The soul of the Democratic Party is the fight for working people—for an America where every person has freedom, opportunity, dignity, and respect. 

Ours is the party that—hand in hand with the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and each great movement for progress and justice—built the middle class, defended democracy from tyranny, and moved our nation step by step towards honoring the best of our founding ideals.

In 2024, Democrats lost. Everywhere. For the first time in a half-century, Democratic vote share dropped in every single state and DC. From the data we have, the key factor was economic: we lost the most votes from those with the least. We lost ground with working-class voters in rural areas, cities, small towns, and suburbs; across race, ethnicity, gender, and ideology. 

When we lose, we must listen. We must reflect. And then we must gear up to meet the new reality in which we find ourselves. Today, a cabal of far-right billionaires, led by Donald Trump, seeks to betray working people, attack the vulnerable, and rig the country for those at the very top. 

To defeat them, and to win the power to make a difference in people’s lives, the Democratic Party must grow stronger. And then the Democratic Party must compete everywhere, and message powerfully—on offense, in all the places and platforms where people spend their time now, and in the language they use themselves about the central issues in their lives. 

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin offers a model for the way forward. In a state where Republicans smashed unions, suppressed voters, rigged maps, and sought to lock in permanent control, the Democratic Party has—hand in glove with partners like Governor Evers and Senator Baldwin, the union movement, and the Democratic ecosystem—built a state party that organizes and communicates in every zip code, year-round, to fight and win key battles at every level of the ballot, fueled by dozens of full-time staff, tens of thousands of volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of donors that broke Democratic state party fundraising records. 

The result? In 2022, the first Democratic gubernatorial for Tony Evers victory under a Democratic president in 60 years—and a two-point swing towards Democrats amidst an average three-point swing towards Republicans. In 2023, a pro-democracy state Supreme Court majority by electing Justice Janet Protasiewicz. In 2024, fourteen state legislative flips on hard-won new maps, a victory for Senator Baldwin, and the nation’s highest turnout. 

Let’s take this model nationwide. The Democratic Party must unite, fight, and win.  

UNITE

Unite around a plan in each state and territory. Not a 57-state-party strategy—57 state party strategies. Every state and territory, from the reddest to the bluest to the brightest purple, has critical battles in the years ahead—and in every state, the mix of elections, stakeholders, and laws is unique. But there are Democrats, and Democratic state parties, everywhere. We need more than a cookie-cutter monthly check (though we need that too!)—we need a 10-year plan to win in every state, built by the people who will implement it, from state parties to elected officials and candidates to unions to grassroots allies. The DNC will partner with every state to bring key voices and trusted local advisors together and develop a plan—and then partner to ensure that each state has the people and resources to turn it into a reality. 

• Fund parties. Increase baseline funding for every state through the State Party Partnership and Red State Fund—and additional resources mapped to the specific battle plan for each state.

• Pay chairs. State chairs work around the clock—and the DNC will ensure they’re paid full-time, with benefits, to honor their labor, help them do more, and retain talent.

• Own data. Ensure that state parties own their own data—with constant DNC support to collect, clean, and build on it so it can power the work that wins elections.

• Build capacity. In each state, let’s expand what’s working, fix what’s not, and—with DNC help—build out new capacity to fill gaps in each state’s ecosystem. Politics is a team sport, and we win when every position is covered and the bench is strong.

Unite our coalition by making sure everyone’s at the table. We win when our decisions, plans, and teams represent all of us. 

• A leadership team and Committee that reflect our party’s diversity. The DNC’s leadership team and at-large appointees will lift up our full coalition—with Black, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ, youth, interfaith, ethnic, rural, veteran, and disability representation. 

• Year-round coalitions staffing, practices, and investment. Full-time dedicated coalitions staff, and a full-time Accessibility Director, will ensure that both the DNC and our work state by state builds real relationships and honors our values. The same commitment will run through all we do—including hiring practices, vendor selection, vetted consultant lists, and media investments. 

• Budget lines for youth wings, caucuses, and councils. Young Democrats, High School Democrats, College Democrats, the Seniors Council—and the party’s mighty caucuses—will have dedicated funds, so they can focus on their critical work. 

Unite around a partnership with the union movement to fight for working people. Across race and ethnicity, gender, geography, and generation, Democrats win when they earn the trust of working people—and when working people have power. The union movement is the Democratic Party’s indispensable partner in that fight. 

• Principal-level strategic meetings and staff-to-staff partnership nationally and, with DNC support, in every state to build and execute strategy for winning working people

• Union people. Input on key hires. Job candidate sourcing. And dedicated full-time DNC staff to support the Labor Council and ensure that the party upholds its end of the partnership. 

• We say “union yes.” Nationally and in states, support for voluntary recognition and good-faith negotiation with staff unions. Work with union vendors. And we say “union-busting NO”—rejecting vendors who work with union busters and donations from corporations who are busting unions. 

Unite at every level of the ballot. Elections at every level of our democracy affect the lives of working people, and the Democratic National Committee will partner with state parties and sister committees to fight for city halls, statehouses, courthouses, the Capitol, and the White House. 

• Sister committees are family. The DNC will fund and deepen its partnership with the DCCC, DSCC, DGA, DLGA, DAGA, DASS, DTA, DLCC, DMA, DMO, and NCDO.

• Coordinated campaigns everywhere. In partnership with our sister committees and a well-supported ASDC, the DNC will work to help coordinated campaigns fight for candidates at all levels—and, fully utilizing and complying with campaign finance law, to work with partners and allies to stretch every dollar for maximum impact.

• Listen, learn, and lead. The DNC will listen to the candidates, committees, communities, allies, and coalitions partners that form our big tent, learn from those who have the most at stake, and lead by with our values and a relentless focus on winning.   

Unite around a process to pick our next president. Every DNC member will have a voice in setting a primary calendar without the chair’s thumb on the scale—to build a calendar that chooses a winner, honors our party’s traditions, lifts up our diverse coalition, and gives candidates a fair shot. 

FIGHT

Fight the attention war—communicating in every place and on every platform. Messaging isn’t just picking the right words. It’s showing up in the many ever-changing places where voters actually spend their time—with great, authentic communicators carrying clear messages that show voters we’re on their side, against those trying to rig the country to rip them off. 

• Be everywhere. Every medium known to voters—from podcasts to streaming to vertical video to microblogging to photo sharing to TV to radio to email newsletters to rural weekly print newspapers—to the next thing. In written words, memes, photos, videos, conversations, and every every other format, let’s analyze where people are making sense of the world, and show up there year-round

• Booking across ideology, and beyond. Build a media training, message testing, and guest pitching operation that books genuine, powerhouse communicators on conservative media, breaks news and builds audiences in the emerging independent progressive media ecosystem, and reaches out to nonpolitical media to reach Americans who trust neither party but whose votes can tip elections.

• A 21st-century war room. Nationally and in states, in partnership with allies, track and shape the conversation—overwhelming the GOP lie machine with a faster-moving, heavy-hitting on-offense communications operation with a “permanent campaign” mentality to shape the news environment and put the right on defense.

• Speakers, surrogates, and a cultural strategy to ensure that every state gets help finding compelling speakers, and partnering with the cultural and arts community to tap creative talent to make politics more fun, more funny, and more interesting—shaping narratives, raising money, and mobilizing volunteers along the way.

• Talk like real people about kitchen table issues. Everyone—no matter the color of their skin, where they live or who they love—needs food on the table, medicine and care when they’re sick, and a roof over their head. Communicating clearly about the concerns of working families—and fighting against those who want to rig the country to enrich far-right billionaires—doesn’t come at the expense of our fundamental commitment to a country with freedom and justice and dignity for all. Instead, economic solidarity is the bedrock for building trust that makes social progress and democracy possible. The DNC will recruit, train, and deploy communicators and messages to disrupt the right’s constant attempt to divide and distract the public as they pick the pocket of working people everywhere. 

Fight year-round—organizing from the grassroots up, in every zip code. Our relationship with the electorate can’t start and end with a stranger at the door asking for a vote on Election Day. It’s time for always-on organizing infrastructure in every community. 

• Neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, door to door. Train and fund neighbor-to-neighbor and relational organizing, face to face and digitally, developing and drawing on local trusted talent who understand their communities. 

• Grow like a snowball, from campaign to campaign. By organizing volunteer teams rooted in state parties rather than individual candidate campaigns, we can ensure that what we build in each election strengthens our work in the next one. 

Fight the next fight, in a new AI era—while learning from the last one. Technology, tactics, media dynamics, and just about everything else is changing fast, and could change much faster soon. Let’s stay curious, learn continuously, and be ready.

• An after-action review after every campaign. Starting with a look back at 2024, up and down the ballot, let’s have a reckoning—not recriminations—to learn what should grow, what should stop, what needs to change, and what needs to start. 

• An Innovation Department with a budget and a mandate to run experiments, try new things, red-team our approaches, and partner with leading practitioners and figure out what’s next… and make sure Democrats do it first. We’ll always live out our commitment to fair labor practices as we empower our teams. And we’ll leave the GOP scratching their heads about how they lost. 

Fight for the ballot, and beat election sabotage. The GOP’s lawlessness, ever-evolving voter suppression strategies, and penchant for violent coup attempts don’t fade away when Trump wins. To deliver for working people, we have to win the fight for democracy. 

• Year-round voter protection wherever it’s needed. Scale up Wisconsin’s pathbreaking model—state-based and national voter protection teams using both legal and organizing strategies to recruit poll workers and observers, ensure access and cure ballots, defend voting rights, and head off election sabotage attempts. 

• Win in court. Even with a GOP Supreme Court hammerlock, key state and federal courtroom victories can prevent or overcome Republican attacks—and a commitment to aggressively defending democracy at every level can deter bad behavior.

Fight with the resources to win, with supercharged fundraising—spent wisely. To expand the pie, we have to show donors small and large that we’ll be spending with maximum effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability—to win. Since 2019, Wisconsin Democrats have built, by far, the largest grassroots fundraising operation of any Democratic state party in the country, more than quintupling the state party’s income. 

• Build trust through transparency. Stop emotional manipulation. Treat donors like humans, not ATMs. Show what we’ll do, explain why we’re doing it, do it, and then explain the results. And ensure that DNC members know where the DNC’s budget goes.

• Spend to win. No grift. This campaign has not—and will not—make any promises to consultants regarding their future relationships with the DNC. On Day One of the new term, the DNC will begin an audit of existing consultant contracts. We will create a member-driven commission to review our findings and draft a policy for how the DNC will engage future consultants, examining ways to avoid conflicts of interest, prioritize impact instead of commissions, and ensure all spending aligns with our values and our mission to elect Democrats.

• Put the “fun” in “fundraising.” WisDems made national headlines with blockbuster events like their original cast reading of The Princess Bride, which engaged more than 100,000 donors and raised $4.5 million. When donating to help Democrats is a blast, instead of a chore, more people do it. Let’s make doing good irresistible. 

WIN

Win every Tuesday. There’s an election somewhere every week. Let’s win special elections, odd-numbered years, midterms, and the presidential election. Let’s break GOP supermajorities and trifectas in state government—and build Democratic ones. Let’s win school boards and city councils and mayorships and state offices and Congress in 2026—and build the ground game for the presidential (and a federal trifecta) in 2028, so that by the time our primary ends, our next nominee has their ground game ready to go. 

Win by making the party powerful—and indispensable—so 2030 doesn’t repeat 2010. 2008’s landslide wins obscured the hollowing out of state parties everywhere, due to a presidential campaign built outside the state party structure. In the 2010 backlash, the GOP swept into power—and then rigged maps for the next decade. By getting this right, we will ensure that our next nominee knows that their clearest path to victory is to build through state parties—ensuring that the 2028 elections strengthen rather than sap the Democratic Party. That will prepare us for victories in 2030—preventing a GOP takeover before the next census and redistricting, and control of states for the following decade. Our decisions now, in 2025, will shape American politics through 2040 and beyond. 

Win change in the lives of working people everywhere. The only true measure of our work is the impact it has on people’s lives. Winning elections is a means to that end. By winning, we open the door to governing—and and by governing in ways that change people’s lives for the better, and by supporting and lifting up that work, we deliver on the trust and hope that is conveyed by every ballot.  Let’s build a party that wins voters’ trust, wins elections—and ushers in the next era of progress towards a more just, more free America that works for working people from sea to shining sea. 

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