In 1932, amid a Depression worsened by tariffs, inequality and isolationism, Franklin Roosevelt accepted the Democratic presidential nomination with a cautionary note: “Those nominal Democrats who squint at the future with their faces turned toward the past and who feel no responsibility to the demands of the new time,” he said, “are out of step with their party.”

Roosevelt’s warning rings true today as the Democratic Party struggles awkwardly to straddle its past and future. President Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low. Mired in a pointless war that has driven up prices, he demeans voter concerns and runs the White House with a revolving door for oligarchs. That should be enough to propel Democrats to a House majority, and a slate of compelling Senate candidates could win states that normally favor Republicans.

But this speaks more to a patchwork of progress than a national shift toward the Democratic Party. Less than two years after a catastrophic election, the Democratic brand remains unpopular, and the party remains in the grip of a divisive identity crisis. As Democrats work to claw back power in the midterms, they should also reckon with how they can better position themselves as the political force that can decisively replace MAGA.

Running as a Democrat in 2026 is mainly helpful insofar as it distinguishes you from the alternative. Americans don’t need much convincing that Republicans must be checked, but when they look to Washington, they still see a sclerotic national party led by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries that has struggled to address their fears about a corrupt political system, unfair economy, transformative technologies, endless wars and a lack of shared national identity.

The people fighting to restore the Democratic Party to power understand that. In Iowa, the centrist candidate for governor Rob Sand calls it part of a “broken” two-party system. In New York City, the leftist Zohran Mamdani took aim at a national Democratic establishment “run by well-paid consultants and big-money interests.” In must-win Maine, Minnesota and Michigan, the Democratic Senate nominees have suggested that the party needs new leadership. In Alaska, Mary Peltola rejected the support of the Democrats’ last presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.

Between now and November, the Democratic establishment should step back and let a talented assortment of candidates be the face of the party. Doing so will give Democrats a chance to learn from what is working in different parts of the country. If those lessons are uncomfortable in Washington, they must be urgently heeded instead of disappearing into business as usual. Because as soon as the midterms are over, attention will turn to the election cycle that will end the Trump era. Unless Democrats can win back the trust of the broader electorate, they will not be credible when they promise to bring the change America desperately needs.

There is a cavernous void to be filled in American politics: No one has offered a vision for a future that a decisive majority of Americans can believe in. Before Democrats can change America, they must first change themselves.

What does it mean to be a Democrat?

Since Roosevelt’s nomination, the party has thrived when it makes people feel that the government understands their circumstances and is on their side. This common thread unites efforts to expand the social safety net, rein in big business and corruption, extend civil and labor rights and invest in new ladders to opportunity. That requires storytelling, and in my lifetime Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been the dominant figures who told that story.

Yet in the decade since Mr. Trump’s first election, Democrats have played defense: defending legacy programs, marginalized communities, democratic institutions and incumbency. These understandable impulses have at times led to self-destructive excess: prioritizing past achievements, tipping into sanctimonious wokeism, taking ownership of a broken system and resisting generational change. By defining themselves in opposition to Mr. Trump, Democrats have failed to tell a story about the future beyond him.

To break this cycle, Democrats must put themselves on the side of Americans who feel as if they don’t have any power — or even agency — over their future. But that is not how the party is currently seen.

The pollster David Binder has spent this election cycle examining the attitudes of voters who have been willing to switch parties through the Trump decade. “The bottom line is that voters everywhere are saying, ‘Nobody is looking out for me,’” he told me. “Republicans, Democrats — they all look out for themselves. They get corrupted quickly upon election because they get sucked into a system which is about money, re-election, donors, special interests.”

While Democratic leaders would dispute that, Americans aren’t wrong to feel a disconnect between themselves and the politicians who represent them. The economic populism that fuels campaigns is often muted in Washington. The backlash to data centers started in communities across the country, not in Congress. The growing opposition to arming the Israeli government is far more pronounced among voters than politicians. While many Democratic candidates refuse corporate PAC money, party leaders in Washington do not.

Instead, Washington Democrats often retreat to safer ground. In laying out an agenda for a potential majority, Mr. Jeffries, the House leader, recently outlined restoring congressional tariff authority, reinstituting Obamacare subsidies and reversing Medicaid cuts. Worthy goals, but ones rooted in the past.

The most effective opposition to Mr. Trump has often come from outside Washington. From citizens in Minneapolis who found a way to stand up to Immigration and Customs Enforcement on their own. From a constellation of groups organizing No Kings rallies. From California’s efforts to redraw congressional districts and attorneys general across the country fighting federal overreach. From voices across a fractured attention economy that older politicians struggle to understand.

This reinforces the perception of a Democratic establishment cloistered from a restive country. The Democratic National Committee refused to reckon with the ruinous decision to vouch for Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election. The average age of Democratic ranking members in Congress is nearly 70. With an electorate hungering for someone — anyone — new, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee backed establishment politicians in Maine and Michigan who could not even win their primaries.

In recent weeks, centrist Democrats have attacked democratic socialists over the excesses of wokeism past, and some voted for a Republican resolution condemning socialism. Many followed a Fox News feeding frenzy over the views of perhaps the most popular progressive streamer in the country, Hasan Piker. Third Way, a think tank founded two decades ago to defend Clinton-style moderation, committed $15 million to wage this interparty civil war.

Yes, a democratic socialist platform in New York City should not be replicated in an Iowa or Kansas Senate race. Yes, progressives should be counseled away from reprising the culture wars of the recent past. But rather than attacking the D.S.A. as the enemy, Democrats should ask themselves why so many voters are siding with insurgents. When you have lost all national power to a right-wing populist movement, it is obtuse to slam the door on your own populist insurgents.

Centrists argue that they’re anticipating right-wing attacks, but in fact they’re amplifying them — a common trap for Democrats in the Trump era. And at a time when Democrats desperately need new energy, it makes the Democratic Party look afraid of its own voters. Particularly when set against the cultlike uniformity that has characterized MAGA Republicans, Democrats should be embracing pluralism as a strength. The most innovative Democratic campaigns waged since Mr. Trump’s re-election show that populism can resonate from the center and the left. The goal should be threading them together.

We are living in an age when people feel as if their fates are dictated by forces beyond their control. To succeed, the Democratic Party must fashion itself into a vehicle for people to reclaim agency — one that can convince Americans they can remake our economy, our technology and our foreign policy to work for the people, not the other way around.

Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement promised to do something similar. Yet throughout his second term, he has done the opposite. Power is exalted. Prices keep rising. A culture of corruption feels omnipresent.

There is a populist uprising against data centers because they are a physical manifestation of what people fear about the future. Machines replacing workers. Children taught by chatbots. A creeping surveillance state. Money and power concentrated in ever fewer hands.

People have been speaking up against these developments. Yet as with so many other issues in recent years — from the economy to foreign policy — their will has been ignored by politicians.

Democrats must demonstrate that they understand the extent to which a broken system must be remade. They must commit to using government to break up and constrain the obscene concentrations of power that shape our lives and the flood of money and special interests that have corrupted our politics. That was the purpose of the Progressive Era that followed the Gilded Age. And that is necessary, once again, to build a fair economy, lowering prices, regulating corporations and Big Tech and strengthening the social safety net.

Most Americans probably feel as if these reforms are impossible. That just makes generational change within the Democratic Party that much more of an imperative. It’s not just about optics or political positioning: Only new faces can make voters believe change is possible. Instead of being a collection of familiar personalities and interest groups, Democrats should seize the opportunity to begin building a cohesive movement.

That requires finding a moral language to tell a new story. After a decade of Trumpism, our society has gotten meaner, uglier and more obsessed with screens, consumption and conflict. Lying and cruelty have been rewarded. In the process, we’ve lost track of what gives us a sense of meaning and belonging. Has that made us happier?

Talking points will not fill that void. Democrats must ground their arguments in the language of values that have gone missing: fairness, dignity and community. That kind of message has already propelled younger politicians as different as Mr. Mamdani and James Talarico from obscurity to prominence in just over a year. I believe most Americans understand that we can have a secure border without ICE ripping our neighbors out of their homes and that we can address injustice without constantly shaming people.

A Democratic Party that remakes itself into that kind of vehicle for change can unburden itself of the careful messaging, identity politics, internal squabbling and establishment sheen of the past decade. With Mr. Trump receding into the past, Democrats have an opportunity to be much bigger than the party that struggled in his shadow — but only if they are willing to let the party become a vehicle to take back power for people who feel they have none.

Roosevelt accepted that first Democratic nomination for president in a similarly untethered time and made the future feel like something that could be shaped, declaring that he would “restore America to its own people.” Only by making itself a movement to do just that can the Democratic Party convince Americans that the forces shaping their lives are not beyond their control. After all, this is a democracy.

Ben Rhodes, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author, most recently, of “All We Say.”

Source images by Carol Yepes and GrayGooseGosling/Getty Images.

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