A collection of Democratic-aligned groups are seeking to overthrow prevailing liberal orthodoxy and transform the party into one voters might entrust with the keys to the country in the wake of President Donald Trump’s commanding 2024 reelection victory.
Searchlight Institute, a think tank and the newest entry in the field, aims to check the influence of progressive activist groups on Democratic candidates and the party’s governing agenda. The Working Class Project, launched in the spring, is angling to stanch Democrats’ bleeding with blue-collar voters. WelcomePAC, founded in 2021, is pushing the party to spurn left-wing candidates in favor of pragmatists popular with swing voters. Third Way, the graybeard of the bunch, is a think tank receiving fresh attention for bluntly assessing that Trump won the popular vote, swept the closest battleground states, and won larger shares of nonwhite and younger voters because Democrats lost touch with the electorate.
These organizations are producing policy proposals capable of serving as the basis for a legislative program, conducting polling and focus groups to provide insight into voter sentiment, and hosting events and sharing memorandums with party insiders and strategists to sell their recommendations. It’s all part of a comprehensive bid to discourage base politics and make political pragmatism more palatable for candidates and incumbents to adopt. Adam Jentleson, Searchlight Institute’s founder, said his think tank’s goal is to “create a little bit more breathing room for Democrats to say what they really think.”
Jentleson, who cut his teeth as an aide to late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, argued, “There are very few Democrats out there—especially in redder and purpler areas—who actually agree with the left-wing view straight down the line. Most of them are saying stuff that they don’t really believe on these issues because they feel that they have to or they’re going to get yelled at.” Contentious issues on which Trump has outmaneuvered Democrats fearful of left-wing blowback include border security, transgender females playing women’s sports, and public safety.
The 2026 midterm elections will reveal if these organizations are beginning to move the needle. But Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett suggested the real reckoning will come soon after. The day after next year’s battle for Congress concludes, the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential primary is expected to begin in earnest. “No matter what happens with some members of Congress or some governors in the interim, we won’t have the definition as a party until we have a nominee,” said Bennett, the think tank’s executive vice president for public affairs.
“We think the battle for the soul of the party will be really focused on that—on the nominating process and who we end up with,” Bennett added. If Democrats nominate an heir to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, their effort likely failed, at least in the short term. But if the nominee is a pragmatist in the mold of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Searchlight Institute, Third Way, and like-minded groups can probably take a victory lap.
The Democrats have been here before. Four decades ago, they were reeling from the 49-state landslide reelection of President Ronald Reagan.
The 1984 contest marked the Democrats’ fourth White House defeat in five elections. So early the following year, some renegade Democrats, led by party operative Al From and a cadre of incumbent representatives and senators, founded the Democratic Leadership Council. Like the Searchlight Institute, Working Class Project, WelcomePAC, and Third Way in 2025, the DLC back in 1985 sought to wrest control of the party from left-wing interest groups and elected officials whose rhetoric and agenda—on the economy, crime, and culture—had been demonstrably rejected by American voters.
The goal was to provide Democrats with an alternative policy roadmap that appealed to voters across the political spectrum, and, in so doing, turn the party’s deeply negative image right side up. “If you have a product that’s not selling, you’ve got to change that product if you want more sales. It’s not a complicated thing,” From told The Dispatch in a telephone interview. “One of the problems, when you come close, is that people think you can tinker.” (In other words, Democrats should not misinterpret Kamala Harris’ relatively narrow loss to Trump.)
The DLC ultimately succeeded in refashioning the Democratic Party and turning it into a winner, in part because From and the group’s other leaders eventually recruited to serve as chairman a certain ambitious Arkansan, Gov. Bill Clinton, whose pragmatism and keen voter radar was matched by unrivaled political skill. Clinton, of course, won the White House in 1992, ousting President George H.W. Bush. But in between, Democrats nominated yet another unappealing liberal, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, and in 1988 suffered yet another electoral drubbing.
As then, some Democratic operatives involved in the modern effort to revive the party worry Democrats have not lost enough to change course. After all, Democrats have won three out of the last five presidential elections. Meanwhile, the groups pushing Democrats to tailor their message and agenda to the broad center of American politics are facing challenges the DLC did not.
One of those hurdles is a balkanized media environment that makes it possible for voters to avoid facts and messages they find uncomfortable. A related challenge is social media platforms, which both foster that siloing and provide entrenched interest groups and progressive Democrats loud megaphones suggesting their constituencies are larger than they actually are. The result is that Democratic incumbents and candidates are part of a political feedback loop that incentivizes them to placate the party’s activist base and discourages them from breaking with progressive dogma.
That matters. From emphasized that the DLC won the intraparty war it started precisely because elected Democrats were the ones fighting it in the trenches—and some of the party operatives involved in the current effort say the same is going to be necessary this time. “Our intraparty opponents can inflict way more pain, very quickly, on a wide range of people,” WelcomePAC co-founder Liam Kerr told The Dispatch. “These activists—who don’t need to spend any time thinking about winning swing districts—have nothing better to do than text each other and get all whipped up if any Democrat gets out of line.”
Kerr explained as well that the Democratic Party’s recovery task is more “politically complicated than in the 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, he said, the party’s main issue was winning back a relatively homogenous bloc of Democrats who had voted for Reagan—“Reagan Democrats.” Today, the party has problems with multiple groups with gripes that sometimes overlap but are often different: younger voters, especially young men; Hispanics; and working class voters.
“It’s just way different from ’85 or ’89,” Kerr said. “It’s just less simple.”
