The Mistakes We Made and the Challenges We Must Overcome: The Democratic Party

*In 2016, the SOL program pivoted for the year to focus on political engagement in what was then called the “Political Engagement Pilot Project,” or PEPP. This was an alternative version of SOL that laid the groundwork for the development of the PEP program as it currently exists.

The historic election of Donald Trump sent the left into a panic. For the first time in eight years, the Democratic Party had to face severe disappointment and become critically self aware of the choices it made in its platform and the demographic it appealed to. The party had to ask itself what the Republican Party had to ask itself in 2008 and 2012: where did we go wrong?

Quite a number of think pieces have been released on the topic in the weeks following November 8^th from a variety of left leaning media sites. Liberal voices battled over every aspect of the election, from the losing candidate herself to the electorate that voted for President Elect Trump. Two arguments emerged over and over again. Pundits agreed that the overuse of identity politics by the party, coupled with the fact that the party lost working class voters, led to the election of an incredibly unqualified demagogue.

This paper addresses those arguments, as well as the counterpoints to those arguments. It also synthesizes all of the arguments given in order to give recommendations on how the Democratic Party can actually be what it strives to be- the “big tent” party.