All this had been accomplished in a country that seemed increasingly open to the Democratic Party’s ideas: At the beginning of Obama’s term, 44 percent of Americans thought marijuana should be legal; by the end of his time in office, 60 percent thought so. Support for same-sex marriage skyrocketed. In 2015, 45 percent of Americans said they leaned Democrat, compared to 42 percent who leaned Republican, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million.
So why did the Democrats lose the 2016 presidential election? Why, even as Obama spoke, was there a newly expanded Republican majority in Washington working overtime to gut his hallmark healthcare law? In his eight years in office, Obama oversaw the rapid erosion of the Democratic Party’s political power in state legislatures, congressional districts and governor’s mansions. At the beginning of Obama’s term, Democrats controlled 59 percent of state legislatures, while now they control only 31 percent, the lowest percentage for the party since the turn of the 20th century. They held 29 governor’s offices and now have only 16, the party’s lowest number since 1920. [...]
While the party was getting younger, it was also growing more diverse. The share of self-identified Democrats who were nonwhite remained on track with the broader demographic shift the country has been undergoing — a trend that started well before Obama took office. Both parties recognized that the Democrats were winning a long-term political battle in a country where a majority of the population will be nonwhite by 2044. Sixty-four percent of Democrats were white in 2000; that number dropped to 57 percent in 2008 and 53 percent in 2014. (Seventy-four percent of American adults overall were white in 2000, dropping to 64 percent in 2014.) [...]
But the big-tent philosophy brought challenges for Democrats ideologically and electorally. “We have to unite the undocumented abuela with the treehugger from Oregon with the criminal-justice advocate from Detroit with the anti-Wall Street small farmer from Iowa with the trans woman from Florida,” said Heather McGhee, president of the progressive think tank Demos. “Creating a forceful, coherent progressive vision in an age of racial, economic and political inequality is more challenging than the conservative project of small government and lower taxes.” [...]
Democrats’ most complex problem is with race. Inextricably intertwined in the party’s loss of political power — even as it made demographic strides — are uncomfortable questions about the deep racial divide that lingers in its broader traditional coalition. Many Democrats blame the party’s state-level approach and fundraising challenges for their losses, but what’s trickier and more fundamental is that the business of appealing to the abuelas or trans women might make some of the white, anti-Wall Street small farmers uncomfortable or downright angry.
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