Nearly a month after a devastating election loss that exposed cracks in the very foundation of their party, Democrats remain deeply divided over the extent of their political problem — or even if they have one. A number of Democratic leaders are downplaying the strength of Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris as the inevitable result of an inflation-fueled anti-incumbent backlash that shaped elections worldwide. But others are convinced that the Democratic Party is facing an acute crisis that requires an urgent overhaul of its brand, message and economic policies. Trump swept every battleground state on Nov. 5, becoming the first Republican candidate to win the national popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004. Yet nearly half the country voted against him. With the final votes still being counted in some places, Trump won the popular vote by just 1.6 percentage points. He carried the seven top swing states by about 760,000 votes combined out of more than 151 million cast nationwide. “The glass is half full. It was close. If we get another 2% or 3% of American voters, it would have successfully led to victories from the presidency on down,” says Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who is leading a group called Governors Safeguarding Democracy. But for Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Labor-Farmer Party and a candidate to lead the Democratic National Committee next year, the election represented “a damning indictment” for the Democratic Party. “People do not believe that the Democratic Party is fighting for them or for their families or gives a damn about their lives,” Martin told The Associated Press. “We lost ground with almost every group except wealthy households and college-educated voters.” The internal debate over the health of the party comes at a critical moment. Trump will return to the White House on Jan. 20, claiming a mandate to enact a dramatic “Make America Great Again” agenda led by the mass deportation of millions of immigrants in the country illegally; an overhaul of the federal departments of health, education and justice, and major import tariffs that threaten to strain the U.S. economy and international alliances alike. Democrats, even diminished and divided, stand as the only organized resistance to Trump and his emboldened MAGA allies. But for now, at least, the Democratic Party has no leader and no agreement on the political problems that need to be fixed or how to fix them. Many Democratic groups and leaders are working through post-election analyses to better understand what went wrong on Nov. 5, but few are working together. And already, some fear that the disparate post mortems will produce competing recommendations likely to be lost in a rush to leave the pain of 2024 behind. Priorities USA, one of the Democratic Party’s leading super PACs, is set to unveil its post-election findings this week. The group will recommend, among other things, that Democrats do a better job listening to voters instead of pollsters, while offering a more forward-looking positive alternative to Trump’s MAGA movement. If they do not make significant changes, according to a preview of that briefing, Priorities believes there is no guarantee that key elements of the Democratic base — especially young people and voters of color — will return to the party in future elections. Some of the loudest […]