Democrats are asking the wrong question

In 2008, Democrats had a choice. The same choice that they think is at stake right now: turn to the populist left with Bernie Sanders or stick to the center left with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. 2008 was a “change” election. Democrats had lost the White House in 2000 and then both the House and the Senate in 2004. By 2008, voters were frustrated with George W. Bush and his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—just about any Democrat would have won that presidential election.

Now, while Donald Trump is taking a sledgehammer to American democracy, Democratic Party leadership is busy arguing over which way to go ideologically.

But this is the wrong question.

The 2026 midterm elections are just one short year away which means that a different question needs to be asked and needs to be asked 468 times: who is the right candidate for THIS House or THIS Senate race?

All 435 House districts as well as 33 Senate seats will be up for election. Some have strong incumbents while others are open seats or seen as up for grabs. But New York City voters, who will elect Zohran Mamdani, a “proud Democratic socialist” on November 4th are very different from the Arizona voters who chose centrist Ruben Gallego as their senator last year.

There is no one-size-fits-all. All 468 elections require candidates who can speak to the mood, values and interests of the voters in their states or districts, whether they be more centrist or more progressive.

Just a quick political science interlude here: in the U.S. presidential system of government, each member of the Senate and the House of Representatives is elected individually. The winner is whoever is “first past the post”, meaning whichever candidate wins the most votes (a plurality). There are no lists, voters choose the candidate they prefer for their state or district and sometimes, they even “split the ticket” voting for a mix of Republican and Democratic candidates.

It’s also worth noting that in a presidential system, there is no one person who leads the opposition like there is here in Spain and other parliamentary systems. This absence of clear leadership at the national level is exactly what I was thinking on October 18^th, when about three hundred people gathered in Sol for a #NoTirants protest organized by Democrats Abroad in Madrid.

I had been asked to speak and struggled over what I could say to this group of exhausted, angry people looking for a glimmer of hope. I didn’t want to stand up there and give the typical laundry list of all the horrors of Trump II.

So, I said something that I could only say because I am under no obligation to parrot Democratic Party messaging: I said that the Democratic Party is a leaderless mess. I urged them not to sit around waiting for party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries or Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin to save us from Trump. Because they won’t.

Instead of complaining about the state of politics and expecting someone else to come along and give us hope we need to realize that we are the hope.

My father, who was a faithful Republican voter, used to say, “if you don’t like something then DO SOMETHING about it.” This is true no matter where you live, what your party affiliation is or what you believe in.

Over and over in my life, I’ve learned that community service is where I find myself, find community and find hope. So, I thanked the crowd for showing up that morning and asked them to do more, something concrete: reach out to the groups of Americans they know here in Spain and urge them to register to vote via VotefromAbroad.org. There’s so much more to do—from volunteering for your favorite cause to running for office—but it often helps to pitch one clear option to a crowd.

Democrats will continue to lose unless they stop trying to convince voters and start listening to them. They will do this better if they get back to kind of the grassroots organizing that Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz conceptualized and put into action for the Obama campaigns. Democrats must meet voters where they are and that means both candidates and volunteers out canvassing and listening to people. If enough candidates across the country do so, the party will take back the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate. This will give them some power to fight back against Trump’s assault on American democracy.

This age of the attention economy is turning too many of us into doomscrolling zombies unable to walk down the street without staring at our phones or make a decision without consulting ChatGPT. This passiveness and accompanying cynicism is seeping into our politics. Rebuilding that grassroots connection isn’t just a winning political strategy, it is the antidote to the political paralysis our attention economy breeds. Democracy doesn’t work without you.

This is the English version of my column, La Globalista, in El Español.