Democrats should . . .

The old status quo is gone, and it’s because nobody liked it.

When did Democrats become the party of the status quo? There were many reasons we lost the election. The alienation of the leftist base was surely one; how long can you expect people to consent to being taken for granted without any policy deliverables? But another big one was Democrats’ habit of lecturing working-class people on how good the economy was. Since when do we measure the strength of the economy by how well rich people are doing? Middle-class people can’t afford housing or groceries, and we were talking about “Bidenomics”? That was a recipe for losing.

News flash to Democrats: nobody liked the old status quo. Nobody liked it! Running on it was a losing proposition. And now it’s gone. Trump is well on his way to destroying it, and he will succeed. What does that mean? The American-led world order is probably gone; allies realize they can’t depend on us, and well they should not with this strong fascist current in our politics. Who knows what else is gone? What is clear is that things will not return to the way they were. Nobody liked that normal, as it turns out. Time to leave it behind.

What should we do, then? It’s time to lean left and talk about how to build a better world. “Normalcy,” if that means the old status quo, is a loser. Things are either going to get a lot worse under Republicans or a lot better under the left. To the extent centrism means embrace of the old status quo, it is dead and it’s time to bury it. Unfortunately, things are going to get a lot worse first, because that’s what Americans voted for. We’re going to try heavy tariffs, the dismantling of the American-led world order, the gutting of the federal government, mass disruption to supply chains, and more. It will lead to chaos upon chaos. Democrats must respond not by promising “normalcy”; if we learn nothing else from 2024 it’s that voters prefer even Trumpian chaos to the “normalcy” we’ve carried to the political grave. Democrats must respond by promising something better. What might that be? Lean left and listen — the left has a clear, cogent story to tell.