These Younger Democrats Are Sick of Their Party’s Status Quo

A number of prominent younger Democrats with records of winning tough races are forming a new group with big ambitions to remake their party’s image, recruit a new wave of candidates and challenge political orthodoxies they say are holding the party back.

Members of the initiative, Majority Democrats, have different theories about how the national party has blundered. Some believe a heavy reliance on abortion-rights messaging or anti-Trump sentiment has come at the expense of a stronger economic focus. Others say party leaders underestimate how much pandemic-era school closures or reflexive defenses of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election bid have eroded voters’ trust in Democrats.

But the roughly 30 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels who have so far signed on to the group broadly agree that the Democratic Party must better address the issues that feel most urgent in voters’ lives — the affordability crisis, for example — and that it must shed its image as the party of the status quo. Many of the group’s members have, at times, challenged the party’s establishment, something the organization embraces.

“If we don’t build this big-tent party that can win majorities,” warned Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, a leader of the initiative, “we’re on the path of being the party of the permanent minority from a national-election perspective.”

Being the anti-Trump party “might win a midterm election,” Ms. Craig, who is also running in a competitive primary for the Senate, added, “but it’s not going to build lasting majorities. We’ve got to lay out the case for what we’re for as a party.”

Majority Democrats is partly a network and convening forum for elected officials to trade best practices, debate and develop ideas. Discussions are underway about how the officials could mobilize politically on one another’s behalf, and plans are in the works for public voter-engagement events starting later this summer.