Disorder among the Democrats: The opposition struggles to find its way after losing to Trump - Washington Examiner

Julian Zelizer : Democrats are in disarray, a meme that became shorthand for the party's struggles to find a coherent message.

He says the party does not have a leader and is caught between Ocasio-Cortez on the left and MAGA .

At least in 2017 , the Democrats knew who they were. They were the Resistance, in their telling, the party that wasn’t in thrall to the Kremlin . Eight years later , Democrats have devolved into nostrums about appealing to the middle class.

Julian Zelizer : In the waning days of Barack Obama's presidency, the Democratic Party shifted sharply to the left.

Zelizer says it's not clear what the party will stand for in a post-Trump world, but the GOP has three years to answer that question.

He says Obama 's 2008 campaign was a model for Ronald Reagan's first term, but there were moments in his first term when he expressed a hopeful vision that was all ancient history.

The defeat of Trump seemed to validate these tactics, even if Biden was hardly a progressive warrior.

The party that nominated Biden in 2020 was nothing like the party that had nominated Biden ’s boss in 2008 .

Democrats under Trump , and then again under Biden , were becoming more radical on social issues while rejecting the economic populism that made Sanders so popular in 2015 .