Democrats in the Wilderness

Briefing|Democrats in the Wilderness

The Democratic Party had just lost another presidential election. It was hemorrhaging support among blue-collar voters and was seen as out of touch on cultural issues. It was struggling to find its next generation of leaders. The future seemed bleak.

The year was 1984. Eight years later, Bill Clinton — a moderate governor from Arkansas who presented himself as a “new Democrat” — unseated an incumbent president, George H.W. Bush. His victory was the culmination of a campaign by a renegade organization of moderate Democrats, most from the South and the West, to move the party to the center, recruit new candidates and win back working-class Americans.

For Democrats today, that history offers a glimmer of hope. But it’s also a reminder of how deep a rut the party is in. Democratic leaders still don’t agree on why they lost the election or who might lead them back, and today’s electorate is much different from the one in the 1990s.

The renovation

The rebuilding process in the 1980s took nearly a decade — and the route back to power meant ending the party’s leftward drift.

It followed debilitating ideological battles pitting the party’s liberal establishment against moderates, many of whom came from what were already becoming red states. The turnaround came only after Democrats suffered three consecutive lopsided presidential defeats, in 1980, 1984 and 1988. Republicans in those contests won over critical blue-collar voters in some key states.

Eventually, a group of centrists formed the Democratic Leadership Council to promote moderate candidates and ideas. The party pushed aside liberal leaders like the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Clinton, a politician of unusual skill who unified the factions, ran for president in 1992 promising to “end welfare as we know it.” With his victory, the pivot was complete.