https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...election-party
Democrats face a reckoning, four years in the making, after an election that accomplished their mission but did little to resolve urgent questions about the party’s political future and serious internal divisions.
Moderates argue that Biden’s success, which included reclaiming three states in the rust belt Trump won in 2016 and expanding the map to sun belt battlegrounds, was evidence that a moderate who rejected liberal appeals was best positioned to build a winning coalition.
“There are clearly some parts of the Democratic brand that voters across the country did not feel comfortable with,” Erickson said. A post-election analysis by Third Way found that Republicans effectively weaponized ideas like defunding the police and Medicare for All against Democrats in competitive districts, even if they did not support such policies.
“They are dead wrong,” Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator who lost to Biden in the Democratic primary, wrote in an USA Today op-ed. He noted that every House co-sponsor of Medicare for All and all but one co-sponsor of the Green New Deal were re-elected, including several competitive districts.
“The lesson is not to abandon popular policies like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, living wage jobs, criminal justice reform and universal childcare,” Sanders wrote, “but to enact an agenda that speaks to the economic desperation being felt by the working class – Black, white, Latino, Asian American and Native American.”
In the muddled aftermath, lawmakers, activists and the party’s grassroots are all vying for influence. Battles have flared on multiple fronts: the makeup of Biden’s executive branch, the new administration’s legislative agenda and the approach to a pair of Georgia runoff elections which will determine control of the Senate. If they fall short, there is deep disagreement over the extent to which Biden should work with Senate Republicans and Mitch McConnell, a take-no-prisoners tactician.
Democrats will have an opportunity to test their competing theories of change before Biden takes office, via Georgia’s Senate races in January. The stakes couldn’t be higher: if Democrats pull off upset victories, the Senate will be equally divided, with Vice-President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.