In 2004, life as a Democrat was pretty bleak.
The party lost the presidential election to George W. Bush for a second term. Adding insult to injury, Democratic nominee John Kerry lost the popular vote. The party seemingly lost ground after winning the popular vote in 2000 and only thanks to the Electoral College in a very close (and contested) defeat in Florida. It was a different world then, but Democrats felt voters rejected what they had to offer — even when running against a Republican candidate widely considered weak.
In 2024, life as a Democrat is much the same as it was nearly two decades ago. Ballots are still being counted after the presidential election, but the Democratic presidential nominee On the way to losing the popular vote First time in 20 years.
That popular vote loss forced a larger reckoning: winning the popular vote “acted as a sort of salve: Yes, the Electoral College may have awarded the presidency to Bush and Trump, but on some level, their administrations were illegitimate, disapproved of by the popular.” will be,” said Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University who focuses on the media, conservatism and the presidency.
Without a “but popular vote” fallback, Democrats are facing a harsh reality. “For the first time since 2004, this election felt like an embrace of conservatism, albeit a very different kind of conservatism than the election associated with the 2004 winner,” said Kyle Condick, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Now, as in 2004, Democrats are engaging in what might be liberally viewed as introspection (or less liberally, a “round firing squad”) to chart a new path back to power and assess what went so wrong this time around. As for the debate to blame: It could be the economy, Democrats’ Embrace the “awakening”. President Joe Biden’s decision to run for a second term, many Americans actually liked That’s what Trump was sellingor any number of other reasons.
While it may be months before it becomes clear exactly what went wrong, the 2004 election and its aftermath may provide some insight into how Democrats might move forward.
After all, four years after the Bush-Kerry debacle, the Democrats won the 2008 election in a landslide, with Barack Obama defeating John McCain. By nearly 10 million votes And entering the White House with a huge congressional majority behind him.
What Democrats Today Can Learn from the Party’s Defeat in 2004
There are clear differences between 2004 and 2024. Elections dominated by 9/11 and then the Global War on Terror. This year, those issues barely registered, while Trump and Biden’s respective records, the economy and the culture war took center stage. Further, Kerry’s campaign opened with a very competitive primary victory, with Vice President Kamala Harris taking over after Biden stepped down and gave him her endorsement.
But the vibe among Democrats is the same, and what they do next could determine whether they see a revival in the 2026 midterms and subsequent elections.
Overall, Democrats took three lessons from 2004. Whether or not one believes these lessons will apply to 2024 depends, in large part, on what went wrong with Harris for Trump. But, given the Democrats’ successful recovery since 2004, it’s a history lesson to take.
1) They followed a 50-state strategy
After the 2004 loss, a popular meme (still somewhat nascent) rocketed around the Internet: a map depicting the Democratic The “United States of Canada” exists along the coast, and a republican “Jesusland” encompasses the vast majority of the United States..
If that seems reductive and problematic on multiple fronts, you’re not wrong, but the map, above-mentioned issues aside, serves as a shorthand to indicate the problem with voting for Democrats. Yes, Kerry got 9 million more votes than Al Gore four years ago, but he still got about 3 million fewer votes than Bush.
The gap exposed a weakness for Democrats: their inability to form a broad coalition in swing states and beyond would translate into an Electoral College victory. Kerry could not summon the voter enthusiasm needed to match Bush’s strong performance in rural areas and outer suburbs.
For the goose vote, Democrats looked to Howard Dean, who ran a popular primary campaign but lost to Kerry.
Elected as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, Dean became a proponent of the “50-state strategy.” The idea behind this strategy was that the Democrats should try to contest every state, getting the most votes in Democratic areas while cutting the Republican margin where possible.
This year, former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, like deanBelieving can be part of the solution The return of the 50-state strategy. They’re not alone: ”We can’t run in as many states as we need to,” says New School history professor Claire Potter. “The Democrats, in some ways, have really moved away from that strategy, and I think they’ve made a mistake.”
The Harris campaign – for very understandable reasons – did not use Dean’s method. Only a few months left in the campaign, Harris Focuses on the swing state and select demographic groups. He basically didn’t go to historically “safe” Democratic states. Although it is not clear that he can stop the bleeding in those areas, there has been a significant change for the right New York City to Southern California.
And it’s unclear how outdated the 50-state theory is. After all, Hillary Clinton ran up popular vote totals after winning big in solidly blue states, but she served as president for exactly zero days.
That was the trick is deposited later Helped Democrats gain in the 2006 midterms and put Obama in the White House in 2008.
And after 2024, where Democrats lose ground Almost every county in the United StatesA plan to boost the party’s popularity nationally that cannot afford to be ignored.
2) Democrats reassessed their messaging
In 2004, Democrats had no reaction to the rise of the right-wing blog Drudge Report and the merger of Fox News around Republicans. Carey is often cast as an elite Expensive haircutAnd right-wing commentators have successfully turned to one of his strengths as a candidate — His military service in Vietnam — A liability through viral attack advertising.
“There’s this kind of sly attack on Kerry as a Harvard guy, a guy who actually fought in Vietnam,” Potter said. “Bush is able to play the card of being an outsider, even though he’s an incumbent, even though he went to Yale, even though his dad was president.”
In response, Democrats sought to reevaluate their overall messaging strategy. D Influential book Don’t think about elephants! By cognitive linguist George Lakoff served as a guidebook for reframing the debates on their own terms and explaining their policy positions by invoking the values of empathy, fairness, and community without adopting the language of conservatives. They also embraced Dean — whom the Washington Post called an “outdoor rebel” in 2005, who wore beat-up shoes and was a fly trainer, spending most of his time outside of D.C.
In 2024, Democrats were again outflanked by one The New Republican Media Machine — this time, with the likes of Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn — to deliver their message. Harris, for his part, declined to appear on Rogan’s podcast, reportedly Fear of how it will feel within the group.
3) Democrats wanted to be the party of ideas
Kenneth Baer, Kerry’s campaign adviser, said that, in 2024, Democrats repeated the mistake of 2004 of defining them as the opposite of Republicans.
“Smart people seem to have come around to the idea that you can’t just call Trump terrible,” Bayer said, noting that Democrats had the same problem in 2004, when Kerry spent most of his time criticizing Bush instead of Bush. Determining positive reasons for voting for Democrats. It’s for Democrats to “rethink all of our policies and our approach,” Baer said.
Bayer magazine went on to find out Democracy: A Journal of Ideas As a platform for these ideas. It was there that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), then a professor at Harvard Law School, A 2007 Manifesto Release About how financial products like mortgages and credit cards should be regulated by the government. This concept would later give rise to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Today, some Democrats say the party is still necessary Establishing better connections with the working classBut Baer notes that there is There is disagreement about what this means And whether that should involve one economic or cultural methods.
Limitations of political strategy
Democrats would prefer a silver-bullet strategy that guarantees them a post-2004 recovery. But the truth is, political strategy and planning can only go so far. And that may be the biggest lesson of two decades ago.
The party’s return to power in 2008 was driven mainly by two factors: Obama was the politically gifted politician of a generation. George W. Bush was the scariest president of a generation whose second term included a botched and deadly response to Hurricane Katrina; a more catastrophic and deadly handling of the Iraq War (the false pretenses of which were fully exposed during Bush’s second term); and the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn.
“The conditions that could have eroded Bush’s support for a second term were already in place when he won re-election,” said political historian Hemmer.
So how Democrats do in 2026, 2028 and beyond will likely have a lot to do with Trump’s performance in his second term.
today, Primary exit polls advice Trump is unpopularHis proposed tariffs could be disastrous for the economy, Democrats could rally against his policies as they did in his first term, and he would only have Work with a narrow House majorityPotentially hinder his agenda.
Should such a decline occur, however, Democrats must also be prepared to seize it.
