Democratic strategist calls for ‘new generation of leaders’ as party plots response to Trump’s victory
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Strategist who aided resurgence after Reagan urges focus on ‘fundamentals’ – but cautions against leftward drift. Republicans jubilant after winning the White House with a candidate who promised to “make America great again”. Democrats lost in the political wilderness, apparently out of touch with working people. America, apparently, shifting inexorably to the right. Not 2024 but 1984, when Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide.
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Al From remembers it well. The political strategist responded by launching the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) with a mission to rebuild the party and make it electable again. He succeeded in 1992 when Bill Clinton led the “New Democrats” back into power – and four decades on he has advice for how the party can rise from the ashes of another election defeat.
“If you’re going to change the definition of a party, the change has to be big enough that people recognise it, and that’s why you can’t do it incrementally,” From, 81, says by phone from his home in Annapolis, Maryland. “It’s time for a new generation of leaders to emerge to think about the Democratic brand and what can sell long term. The question for me is, how do you build a solid Democratic centre to a centre-left majority?”.
The party has been plunged into painful soul-searching following Kamala Harris’s defeat by Donald Trump in November. Should Joe Biden have quit the race earlier? Was Harris a victim of global trends in inflation and immigration? Were gender, race and culture war issues in play? Have Democrats become too obsessed with identity politics and forgotten the language of working people?.
