We need to make people feel American again. This is about uniting and inspiring, because elections are decided by emotional connection. Whoever is the champion of American values wins by default. This American vision begins with the one thing that can unite and inspire all of us: the core values in the Democratic Creed.

We are facing an assault on basic American values, the very idea of democracy itself. We have to win. We have to win big in 2026, big enough to overcome gerrymandering and every dirty trick in the book. If we don’t do that, if we don’t beat them at their own game, the real nightmare will begin.

We have twenty months to build a nationwide coalition big enough to pull it off. That means we have to create an emotional message that appeals to everyone, from the most Progressive Democratic activist, through unaffiliated and disaffected voters, right down to fed-up Republicans. They all have to buy in. We all have to.

That means a central message, an emotional message that unifies. We have to emphasizes the things we have in common, the ideals of our American heritage .. the very things MAGA is set upon destroying. That means that whatever else we do .. the resistance that is so necessary, the campaigning to come, even just venting .. this central emotional message has to be embedded in it. The emotional foundation is what holds things together, what makes the rest not only effective, but contagious.

The Republican machine put Trump in the White House by endlessly repeating lies and innuendoes. We have to flip the script. We have to begin repeating basic American truths endlessly, the same truths that underly every social and economic issue we have ever stood behind. These same basic truths touch most Americans, the very people we need to win over. Policies and political positions don’t, but underlying truths do. These truths and symbols are the emotional bridge that brings everybody on board. We need to seize on these emotional truths and the icons that represent them, and make them our own. We need to set these things deep in the American psyche as our identity: champions of democracy.

Of course he was. He is. If Lincoln were alive today, he would not only be a Democratic leader and visionary, he would probably be the President of the United States. His vision of America  stands for ordinary folks over billionaires, democracy over tyranny, justice over hatred. Indeed, Lincoln was FDR before there was an FDR.

“… that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”

Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863,

Lincoln was a Democrat because he believed in Freedom for all. There can be no doubt he did. And so do we, each and every Democrat in America.

Lincoln was a Democrat because he believed in Justice for all. It was his guiding principle, and it is ours .. in words, and in deeds. The modern Democratic Party has fought for Justice for everyday Americans ever since our founding in the midst of the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism, in 1932.

People crave purpose. We all do, meaning, a visceral sense that life is not chaos.

As Democrats, we have lost our sense of purpose. It’s that simple. Over decades of complacency,  that basic sense of purpose that led us through the Great Depression and the Civil Rights movement, that stood up for equal pay and gay marriage and everything else, has fallen away in disrepair.

But that sense of purpose is still there. Every single Democrat in this country feels it. It’s there, right in front of us, waiting to be picked up. And that sense of purpose comes down to one single thing: creating a just society .. for everyone, from the brownest American in the biggest city, down to the very whitest person in the reddest corner of America. That concept, the opening words of the Declaration of Independence that have inspired us for 250 years, is the way forward. It’s our purpose put in five simple words: all people are created equal. And those words are just as true and just as powerful as when they were written down 250 years ago.