In 2008, Democrats had a decision to make. The same one they believe is at stake now: turning towards the populist left with Bernie Sanders or stay in the center left with Hillary Clinton o Barack Obama.
The 2008 elections were “change” elections. Democrats had lost the White House in 2000 and then both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2004.
By 2008, voters were frustrated with George W. Bush and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: virtually any Democratic candidate would have won those presidential elections.
Now while Donald Trump hits American democracy with a sledgehammer, the Democratic Party leadership is busy arguing about where to go ideologically.
But that’s the wrong question.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, this Saturday before starting his trip to Asia.
The 2026 midterm legislative elections are just a year away, which means a different question needs to be asked. And you have to do it 468 times: who is the right candidate for this electoral race for the House of Representatives or it is Senate seat?
All 435 House districts, as well as 33 Senate seats, will be up for grabs. Some have strong incumbents, while others are open or contested seats.
But New York City voters, who will elect Zohran Mamdania “proud Democratic socialist,” on Nov. 4, are very different from the Arizona voters who elected the centrist Ruben Gallego as your senator last year.
There is no single formula. Each of the 468 elections requires candidates who can speak to the mood, values and interests of voters in their states or districts, be more centrist or more progressive.
A brief political science interlude: in the US presidential system of government, each member of the Senate and House of Representatives is elected individually. The winner is the one who gets the most votes (“first past the post“), that is, whoever achieves a majority.
There are no slates: Voters choose the candidate they prefer for their state or district, and sometimes even “split their vote,” choosing a mix of Republican and Democratic candidates.
North Americans in Spain against Trump
Hundreds of Americans residing in Spain demonstrated on Saturday, March 29 at Puerta del Sol in Madrid against the policies of President Trump and magnate Musk. Called by Democrats Abroad, the protest denounced the… pic.twitter.com/vGe8W6l7St
— Lucio Martínez Pereda (@anluma99) March 30, 2025
It is also worth noting that, In a presidential system, there is no person who leads the opposition as happens here in Spain or other parliamentary systems.
This absence of clear leadership at the national level was precisely what I was thinking about on October 18, when about three hundred people gathered in Sol in protest #NoTirants organized by Democrats Abroad in Madrid.
I had been asked to speak and I was having a hard time deciding what to say to this group of exhausted and angry people who were looking for a ray of hope. I didn’t want to start reciting the typical endless list of the horrors of a second Trump term.
So I said something I could only say because I have no obligation to repeat the official speech of the Democratic Party: I said that The Democratic Party is a disaster without leadership..
I asked them not to wait for party leaders—like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer; the minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries; or the president of the Democratic Party, Ken Martin— will save us from Trump.
Because they won’t.
Instead of complaining about the state of politics and waiting for someone else to come and give us hope, We must realize that we are the hope.
My father, who was a staunch 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 political affiliation is, or what you believe.
Time and time again, I have learned that community service is where I find myself, I find community, and I find hope. So I thanked the crowd for showing up that morning and asked them to do more, something concrete: contact groups of Americans they know here in Spain and encourage them to register to vote through VotefromAbroad.org.
There’s a lot more to do—from volunteering for your favorite cause to running for office—but it often helps to offer a clear choice to a crowd.
Democrats will continue to lose unless they stop trying to convince voters and start listening to them. They will do better if they return to the type of grassroots organizing that the Harvard professor Marshall Ganz conceptualized and put into practice in Obama’s campaigns.
Democrats must meet voters where they are, which means candidates and volunteers alike must go out and knock on doors and listen to people.
If enough candidates across the country do so, the party will take back the House and perhaps even the Senate. That would give them some leverage to fight Trump’s assault on American democracy.
This era of the attention economy is turning too many of us into attention zombies. doomscrollingunable to walk down the street without looking at their phone or make a decision without consulting ChatGPT. This passivity, along with the cynicism that accompanies it, is seeping into our politics.
Rebuilding that connection to the grassroots is not only a winning political strategy, but also the antidote to the political paralysis generated by our attention economy.
Democracy doesn’t work without you.