How do we win back the voters we lost? And the potential Dem voters who stayed home?

These are now some of the central questions of MVP’s and our partners’ work. The solutions will involve listening to and engaging more voters, more deeply and consistently; showing up year-round in communities of multiracial, working-class, and otherwise marginalized voters; improving our relational media communications; recruiting and supporting more compelling candidates; and telling a more compelling story. These are all areas in which local organizing must play a significant role.

One key lesson from 2024 is this: Political audacity wins over incrementalism. If we invest now in progressive, economic populist organizing, we can harness the deeper forces that doomed Dems in 2024 to fuel our comeback in 2026 and 2028. Peter Turchin, who studies political cycles over the past 5,000 years, explains it this way: 

• The wealth gap has widened drastically since the ‘70s.
• Like it or not, Trump has successfully exploited working-class and middle-class discontent by rebranding the GOP as a revolutionary populist movement.
• Meanwhile, Democrats have, in the eyes of too many voters, “morphed into the party of the ruling class” (which explains the phenomenon of the Bernie-to-Trump voter). 
• We can rail against Trump and the GOP’s hypocrisy in all of this — or, we can reclaim the populist mantle by pushing the Democratic Party to become the champions of “a new New Deal and a commitment to major social reform.”

Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid has some ideas for what it will take to do this — and one key piece of the puzzle is investing in grassroots progressive organizing and social movements.