J. Pharoah Doss: The once and future Democratic Party

“Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States. His unexpected win has finally electrified American liberals and leftists. They are busily planning what they term a ‘resistance’ to what he represents.” That may sound like a mission statement from a progressive activist organization, written the day after Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was defeated in the 2024 presidential election, but it is not. It was the introduction to Mark Lilla’s book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, which came out the year after Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for the presidency in 2016. Clinton detailed her defeat in a memoir simply titled What Happened. Clinton stated she made a series of mistakes and confessed that she did not fully understand the American electorate. Following Harris’ 2024 loss to Trump, Democrats were once again wondering what happened, as to why their candidate came up short against the same Republican who had lost to the Biden/Harris ticket in 2020. Evidently, the Democrats disregarded Lilla’s book, as Lilla clarified the issues the Democrats are currently grappling with. The book begins with this 1985 quote from Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy. “We must see the distinction between...