under the bus. Adults get to make their own choices. Let people live, bygones be bygones and all that. Don’t cow to bullies. I can do this in the same breath:
- Things are too expensive and monopolistic businesses have rigged the game
- Trans people exist, leave them alone, don’t be a dick
I would argue that the reason Democrats are failing is because they are failing to stand up. More Chris Van Hollen, less Chuck Schumer.
People want Democrats to fight, policy is almost irrelevant.