Losing anything in life sucks. Feeling like the work you put into something was made useless by the result is a hopeless feeling. However, instead of dwelling on defeat, there should be a time for reflection and growth. This kind of resilience in the face of adversity is what separates winners and losers.

Looking directly at the 2024 elections, the Democratic Party’s strategies were clearly and undeniably flawed, as it neglected critical working-class issues and failed to resonate with the concerns of the American people. These shortcomings led directly to the party’s failure to win the House, the Senate and the White House. It’s time to discuss some hard truths as to why its strategies were so flawed.

The landslide election results from the 2024 election cycle aren’t the fault of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or any singular Democratic political figure. No, the root of the issue lies in the hands of the party’s platform itself, and the core values it presents to the public. Democrats don’t know how to communicate effectively to the American people and they’re always trying to be “politically correct.” The Democratic Party is no longer the party of common sense nor the party of the working class. That’s the message voters sent to the party after an electoral sweep by the Republicans.

The virtue signaling needs to stop. Speak to people like they’re normal, and stop trying to find different ways to talk to different groups of people because you don’t want to offend anyone. Sometimes the truth hurts, and if the Democrats want to win again, they need to focus on the issues that matter the most to voters.

During the 2024 election cycle, the most important issue across the board to voters was the economy. According to the AP VoteCast, 4 in 10 Americans’ top concern was the economy. In that same poll, they found that only 1 in 10 of Americans’ top concern was abortion. You’d think that any political campaign would run on the more pressing issue given its importance to the electorate as a whole. But no, the Democrats’ top ad spending in key swing states during the election was not the economy, it was abortion.

Americans spoke. They were tired of the high prices and elevated inflation and were concerned about putting food on the table, filling up their cars and being able to buy a house. The Democratic Party focused on a platform that resonated with a minority of the population, which directly led to its downfall on Election Day.

While Democrats are spending time trying to get a viral moment out of Donald Trump or another Republican, the steelworkers of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or the autoworkers of Oakland County, Michigan, are fighting for their livelihoods, stuck in dead-end jobs, trying to support their families. The Democrats are telling them that there is no real problem with the current state of the economy. This is a glaring issue showing how the party neglects the values of those who haven’t been socially persecuted. And if it’s not addressed internally, the Democrats will continue to lose election after election.

By voting for Republicans up and down the ballot, the voters made their priorities clear: the time of focusing on identity politics needs to stop, and the “kitchen table” issues need to take real priority. Do people like Trump’s personality? No. The way he treats other people? No. But he has a unique ability to appeal to people who don’t feel seen or heard.

Trump, as well as the Republican Party, acknowledge that not everything is “sunshine and rainbows” as the Democrats suggest. They acknowledge that people are feeling true pain, and that messaging was clearly effective. It’s the reason why they were so successful with everyday hard-working Americans, why they were so effective with Latinos and performed well above expected with virtually every minority group. This happened because The Republican Party spoke to them and not at them.

The Democratic Party is facing a challenge that it hasn’t needed to address in quite some time: there’s no clear leader. While the emergence of a party leader won’t automatically solve all of the Democrats’ election shortcomings, it’s critical that whomever the Democratic Party elevates to lead their party not only makes more of an effort to prioritize majority issues but also adapts their values to better reflect the concerns of the American people. From a purely political standpoint, this is what they must do to begin winning elections again.