Do Democrats still have a "big tent" party, or have they now morphed to being a "small tent" party by insisting on too many must-pass litmus tests? That is a question Democrats should really be asking themselves now, after suffering a humiliating election defeat. That's the traditional way to put it, but at the risk of using an offensive term, what they really need to decide is whether they're going to allow what might be called "Cafeteria Democrats" to exist peacefully within their party or not.

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The 2024 election is not yet over. Well, the ballots have all been cast -- the act of voting in the election is over -- but we're still waiting for the final results in a handful of districts in the House of Representatives. And right now, it is looking like the election didn't change the makeup of the House one bit. This could slightly change, but only by a small number. That's fairly remarkable in an election where the Republicans gained seats in the Senate and took back the White House.

As of this writing, there are five districts still outstanding -- two in California, one each in Iowa and Ohio, and the at-large Alaska seat. As things stand, Republicans are ahead in three of these races while Democrats lead in the other two. If that winds up being the final result, then the makeup of the House will not have changed by a single seat.

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Although Donald Trump is known for tossing aside any political conventions or traditions he doesn't like, there's one aspect of his transition that seems rather jaw-dropping, although few have commented on it (other than by making jokes). Ultra-cynical observers of American politics have long denounced the wealthy (not to mention corporations) for "buying" politicians. If you've got enough money, then you can easily fund a re-election campaign... or fund a primary challenge if this carrot doesn't work as intended. From that point on, they have certain politicians "in their pocket," and can count on them to vote to support their interests.

This has been rampant in American politics for a very long time, of course. Campaign-finance reforms are occasionally enacted, but there's a saying in Washington: "Money in politics is like rain on a paved road... there will always be cracks that allow it to seep in." And ever since the Supreme Court ruled that money equals free speech in politics, campaign finance laws are notable only for their weakness (or their non-existence). The business of buying politicians has been made easy, which has led to not just a rainfall of people using political donations to buy influence, but an absolute flood.

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The circus has come to town, and performing in the center ring this week was the teeny-tiny clown car which disgorged a continuing parade of clowns, each more outlandish than the last.

Or, to put things another way: get ready for lots more circus/clown metaphors in the very near future. It's really the only possible way to describe Donald Trump selecting his cabinet. But we'll get to the individual clowns in a moment, because first we've got to take a broader view of what Trump's up to here.

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I have to say, the temptation to join the chorus of both laughter and horror over Donald Trump's cabinet picks is pretty tempting today, but I think I'll save my comments on that clown parade for tomorrow. Instead, I'm going to continue looking forward today, to extend my thoughts on the Democratic Party and what it should do moving forward. The last two days I devoted to possible presidential candidates in 2028, but today I'm going to concentrate on what Democrats should be emphasizing during both the 2026 (midterm) and 2028 campaigns.

Looking that far into the future in politics is impossible, I do realize that. A lot of any Democratic campaign is going to be commentary on what Trump has done as president, that much seems pretty certain. What I'm going to lay out is a very pro-family economic platform for Democrats to embrace next time around, which would compliment whatever Democrats are saying about Trump and the Republicans running Washington.

This isn't meant to be an autopsy of what went wrong in the 2028 campaign, but one common theme has emerged from such attempts I've read elsewhere. Democrats continue to lose working-class blue-collar workers -- of all identity groups. Blacks, Latinos, Whites -- it doesn't matter which, they all deeply care about the economy. If there is one easy way to explain the way the electorate was feeling this cycle, it is the anger that eggs got expensive (I've even heard the neologism "egg-flation" used to describe it), and Democrats didn't seem to care much or have an answer for it.

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[We continue today with Part 2 of the article posted yesterday, where we are taking a look at the Democratic "bench," to see who might be considering a run for president in 2028. Yesterday we began with governors; today we move on to senators and other Democrats who might decide to become candidates.]

Senators

I will begin by saying that this section is probably going to be somewhat incomplete. Almost all senators entertain thoughts of becoming president at one point or another, so I'm sure there will be some surprises when 2028 rolls around. Most of these, however, fail to gain much traction on a national stage and wind up pulling out of the race pretty early, though. To give but one example, does anyone today remember Michael Bennet's 2020 presidential campaign? I certainly hadn't, and I follow politics pretty closely. So there will likely be at least a couple Democratic candidates next time around that few outside of their home state even recognize.

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Yes, this is way too early. Insanely early. I get that.

But looking into the future with hope is what Democrats are going to have to start doing at some point, and I figured now -- while Democrats are in some pretty deep despair -- is a pretty good time to start doing it. So today let's think about the 2028 Democratic primary season, and run down the list of possible Democratic candidates. Hey, it's better than watching Donald Trump make cabinet picks, right?

In 2028 we will have a rare election, because both political parties will have open races. Trump is term-limited out of office (assuming the Constitution is still relatively intact, of course), and there will be no heir apparent on the Democratic side.

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Few have commented on it since the Democratic National Convention last year, but to me there were some striking parallels between the election of 2024 and that of 1968. The biggest of these? A sitting Democratic president declined to finish his effort to win re-election, so the party had to rally around an alternative candidate late in the cycle -- who went on to lose. But that's not the only parallel. In 1968, America was mired down in a proxy war in Vietnam. Young people faced being drafted and sent off to fight and possibly die halfway around the world, and neither political party seemed to have any answer to the situation that didn't include a whole lot more of the same. This is where the parallel is not exact, because nothing like that is happening today.

But there is a groundswell of protest among young Americans over what is going on in Gaza. To those people who lived through or were otherwise affected by Vietnam, this is somewhat puzzling, since no college student now protesting is in danger of being forced to go fight in a foreign war. "It's not the same," they say, "since you aren't going to have to participate."

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We've all already seen this movie once, so we should kind of know what to expect. And sequels are usually much worse than the original.

Which is why today we're going to devote this column to pondering how bad things could really get in Donald Trump's second term in office (rather than sticking to our normal Friday format). Some things will probably not be as horrifically bad as Democrats now think, some things will indeed be precisely that bad, and some things will be even more horrific than anyone's imagining right now. And my apologies, because this is not an attempt at making a comprehensive list of predictions but rather just free association, what might be called initial thoughts.

As far as he is concerned, Donald Trump now has not only a mandate to do whatever he pleases, but he will also have the power to make it all happen. There will be no guardrails at all. Republicans will control the Senate and most likely the House as well. Democrats will be almost powerless. Mitch McConnell swore this week that the filibuster would remain in place in the Senate, but as he is on his way out as a Senate leader, that will really be up to the next guy to decide. There will be no filibuster on budgetary matters or judge confirmations, and if the filibuster ever gets in the way of Trump and the Republicans doing something they consider a big deal, it will be jettisoned (perhaps just for that issue, or perhaps for everything).

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As the Democratic Party surveys the smoking wreckage of their electoral hopes and dreams, there will no doubt be a movement to figure it all out and try to fix whatever's wrong, in preparation for next time. The pundits are already busy tossing ideas out, and the party bigwigs will probably make some sort of official effort to understand it all at some point.

While Democrats have largely been united -- to a historic degree -- around being anti-Trump for the past eight years or so, the party's various factions have mostly kept from huge public squabbles with each other. That was an enormous change from the way the party had previously operated. Nancy Pelosi deserves a lot of credit for this, in fact, since nobody herds Congressional Democratic cats like she can. But it was also mostly just putting up a united face against Trump and Trumpism that brought Democrats together. This will undoubtedly also hold them together in Congress for Trump's second term, but there will be power struggles behind the scenes for what the party's agenda and message should truly be, heading forward.

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