Democrats Own Up to a Flawed Playbook—The Harder Question Is What Comes Next

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) acknowledged this week that the party’s approach to reaching voters is broken.

That admission, contained in the opening pages of a 200-plus-page campaign playbook released on March 28, came with a plan to fix the party’s organizing mechanics. It did not come with an answer to the broader question facing Democrats heading into the November 2026 midterm elections: What does the party stand for beyond opposition to President Donald Trump?

The playbook—titled “A Guide for Coordinated Campaigns & State Parties”—states that the party’s organizing model “is not fit for the moment” it finds itself in. It is the first document of its kind from the DNC, which said it had never before compiled and distributed best practices across the Democratic campaign ecosystem.

The playbook follows a turbulent period for the party. In November 2024, Democrats lost the White House as Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump, and in 2025, Democrats won governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey—two contests in which the candidates leaned heavily on affordability messaging—giving the party a template that the playbook’s own polling data reinforce.

There are insights from four people connected to the party—a former congressional candidate the party recruited, an international campaign strategist who worked on the 2024 presidential campaign for Democrats, a longtime Democratic voter, and a Democratic political communications consultant—describing broad agreement that the old approach is failing but offering no consensus on what should replace it.

Recruit Never Makes It to Ballot

Minnesotan Tom Hall, 38, is an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida and a former Army Ranger.

Hall told The Epoch Times that he was recruited in late 2024 by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the party’s arm dedicated to electing Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives—to run for Congress in Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, a rural seat currently represented by Republican Pete Stauber.

The recruitment was part of an internal effort to field candidates who could appeal to voters the party has struggled to reach.

Hall spent nine months building a campaign team and developing a strategy. He never made it to the ballot.

“My message to them was if they wanted to win they couldn’t keep running on the same old platform of ‘Trump bad, Dems good,'” Hall said in an email. “They needed to alter their strategies based on the districts.”

Internal disagreements ended the effort, he said.

“By September however it became evident that a civil war was brewing internally within the party,” Hall said. “Old guards whose entire careers were in politics wanted to let Republicans continue to hurt themselves, and wanted the Democratic party to maintain the status quo. The new blood wanted to reform and become more attractive to the younger generation, men, and rural communities.”

And so he withdrew before officially filing to run in October 2025.

Hall said the core of the divide “is that one side in the party’s strategy is to keep talking about Trump, Israel/Palestine, etc while the other side wants to focus on issues impacting every day Americans like the cost of healthcare, decline in education, consumer rights, etc.”

“This is to say, there is no unified strategy because there is no unified Democratic leadership,” he said.

That split has been visible in Democratic primary elections across the country so far this year.

On March 3 in Texas, state Rep. James Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Talarico won despite being less well-known than Crockett, who co-chaired the Harris–Walz presidential campaign and has drawn national attention for her dramatic confrontations with Republicans.

Less Focus on Trump

Talarico’s campaign, on the other hand, had been characterized as focusing less heavily on Trump by name.

In Illinois, the March 17 primaries exposed disagreements within the party on immigration enforcement and the influence of outside spending. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate—the race to replace retiring Sen. Dick Durbin—while running on a platform that included abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for immigration arrests and deportations.

She defeated two sitting members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, whom Stratton criticized during debates over his acceptance of donations from an executive at a company that contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, donations he said he gave to immigrant rights groups.

In Maine, the June 9 Senate primary features candidates backed by figures who represent different directions for the party. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recruited Gov. Janet Mills to run. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats and has long pushed the party toward more progressive economic policies, endorsed Graham Platner.

Pablo O’Hana, 31, is a senior political adviser and campaign strategist based in New York. He worked on Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign and has advised senior political figures in the UK, including the deputy prime minister and three successive leaders of the Liberal Democrats. He also worked on the UK’s campaign to remain in the European Union and on Ireland’s referendum legalizing abortion.

O’Hana told The Epoch Times that primary results reflect a gap between party leadership and Democratic voters.

“These primaries show a Democratic base that’s done waiting for the party establishment to catch up with where voters actually are,” O’Hana said. “They’re an indicator of something that was already visible in the Harris campaign: Democratic voters are desperate for clarity, not calibration.”

O’Hana said immigration illustrates the disconnect between what voters want to hear and how party leaders talk about the issues.

What’s the Plan?

“The lesson from 2024 isn’t that Democrats need to sound tougher on immigration, it’s that they need to sound like they actually have a plan,” he said.

“Most people—and most people are not in the political bubble—are not ideological about enforcement. They’re anxious about chaos and disruption to their already busy and difficult lives. The candidates winning primaries right now are the ones who project competence and control, not triangulating toward Republican framing.”

The DNC’s own research points in a similar direction. The playbook includes findings from polling and focus groups that the party conducted among black and Latino voters in Virginia and New Jersey from September to November in 2025.

The research was carried out through the DNC’s Office of Strategy and Innovation with three polling firms: Bendixen & Amandi International, Brilliant Corners Research, and Anthony Williams Consulting. The results were consistent across both states. Their top concern was the rising cost of living: 78 percent of New Jersey voters and 54 percent of Virginia voters named an item related to the economy or cost of living as the single most important issue facing their families.

Texas Democrat Javier Palomarez, 65, is the founder and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council. He said the party has an opening on economic issues—but only if it commits to that message.

“Democrats have another opportunity to capitalize on the economic frustrations of American voters,” Palomarez told The Epoch Times. “Despite affordability being a priority in both Trump’s first term and Biden’s, there has been no meaningful progress, making it a top voting issue across the last three elections. Americans are still looking for a candidate that can restore predictability and provide an avenue of escape from the economic woes that have been plaguing them for the past nearly eight years.”

Immigration was another big issue brought into the spotlight by deportation operations across the country, he said.

“A strong focus on economic policy and a new approach to the immigration issue will be key for Democrats.”

They should not respond to their opponents by matching their approach, Palomarez said.

“What clearly does not work is responding to the radical right with radical policies of our own,” he said. “Americans as a whole are growing tired of partisan politics and showdowns.”

Who’s the Messenger?

He said the party should also consider who is delivering its message.

“While age isn’t a deal breaker for myself personally, many Americans are increasingly turned off of older candidates,” Palomarez said. “Having a fresh, relatively young face in the mix could excite the younger generation and increase turnout from a bloc that is typically less active. The DNC needs to adapt to the times we are currently in.”

He also said a focus on social issues over economic issues has been prevalent, but not successful, in recent elections.

“I remain a Democrat because at its core, that party defines me best,” he said.

“Democrats have struggled in recent years to stay true to that core.”

Hall said the absence of a single party-wide strategy may give individual candidates room to run on their own terms.

“While this might seem bad, I believe it is a good thing because candidates have more free rein to be real humans in their races instead of a rehearsed and scripted robot, which is all too common these days,” he said.

The question facing the party is whether that freedom produces a message voters can identify with by November 2026.

Max Weisman, a Philadelphia-based political communications consultant, said opposition to Trump can carry Democrats through the midterms—but beyond that, Democrats need to be careful.

“In terms of messaging, I think Democrats are starting to admit what did not work in 2024 and with an unpopular war which is causing rising prices at home, the anti-Trump message will be strong,” Weisman told The Epoch Times.

“I predict that this message will do well for Democrats in the midterms. However—in between the ’26 midterms and ’28 elections—it’s important that Democrats don’t just run a campaign on who they are not (Trump)—they have to boldly put forth a vision and define who they are.”

O’Hana said this challenge is not new and is not limited to the United States.

“The broader pattern on both sides of the Atlantic is that bases don’t move toward the center when they feel unheard,” he said. “They move toward whoever speaks to them with conviction, clarity, and authenticity. The question for Democratic leadership heading into 2026 isn’t which direction the base is moving, it’s whether the party is willing to move with it.”

The DCCC and the DNC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.