The Democratic Party’s siren call to defeat

How misaligned incentives and a broken ecosystem are undermining the Party and its future

Today’s guest post is by Greg Schultz, the Biden 2020 Presidential Primary Campaign Manager.

It’s no secret that the Democratic Party brand is struggling. Republicans have poured billions into undermining it — but the deeper challenges for Democrats are internal, affecting not just election outcomes but also the ability to govern effectively.

While Democrats and Republicans both operate within expansive ecosystems of outside organizations, Democrats face a painful truth: their infrastructure is not primarily built to win elections. Instead, it serves entrenched interests that pull the party away from broad-based strategies and toward ideological extremes and overarching focus on identity.

These structural misalignments lead candidates, elected officials, and organizational leaders to prioritize niche debates and narrow ideological framing over practical governance. The result is a weakened party brand, reduced electoral competitiveness, and diminished governing capacity.

To understand the forces undermining Democratic success, it’s helpful to think of elected officials in three broad groups:

1. The Far Left: Safe blue-district progressives (the Squad, et al) who face no real general election threat.

2. The (Mostly) Safe Middle: Center-left officials in relatively secure seats, but vulnerable in wave years.

3. The Majority-Makers: Moderates in swing districts who must appeal to a broad electorate to win year in and year out.

While the far left often grabs headlines, the real damage to the party’s brand increasingly comes from the Mostly Safe Middle. Rather than acting as a ballast against ideological excess, the safe middle often amplifies it, creating a perception that the Democratic Party is more extreme than the electorate it needs to win. Equally as troubling, the Mostly Safe Middle remains silent when Majority-Makers and their allies could use support when attacked by the Party’s extremes. Crucially, the Mostly Safe Middle incentives are shaped less by voters and more by the ecosystem itself; the donors, organizations and activist groups, and party influencers who are unrepresentative of the broader electorate.

This misalignment and the incentives it drives are what truly needs to change if Democrats want to build enduring majorities.

The base voter fallacy

At the root of this dysfunction is a flawed assumption: that Democrats win by focusing almost exclusively on turning out their “base.” But the concept of the “base” is often misunderstood.

As Joe Biden’s 2020 primary campaign manager, I saw firsthand that the real Democratic base is made up of moderate voters — people worried about jobs, wages, healthcare costs, housing, and education. It’s not college students or online activists.

I remember vividly a focus group we did with Black voters in South Carolina in late June/early July of 2019. Biden was being attacked by the left elite of the Party for saying he worked with segregationists in his time in the Senate. Despite what the left was saying, Black primary voters in South Carolina felt that Biden’s work with segregationists was another good reason to support him for President! As participants of this focus group pointed out, if you were Black and lived in the South under Jim Crow, you too had to work with segregationists. While the Democrats’ ecosystem was criticizing Biden for an action, actual voters in key places were praising him for the exact same thing.

Even in 2020, there was no “youth wave” for the most progressive candidates, nor was there a surge of voters of color gravitating toward the left. The data simply doesn’t support the narrative. And beyond the misreading of the base, the arithmetic doesn’t add up. Turnout alone doesn’t win in swing states. Persuasion matters just as much — often more.

Battleground states and swing districts require candidates who can build broad coalitions across ideological lines. “Majority-Makers” win by focusing on practical concerns, not by chasing ideological applause.

A tale of two ecosystems

The Democratic Party’s outside infrastructure often pushes candidates and elected officials toward ideological extremes.

A clear policy example: the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. In an attempt to satisfy a narrow ideological faction, the Biden Administration implemented rigid, impractical rules, sacrificing effective governance for ideological purity.

Or take the response to Representative Seth Moulton’s comments on fairness in girls’ sports, referencing his perspective as a father — a position shared by a majority of Americans. Instead of fostering thoughtful debate, many Democrats attacked him. Worse than the attacks by Democrats was the near silence from the broad middle of the Party, who were not willing to stand up for Moulton and worried more about the attacks from the ecosystem than showing alignment with broad public opinion.

In both cases, the incentives for action, or lack of action, came from the Party’s ecosystem, misaligned from effective governance or voter interests. Officials in relatively safe seats mirror these pressures because the current incentives encourage it — even when it weakens the party’s ability to compete in swing districts.

Managing Biden’s 2020 Primary, I and the campaign were targeted repeatedly by groups in the Democratic ecosystem pushing policies out of line with voters, including around Medicare for All, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s student debt plan, and extreme environmental positions. But embracing these positions would have complicated winning the general election. In particular, I received countless messages warning me that if Biden didn’t adopt Warren’s student debt plan, then he would for sure lose the primary.

Conversely, no groups in the Democratic ecosystem — except a few unions, to my memory — gave Biden support in the primary for advocating for a secure border or significant infrastructure investment proposals, positions that help win general elections.

Things are different on the Republican side.

The GOP have built an ecosystem anchored in broadly resonant values: Club for Growth (free market capitalism), CATO Institute (liberty), Heritage Foundation (freedom), the Koch network (prosperity), and the Federalist Society (conservative legal framework). These organizations not only shape policy and advocacy but also reinforce a cohesive Republican brand. Moreover, the GOP has cultivated a communications network that amplifies its message effectively.

Democrats, on the other hand, have built organizations largely around identities or specific policy goals rather than broad, unifying values. While most voters, including many Democrats, may not be aware of these organizations, they wield significant influence over candidates’ selection, policies, messaging, and governance. The result is an ecosystem that incentivizes Democratic politicians to focus on identity and niche policies rather than broadly appealing economics or narratives around American values. Even in the rare parts of the Democratic ecosystem where organizations grasp the hard electoral realities and have built durable infrastructure over multiple election cycles, they face an uphill battle to secure the resources needed to scale their impact.

The Democratic ecosystem has increasingly embraced the concept of “intersectionality,” a term rarely used outside elite circles. This mindset has blurred organizational focus, making it difficult to distinguish what any given group actually stands for. As a result, nearly every organization is seen as prioritizing a broad mix of causes — from transgender rights and climate justice to politically correct speech and global ideology — regardless of their original mission. This incentive to “check every box” extends to candidates and elected officials, diluting clear, strategic messaging and undermining the ability to make compelling arguments that help win elections or govern effectively.

Creating incentives to win

For lasting impact, organizations need consistent, strategic funding. But Democratic donors — mostly clustered in elite coastal zip codes — often operate in social bubbles disconnected from the broader electorate. This leads to groupthink, where resources are funneled into ideological passion projects, initiatives based on flawed assumptions about constituencies, or candidates with little to no actual path to victory.

Donor advisors frequently make this worse. While some offer smart guidance, many lack firsthand experience in competitive districts. As a result, funding often prioritizes ideological policy alignment or demographic targeting over actual electoral viability, wasting money and missing chances to build the infrastructure that incentivizes winning.

Democratic leaders have also failed to direct donor attention toward long-term infrastructure. Their immediate incentive is to win the next election, where millions are raised and spent on ads that disappear after Election Day. But investing in generational organizations that realign incentives would be a self-fulfilling investment into a strong brand that can win more elections.

To realign incentives toward electoral success, Democrats must build institutions that reflect core American values and reinforce a winning electoral strategy. This requires a holistic reimagining of what we are building and why we are building it.

A key first step is the pulling together of a Strategic Donor Network that prioritizes electoral strategies based on realities rather than ideological preferences and identity politics, a network that recognizes the need for persuasion as well as turnout. Building an ecosystem that incentivizes and emboldens Democrats to win elections and govern well with electorally viable candidates, policies, values, and framing will take time and vision. Here’s where we can start:

1. A political organization that champions a bold, coherent economic framework, is active in Democratic primaries, and is rooted in good growth capitalism and opportunity for all.

2. A legal organization to counter the Federalist Society offering a forward-looking Democratic vision and building a pipeline for legal talent and thought.

3. A think tank focused on personal liberty, developing winning message framing and policies to push back against big government overreach by Republican polices, including efforts on reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ equality.

The siren call of the Democratic Party’s ecosystem is seductive — but it’s a trap for The Middle.

The Democratic Party’s core challenge is not that voters have abandoned its values. It’s that elite incentives have pulled the party away from the voters, policies, and values it needs to win. If Democrats want to build lasting majorities and govern effectively, they must fix the incentives within their ecosystem — rewarding organizations that prioritize broad coalitions, pragmatic governance, and a real understanding of who their base truly is.

Only by recognizing that we’ve built a system that incentivizes our own defeat can we start making the strategic investments needed to win now and for generations to come.