Would you rather compete in more districts or less? More states or less? The answer is obvious. Anyone in their right mind knows the answer. You would rather compete in more places because it gives you a better chance to win majorities.

Which party is doing a better job of that? The answer is emphatically not the Democratic Party. Let’s start out by stating the obvious- there are simply less blue states than red states, and less red states in which a good Democratic candidate can compete. The map for Democrats to win elections, whether it be for President or state legislators, is tighter and tighter every time. Since President Obama’s re-election ended, more and more of the nation’s land looks red. Plenty of people respond to that with “so what, land can’t vote.” Unfortunately in a federal system, geography is actually important.

Let’s start with the Presidential map. President Obama won 27 states, a district in Nebraska, and Washington, D.C., all at least once in his two runs. Hillary Clinton won 20 states and Washington in 2016. Joe Biden did a bit better, carrying 25 states, Washington, D.C., and Nebraska’s second district in 2020. Kamala Harris only won 19 states, Washington, D.C., and Nebraska’s second in 2024. The states of Iowa, Ohio, and Florida have become red bastions. The states of Indiana and Missouri have gone from super competitive in 2008 to dead red. No Democrat has been able to pull North Carolina back in since 2008. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin all went from narrow Democrat states from 1988 to 2012, to completely swing states that Trump has won twice. Even with the positive trends in Arizona and Georgia, the map is becoming increasingly difficult for a Democratic candidate to win. States like Texas that Democrats believed would come their way because of demographics are certainly not coming to the Democratic column soon. With current trend lines, Democrats basically will have traded Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina from lean Dem states to somewhere between swing to red, in exchange for Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico as blue states, and Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona as swing states, and we lost all three last year.

The Senate outlook is even more bleak. Increasingly, there aren’t Democrats winning red states or Republicans winning blue states. If you told a 20 something year old that Democrats not that long ago held both Senate seats in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, they’d think you’re on crack. If you told them that Tom Harkin used to not only win Iowa, but be well liked, they’d laugh. If you told them we recently held seats in Missouri and Indiana, they’d not believe you. Florida? Ohio? No. With maybe 19 states leaning to the Democratic side, there’s just not enough in play. There are 25 states that Trump won three times, another five he won twice, and one more he won this time, so Republicans have at least 31 states to battle in. Tack on Maine, New Hampshire, and Minnesota as states he was competitive in, and you have a GOP battle field right now of about 68 Senate seats they can realistically win. At best, the Democrats look like they could pull off 25 states, so they can maybe put 50 states on the board. If Ohio, Florida, and Iowa don’t look any better in 2026, they may literally need to run the table every election to control the Senate moving forward.

Governor races are slightly better- every once in a while you see someone win in a state they shouldn’t, from both sides. Even so, the re-districting battle that is playing out right now is probably not going to help that. In fact, with the outsized role cultural and public health fights in the states are starting to play in our politics, it could become harder and harder to get elected as a Governor in a state where the other party is the dominant political party.

And of course, this gets me to legislative races. Yes, the House of Representatives has been fairly competitive in recent years. Here’s the ugly reality though- The GOP has controlled the House for 17 of the first 25 years. Here in Pennsylvania, they controlled the Senate for all 25 years, and the House entirely for 18 of the last 25 years, and with a Republican Speaker for 20 of the last 25 years. This was during a period when the Voting Right’s Act protected minority representation more than it does now, and during a period where we held the White House for 12 of the 25 years. Uninhibited by the Voting Rights Act or an Executive Branch that will enforce it, the GOP is likely to win a race-to-the-bottom re-districting fight, nationally. Democrats have not faired all that well even under friendlier conditions.

What’s worse to consider is exactly how the Republicans have taken control. After President Obama’s victories, a lot of the “smart kids” inside the Beltway and in leadership positions within the party said “demographics are destiny,” and were going to kill the Republican Party as they lost the “emerging electorate.” They couldn’t have been more wrong. Trump ran a huge chunk of his 2024 campaign railing against transgender people. His supporters basically called Vice-President Kamala Harris a “DEI hire,” and impugned her intelligence. They at times accused her of sleeping her way to the top. Against both Hillary and Kamala, Trump backers raised doubts about women in leadership roles. Trump has spent his Presidency destroying DEI programs in the public and private sector, invading diverse cities with law enforcement and troops, and deporting anyone he can. Even with all that, he has made gains among minority voters. He has locked down anywhere rural in America. He has boxed Democrats into a smaller and smaller playing field.

I blame a ton of this all on the operative class in the Democratic Party, who used fancy algorithms to defend being uncompetitive at all with voters and places they didn’t really like. I also blame this to some extent on a donor class and activist that is way out of touch with what actual voters want the Democratic Party to do. So much of Barack Obama’s campaigns was not about his identity and ideology, and more so about saving jobs for blue collar folks in Michigan and Wisconsin, and it worked. This isn’t an either/or though. You can’t watch Roe v. Wade be overturned and say “we’ll ignore that, women won’t care.” Of course you have to respond to actual harm done in culture wars. Conceding all areas that aren’t culturally progressive though is a losing message. Taking positions that most people hate, like defending “intifada” or slamming Sydney Sweeney for saying she’s hot, just makes us look like weirdos. There’s really no constituency for it. Fighting about niche cultural issues has little appeal, even to people who voted for President Obama. What we should have learned from Hillary Clinton’s loss was that the combination of people who hate us on cultural issues and the people who just don’t give a shit about some of them, makes up a majority. We spent most of the last decade making our message “Donald Trump is unacceptably bad,” and a majority of people either disagreed or shrugged their shoulders.

We’re not going to live in the enlightened utopia that Democrats wish for. Running inauthentic “blue collar” messengers like John Fetterman isn’t going to appease anyone either. No, they don’t want the angry cultural leftist, but no, they also don’t want a bunch of Ivy League educated, trust funded socialists either. They can tell the difference between a blue collar guy and a deadbeat like Bernie Sanders too. They want a better deal from their government, and maybe none of that “globalize the intifada” garbage. Makes sense. None of that will change though until we change our “Democratic political industry” complex altogether. We’re just going to keep putting forward candidates who don’t relate at all.