Hours after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election, Senator Bernie Sanders delivered a fiery speech. statement saying, in part, that “it shouldn’t be very surprising that a Democratic Party that has abandoned the working class finds that the working class has abandoned them.” He concluded that those who care about democracy need to have “very serious political discussions.”

The statement drew both praise and repression other members of his party. But the serious discussions that Sanders warned against did begin last week. Many accusations have been made: Democrats have pointed the finger at the economy, identity politics, Joe Biden, racism, sexism, elitism, Liz Cheney, the war in Gaza and many others as factors of Trump’s resounding victory. Democrats will surely continue to analyze why voters shifted to the right in 2017. almost all countiesas a first analysis showed. Meanwhile, many Democrats already share their vision for where the party should go. Some swear to fight Trump at the state level, and others are pawning find common ground with his administration. Those on the left of the party, including Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezappear to be using this moment to push the party toward more progressive policies that serve the working class.

And the reflection on how to change a party invaded by elitism began. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, in a long time thread on uninspiring… which do little to really shake up the party. status quo as to who has power and who does not. Murphy’s prescriptions included: “Embrace populism. Build a big tent. Be less critical. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner who won a very close race against a MAGA Republican in Washington state, said“We need people who drive trucks, change diapers and turn wrenches to run for office.” It’s not that lawyers shouldn’t serve in Congress, she added, but “we need to change our idea of ​​who is credentialed and capable of holding elective office.”

Other Democrats blamed ultra-progressive messaging for playing a role in Democrats’ defeat and suggested the party needs to abandon that approach. Rep. Tom Suozzi, who recently won the seat formerly held by George Santos on Long Island, said The New York Times that “Democrats must stop pandering to the far left.” Rep. Ritchie Torres, who represents the Bronx, said my colleague Michael Powell that “Donald Trump had no greater friend than the far left,” who, according to Torres, “alienated historic numbers of Latinos, blacks, Asians and Jews with nonsense like “Defund the police” or “From the river to the sea” or “Latinx”. Moving forward, he suggested that Democrats cannot assume that they “can reshape the world in a utopian way.”

Messages are not everything, but given the current position of Democrats in Washington, they will be essential in the years to come: facing a probable Republican trio: the Republican Party has regained control of the Senate and is now only to four winnable districts from a House majority — that would hamper their ability to implement laws, much of what Democrats can what we do in the years to come comes down to their messaging (and may rely on a new generation of messengers). As Rep. Dean Phillips – the only elected Democrat to hold a primary to unseat President Biden this year –put it on at the request of a Washington Post journalist on what the party needs to do to reinvent itself: “We have good products and terrible packaging and distribution. »

As the Democratic Party begins to identify lessons from last week’s results, it will need to consider the discrepancies between presidential and down-ballot results: many Democratic Senate candidates performed well in Swing states where Trump won the presidential race, prompting questions. on whether the Democrats’ problem is more of a major problem. And, for all the talk from high-level party members, reform for Democrats might actually happen in a more “organic” rather than centralized way, Michael told me — including momentum from local campaigns. “I think if there is change, it will come from the ground up and in fits and starts,” he added. For example: “Bernie Sanders was dismissed in 2016 by every serious or serious writer and politician, and almost changed the face of the party. I suspect that, in a more modest form, this is how change – if it comes – will emerge.

Related:

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Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

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Today’s news

1. Trump is expected to announce that Stephen Millerhis main immigration advisor and former assistant, serve as deputy chief of staff for policy.
2. Trump said Tom Homan, his former acting ICE director and former Border Patrol agent, would be named his “border tsar“, with an emphasis on maintaining the country’s borders and deporting undocumented immigrants.
3. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York is Trump’s selection to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. His nomination will likely be confirmed by the new Republican-led Senate.

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Dispatches

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Evening reading

To find extraterrestrial intelligence, start in the mountains

By Adam Frank

The Cambrian Explosion (is) the most rapid and creative period of evolution in the history of our planet. In the blink of a geological eye (hundreds of millions of years), all the basic biology necessary to sustain complex organisms was developed, and the pathways leading to all modern life, from periwinkles to humans , have branched off. Mega-sharks hunted in the oceans, pterodactyls took flight, and velociraptors terrorized our mouse-like mammal ancestors on land.

What led to this epic, instantaneous shift in evolution has been one of the great unresolved problems in evolutionary theory for decades.

Read the full article.

More than The Atlantic

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Cultural break

Watch. Saturday evening live isn’t it care about civility more, writes Spencer Kornhaber.

Read (or skip). That of Lili Anolik new book compares authors and enemies Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, but its fixation on their rivalry obscures complex truth, writes Lynn Steger Strong.

Play our daily crossword.

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Stéphanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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