The Democratic Party has been humbled. The disaster of this electiondaywillreverberateacross society for the years to come, and the same holds true for our political sphere. It is tempting—especially given the historic, negative impact this election is likely to have on many members of our nation—to read the result as a single narrative, be it one of nationwide misogyny, racist backlash or voter suppres- sion. It is important to remember two things about this tendency.

Like all events involving over 130 million people, the 2016 elec- tion was a tremendously complex one, featuring a wide variety of ex- planations, each more complicated than the last. Boiling it down to single factors, like above, is noth- ing less than delusional, especially coming from a college liberal per- spective, for two principal reasons. First, considering allTrump voters to be by necessity uneducated or actively racist only obscures the far more nuanced reality and makes such results harder to predict, often in the interest of feeling smug and morallysuperior.Second, blaming factors external to some of the ac- tive parties, especially the media and the Democratic side allows them to emerge unscathed and in- sulates them from criticism, when in fact they have just as much if not more to do with the result than many purported scapegoats like James Comey and JulianAssange. We owe ourselves and those most affected by a Trump presidency an honest account, rather than gloss- ing over unpleasant or nuanced realities in the name of simplicity. Preciselyoneoftheseunpleas-

ant  realities  is the responsibility

that the Democratic  Party,  espe-

cially its leadership, strategy and methods, must bear for the result. I understand that this can be difficult to understand or accept, given the large amount of readily available and more immediately recogniz- ableotherfactors,butthisneverthe- lesswarrantsexaminingbothforits crucial role and for the possibility of reform, which is perhaps more straightforward here than in cases suchas education.Trump’svictory represents a catastrophic failure of the Democratic Party as an institu- tion. It ought to prompt those of us interested in meaningful change to try and rebuild the party from the ground up.

Our story begins in April 2011, when President Barack Obama announced that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz,onetimehead of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, would succeedTim Kaine as chair- person of the Democratic National Committee, despite rumored ani- mosity between her and Obama. Wasserman-Schultz quickly set about orienting the partyasshe saw fit. Encouraged by the increasingly visible and hostile conservative faction of the Republican Party, as well as the hegemonic liberal con- sensus among most mainstream media outlets, she sought to secure the party’s future through opposi- tion to segments of the Republican Party deemed most objectionable to Democratic ideals. This, com- bined with the personalistic celeb- rity treatment of politicians like the Clintons, Obamas and Joe Biden, has defined much of the Democrat- ic approach, be it in campaigns or policy messaging, until the present day, despite some mild criticism. It was successful until the 2016 Democratic Primary.

Now, I do not mean to say that Bernie Sanders would have done better, even though I am his fan. An avowed socialist with a history of being removed from the American mainstream—par- ticularly on issues like relations with Cuba—would have had sig- nificant issues in a general elec- tion (although the Trump victory does somewhat complicate this analysis). However, the problem is that the DNC actively tilted the scales in favor of Clinton, against Bernie, in terms of discourag- ing mainstream challenges to her candidacy. A leaked internal DNC memo from May 2015, shortly af- ter Bernie had announced his run, refers to the DNC’s general elec- tion strategy as revolved around the contrast between “HRC” and the Republicans, making it clear from the beginning that the DNC was counting on a Clinton victory. Furthermore, actions like the “Hillary Victory Fund,” a dubi- ous campaign finance agreement meant to circumvent existing laws throughjointfundraisingwith state parties only goes to show further how far this intention went. On top of that, the DNC only  scheduled six debates (rather than the 25 of 2008) to further favor Clinton, as it  gave  her  lesser-known opponents much less national  air time and limited the opportunities for her to make a high-profile gaffe. When the Clinton campaign hired Wasserman-Schultz after her dis- graceful resignation in the midst of the email-leak scandal, it only furthered the perception of inap- propriate collaboration between the two. It even seemed to be a reward for services rendered.

Now, Hillary Clinton might very well have still won the primary had the DNC acted differently. What a meaningful and actually competitive primary challenge would have signified, however, is that she would be a stronger candi- date by the end of it, with a better read of the electorate and a greater appreciation for the strengths of her opponents. Instead, her cam- paign and the DNC were able to mostly disregard the lessons of the Sanders challenge, as they were never truly threatened by it, and as a result were unable to capture his encapsulation of the national mood and longing for a coherent, positive message, relying instead on a policy platform with mostly symbolic value and use of Sanders as a new Democratic celebrity as appeasement measures.

Thecampaign’sshortcomings here are clear: by failing to have a truly unified positive message be- yond the horrors of her opponent (which while they are many, did not motivate voters in the same way Obama’s inspirational ’08 campaign did. Even “Stronger Together” was only ever a thinly veiled dig at Trump, and did not generateexcitementorencapsulate herentireplatform),avoteforClin- ton was more often than not billed as a vote against Trump (even if it signified more than that to many people),afact that, while sufficient for some voters, obviously did not cut it on the whole. A quick note here on the popular vote: Clinton won that by running up the mar- gins in very populous and heavily Democratic states, in which her coalition tended to reside, rather than where it mattered. And while there are many arguments for abol- ishing the Electoral College, we ought to look beyond a knee-jerk reaction to last Tuesday’s results. Had the situation been reversed, with Trump winning the popular vote but losing the election, then we’d all be on the other side of the argument.

The Clinton campaign’s fail- ure represents a broader failure of the DNC’s messaging strat- egy. Many, outside of the liberal media and social spheres that we know so well, simply are not as re- sponsive to the perceived outrage over Republicans shutting down the government and defunding Planned Parenthood as Samantha Bee and John Oliver are. While the DNC’s strategy plays very well among this crowd, it doesn’t draw in any voters not quite convinced of the superiority of liberal cultural values, as evidenced by this election’s results. Also a factor here is the DNC’s collusion with many news organizations. As the hacks  of  the  DNC  and Clinton campaign emails show, there is a direct pipeline from Democratic messaging to the news media, as some journalists ran stories by the campaignforsuggestions,repeated talking points verbatim, and co- ordinated on broader campaign strategies, while journalists who were more critical in their cover- age of either Clinton or the DNC faced consequences (I’m thinking here of the case of Mika Brzez- inski of MSNBC, who criticized Wasserman-Schultz on air then was reprimanded by executives). This is a problem for two rea- sons. First, it turns much of main- stream news media into an echo chamber, in which news about Democrats, with the exception of fan-favorite personal dramas like theClintonemails,arewhollyposi- tive while the mere mention of a Trump victory draws criticism and reminders of the candidate’s past remarks, which in turn numbs the public to his remarks as they’re re- peated so constantly as to lose their effect. Second, it creates the per- ceptionamongpeopleless-inclined to favor liberal cultural causes that the system really is rigged against them, and that Washington and the news no longer operate within the same sphere asthem. Someone try- ing to decide between Clinton and Trump who is debating the merits of his “rigged election” rhetoric, could have turned on CNN prior to the election to see anchors debating what color the balloons should be at Clinton’s victory party and in- stantly felt that Trump might have been on to something. Thus, the media is complicit in this as well.

What does this mean for the future of the DNC? While no one can know for certain, I think that this election serves as an appro- priate wake-up call that this party cannot continue or survive as the bastion of the liberal elite, be they economic,politicalorcultural.De- spite all the NowThis videos you may have seen on Facebook, the country is simply not yet ready to accept total cultural hegemony on the part of these elites. The party needs more grassroots activism: listeningtohowpeopleare feeling, what they’re interested in and what issues matter to them. Conversely, there should be fewer panels of Hollywood celebrities gathered around a table discussing which of Hillary Clinton’s 87 focus-group- tested policy proposals they think would have the greatest impact on impoverished communities.

Luckily, there is hope yet for a bottom-up reorganization of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sand- ers demonstrated that one can run a plausible nationwide campaign with minimal monetary support from big-money donors and Su- perPACs. Rep. Keith Ellison (D- Minn.), the first Muslim member of Congress, appears to be emerg- ing as the grassroots favorite to lead the DNC. The opportunity is there for the taking, but both we and our politicians have to seize it, and hopefully prevent 2016 from ever happening again.