Take Out the Trash: A Proposal to Clean Up the Democratic Party
President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 2024. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Democrats are in disarray. It’s time to name our enemies and assert our demands to build a party that can win.
by Sunjeev Bery
The leadership of the Democratic Party deserves significant blame for the return of Donald Trump to the White House. While there were multiple factors at play, it must be acknowledged that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their enablers engaged in vast levels of political malpractice despite countless warnings from many key voices and constituencies.
Multiple governments worldwide, regardless of ideology, have suffered at the polls this year, suggesting that Harris faced an uphill battle no matter what. But that fight was made even more difficult by the simple reality that Biden and Harris spent a solid year alienating core constituencies of the Democratic Party, supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and failing to assign clear blame for the individuals and interest groups responsible for the economic woes of the working class.
If we want a Democratic Party that can produce different outcomes, we will need to hold the current party accountable for its failures. That means matching our demands for change with the force and pressure of real accountability. The Democratic leadership must itself be targeted with campaigns that highlight the principles of electoral success while punishing those responsible for the party’s continued defeats. I’m building a campaign to do exactly that, and here’s how I think we can win.
Clean Up the Party Now
Democrats are in disarray, with many different voices and communities picking through the wreckage of 2024 to decide what can be learned and what should be done next. This is the time to name our adversaries and assert our demands. If we want to build a Democratic Party that has any shot of winning elections and advancing the human condition, we must model the very posture of aggressive accountability that we want future Democratic presidential candidates to adopt.
There are plenty of potential targets for accountability. We can directly challenge the culture of the Democratic Party right now by turning the looming internal elections for a new Democratic National Committee chair into a public battle for our core values. Leaning into 2026, the elections for the House and Senate can be leveraged to call out Democratic incumbents who continue to serve as vehicles for corporate interests. Pro-Israel hawks like Rep. Ritchie Torres should be directly challenged in both the 2026 primaries and general election.
Looking to 2028, leading Democratic contenders for the presidential race should be held accountable now for their failings. One such example is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. When Uber launched its successful war against California state-mandated benefits for drivers, Newsom stayed neutral. He should be called out for this silence. Another important target is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is also being talked up as a presidential contender. Shapiro’s record of support for Israeli apartheid and genocide is well documented, and a grassroots campaign to oppose him as president should begin now.
Even Biden’s eventual groundbreaking ceremony for his future presidential library should be made into a target for principled criticisms and protests. Biden destroyed the Democrats’ prospects in 2024 by supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and arrogantly refusing to drop out of the presidential race until it was too late to hold a real primary. By making an example out of Biden himself, we can “punch up” into the highest levels of the party and build our power to hold the party accountable.
Name the Enemy: Corporate Elites
When it comes to the fundamental unfairness of the U.S. economy, Democrats often speak in soft surrogate terms: cutting taxes on the middle class, forgiving student loans, increasing funding for college, etc. But Democrats’ core silence on corporate greed has allowed Trump to step into the vacuum with a very different explanation of who is to blame. Trump’s false explanations often focus on racial resentments, culture conflict, or issues related to gender and sexuality. But blaming undocumented immigrants, DEI, “critical race theory,” or transgender equality will not address the fundamental unfairness of an economy in which workers are squeezed under the diktat of economic elites.
The American working class has long been undermined by those who represent the interests of concentrated wealth. America’s corporate elites block unions, outsource U.S. jobs, cut benefits, and squeeze as much profit as they can out of America’s workers. But Democratic presidential candidates rarely run campaigns that bluntly name and shame these elites for the damage that they do to working-class lives. The simple reason why is that many state- and national-level Democrats depend on these same financial elites for the cash that fuels politicians’ expensive campaigns.
When Democrats create a “blame vacuum” for why working-class voters are suffering, other political opportunists are more than happy to step in.
As president, Biden brought into his administration a range of people and policies from the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren wing of the party, which resulted in policies and actions that have been pro-union, anti-inflation, and anti-monopoly. But unlike Sanders and Warren, Biden has done a very poor job of using his bully pulpit to bluntly name and blame the individuals and interest groups who are often most responsible for working-class woes. Biden had some of the right policies, but for reasons that likely included age-related fatigue and ideological predisposition, he got the politics wrong.
When Democrats create a “blame vacuum” for why working-class voters are suffering, other political opportunists are more than happy to step in. Thanks to the seduction of Trump, the white working class had already largely abandoned the Democratic Party. Now nonwhite working-class voters are starting to do the same. To reverse these trends, Democrats must start assigning blame accurately for the high prices, long workdays, and stagnant wages that harm so many workers in our country.
Kick Out the Sellouts
Not only is the senior leadership of the Democratic Party unwilling to accurately name the enemy, but in many cases, the Democratic Party is actually run and advised by the same corporate elites who benefit from the exploitation of the American working class. The current chair of the DNC is Jaime Harrison, a former lobbyist for Walmart, Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, the coal industry, and many other corporate interests.
Another toxic example of the pervasive corporate control of the Democratic Party is Tony West, the brother-in-law of Kamala Harris. In 2024, West took a leave of absence from his role as senior vice president and chief legal officer for Uber to advise Harris on her presidential campaign. During West’s time at Uber, the company waged an all-out war against working-class interests by using a California ballot proposition to successfully gut state-mandated benefits for overworked and underpaid Uber drivers. And before West came to Uber, he served as general counsel at PepsiCo, a company that has profited heavily from price inflation.
It has been widely reported that West advised Harris to embrace wealthy corporate elites instead of blaming them for America’s economic woes. This disastrous advice led Harris to cater to high-net-worth interests and muddle her message. This may have helped Harris attract the $1.6 billion in contributions that backed her campaign, but her lack of a clear message on the economy left her with millions fewer votes than Biden received in 2020. She failed to energize the Democratic Party base, including working-class voters, and she lost her campaign.
Say Goodbye to Bill, Hillary, and Barack
Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama all have a long history of undermining progressive and populist movements in the Democratic Party. All three should be greeted by Democrats with the same deep skepticism that Trump supporters have shown George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Instead, they are still showered with deference and reverence by many.