\n<\/p>\n
The Resistance of 2016 was also buoyed by a sense of hope\u2014that Democrats, \u201creasonable\u201d Republicans, or maybe Robert Mueller<\/strong> would come to the rescue. By contrast, the protest movement against Trump\u2019s second term is navigating a sense that we all might be helpless in the face of what’s coming. \u201cThis DOGE business will get out of control,\u201d as one sign put it at a Tesla Takedown protest I recently attended in Chicago. \u201cIt\u2019ll get out of control and we\u2019ll be lucky to live through it.\u201d<\/p>\n I had come to Lorain to see whether someone like Walz might be able to not only channel the movement\u2019s righteous fury, but also convince a shaken public that resistance is not futile, as this rogue president would have it believe. \u201cYou\u2019re deeply concerned about your country and you want to do something about it,\u201d he said at the top of the town hall. \u201cIt might be a pain in the butt to park and get here and wait in line and come in here and sit in a chair or whatever,\u201d he continued. But \u201cit beats the hell out of doom-scrolling in a fetal position.\u201d<\/p>\n If anybody could rally Democrats out of that dejected posture, perhaps it was \u201cCoach Walz\u201d\u2014who seemed to exude the same jocularity and charisma he had at the beginning of Kamala Harris<\/strong>\u2019s campaign. Part of that was, of course, owing to the venue: \u201cThank you for doing this in a high school,\u201d the former teacher said. \u201cThe only other place I\u2019m more comfortable is my living room.\u201d But more than that, he was no longer in the middle of a run for office, and could speak more freely than he could during last fall\u2019s high-stakes campaign.<\/p>\n As he spoke of the need for a more \u201cpositive, populist\u201d agenda\u2014like the one he has worked to implement in Minnesota\u2014he acknowledged that Republican and<\/em> Democratic leadership had contributed to the precarity in places like Lorain: \u201cIt was Bill Clinton<\/strong> who signed NAFTA,\u201d noted Walz, who wore a United Auto Workers pin on the lapel of his navy suit. And while Democratic policies do<\/em> better serve the middle and working classes, he said, his party doesn\u2019t move fast enough or decisively enough: \u201cI believe that when you get power, you should wield it,\u201d Walz said. \u201cYou win elections not to bank<\/em> political capital to win the next election\u2014you win elections to burn<\/em> political capital to improve lives as quickly as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n But Democrats\u2019 path to power has only gotten narrower in recent elections, as the national party relies on its urban centers of support and focuses its resources on a handful of swing states. Their 2024 defeat demonstrated, in stark terms, how flawed and unsustainable that strategy is: Harris lost every battleground, while Trump made gains in blue strongholds like New York, and among voting blocs that have traditionally favored Democrats. \u201cWe can\u2019t expect to win presidential elections [when] we don\u2019t show up places and then every four years we go to the same seven states that we were told [were] the \u2018blue wall,\u2019\u201d Walz told the Ohio crowd. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a very good wall.\u201d<\/p>\n It was refreshing to hear such a blunt assessment of the Democrats\u2019 strategic failures\u2014and a reminder that things weren\u2019t always this way. Barack Obama<\/strong> won this state twice. In 2012, he defeated Mitt Romney<\/strong> in Lorain County\u2014once a Democratic stronghold\u2014by more than 15 points<\/a>. Four years later, Hillary Clinton<\/strong> won it by a 10th of a percentage point<\/a>. However, Trump has carried it the last two cycles: He beat Joe Biden<\/strong>\u2014who campaigned as a strident \u201cunion man\u201d\u2014by more than two points<\/a> here in 2020, and expanded his support in 2024 to nearly six points<\/a>. That\u2019s been the story of politics in Lorain, but it\u2019s also the story of Ohio\u2014and America more broadly\u2014over the last decade: Blue to purple to red. Places where Democrats could win or at least compete not so long ago\u2014Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Iowa\u2014have been treated by the national party as lost causes, to the chagrin of local parties. \u201cThere\u2019s real opportunity here,\u201d Katie Seewer,<\/strong> press secretary of the Ohio Democratic Party, told me. \u201cOhio is very much worth investing in.\u201d<\/p>\n New Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin<\/strong>\u2014a Walz ally and fellow Minnesotan\u2014has promised to turn things around and revive Howard Dean<\/strong>\u2019s 50-state strategy. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to turn red states to purple states to blue states,\u201d Martin told me<\/a> in December, \u201cyou can\u2019t ignore them.\u201d It won\u2019t be easy for them to recapture the territory they\u2019ve ceded to Republicans. It will require the party, which still suffers from abysmal approval ratings, to build political infrastructure in places where you might find a yard sign like the one I saw on a back road a couple hours west of Lorain, that read: \u201cAre you an American or a Democrat?\u201d It also demands that they meaningfully address the disillusionment that has set in over places like Lorain, which a friend of mine in Cleveland described as a \u201cSpringsteen song\u201d of a town.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n