For the last three election cycles, the main project of the Democratic Party has been to keep Donald Trump out of office. Advancing policy to improve the lives of working people has been, at best, an afterthought and, at worst, a distraction. Every other aspect of politics has been deprioritized to favor this single goal, with “vote blue no matter who” emerging as the rallying cry.

But despite the elevation of beating Trump over important policy areas like health care, education, housing, worker protections, and so on, the strategy still failed — twice. Not only are working people now set to face the immense challenges of a second Trump term without any palpable progress that might have been achieved during the Joe Biden years, but the Democrats have also dramatically harmed their reputation and lost scores of working-class voters for nothing in the process.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders, running on a slate of policies designed to uplift the working class, faced unique opposition from within his own party and was presented as an unacceptable political risk. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment, rather than learn from the surprising success of the Sanders campaign, blamed it for losing Clinton the general election.