Rebuilding something like the New Deal coalition may require winning back socially moderate and conservative voters

“If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined,” lamented King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose costly triumph in 279 BC inspired the phrase “Pyrrhic victory”. In 2020, the Democratic party learned what King Pyrrhus was talking about. They recaptured the White House and narrowly held on to the House of Representatives. And if the Democrats win both Senate runoffs in Georgia, they may yet capture the Senate. But Republicans increased their share of the House, making it easier for them to recapture it in 2022, and they control a majority of state legislatures whose redistricting plans for the US Congress can help the Republican party.

Perhaps the greatest blow has been to the progressive interpretation of American politics. Most progressives have understood Trumpism as the last gasp of a dwindling, reactionary white male population. The future of the Democrats, it was said, lay with women and minorities. And yet in 2020 white men shifted more toward Biden than white women did. Black and brown Americans still voted mostly for Democrats, but there were significant shifts toward the Republicans among black and Hispanic voters and all of the Republicans who took contested seats from the Democrats were minority group members or women.