How Democrats Need To ‘Reboot’ After 2024 Rout, According To Ex-Lawmaker

Former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) is making the case for how and why the Democratic Party should undergo a “complete reboot” after its candidates got clobbered nationally in the 2024 election.

Democrats are conducting election postmortems after losing the White House to President-elect Donald Trump and the Senate to Republicans. They also failed to win back the House.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” Ryan was asked what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) or future chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) should do going forward.

“You start with a complete reset,” Ryan said. “I mean, we need a rebrand. I think you and I have been talking about this since 2016, like, our brand is toxic in so many places and it is like, you are a Democrat?”

He added: “That’s the stuff we get like in Ohio. And so it needs — we need a complete reboot. We need a complete reboot with the DNC. We need a complete rebranding.”

Ryan, who lost to Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, in the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Ohio, argued that members of his party need to reassess what it means to be a Democrat.

“People want to trust us. They don’t want to go to Donald Trump. I’m telling you, the middle-of-the-road people, they’re holding their nose to vote for him,” Ryan said.

Ryan offered a number of suggestions for how the Democrats can recalibrate, such as embracing natural gas as an alternative to coal and backing off a “big fight” with the crypto industry.

“We’ve got to get back to the bread and butter policies,” Ryan said, adding that the Democratic Party should focus on wooing back working-class and other voters as well as offering a vision for the future.

He further suggested that Democrats need to “lead” on the economy and say “no” to some of the “issues” — even if members can be allies to those causes.

“The other thing that I think is really big: We can’t be for solely redistribution,” Ryan said, adding later, “We want people to aspire to make money in America. … It’s about growing the pie.”

Ryan posited his party should look back to the “Bill Clinton campaign,” put together a plan geared toward “reinventing” a “broken” government, and offer “more of a class-based upward mobility system.”