My Democratic vote has little effect on the outcome of state and federal elections where I come from. Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by nearly 20 points in Indiana, a margin comparable to Mississippi. But I nevertheless made the trip home to Indianapolis this fall to vote for Harris in person.

On Nov. 5 and throughout the 107-day campaign, I was so proud to call myself a Democrat. You didn’t have to imagine a future where our democracy is strong and our presence on the world stage is wanted and respected — it felt like it was already the case.

Perhaps it was this level of optimism that caused us to fumble the ball at the goal line. But I am not in the business of blaming myself and those who did their duty in November to vote for Harris. It can’t have been our fault.

There is very little that could convince me to vote for a Republican. The issues are fundamental, and my stances are more or less permanent. Yet today, I am slow to call myself a “Democrat” when the national party fails to support me and my worldview by, at the very least, putting its best foot forward to win elections.

Republicans look, for lack of a better term, crazy right now. Elon Musk holds Republican members of Congress and Trump’s cabinet at gunpoint each day in a political dynamic we have not seen before in modern history. With the help of select college students and engineers in their early 20s, he cuts funding for the United States’ most virtuous programs around the world and targets underpaid federal workers responsible for keeping the lights on.

In his first month in office, Trump floated grand plans to turn Gaza into a new “Riviera,” mused about taking over Greenland and Canada, and humiliated the Ukrainian president in an Oval Office ambush. If this is a new look he is trying for the United States, we certainly don’t wear it well.

But instead of calling it like it is, national Democrats have spent the months since Trump’s election illustrating their own ways of being out of touch. The results exposed Democrats for being dismissive of voters’ need for a lower cost of living, we know that. But today, and perhaps most detrimental to our electoral prospects, we no longer adhere to the politics of voters’ lived experiences.

Republicans can be ridiculous without the threat of ridicule because they make the alternative appear unrelatable. And they do so by using the current pace of progress against us. Under the guise of a commitment to merit, they dismantle “discriminatory” and “racist” DEI initiatives.

“Celebrating” women’s sports, they ban transgender athletes from competing in events to supposedly level the playing field between men and women. This particular cognitive dissonance happens on two fronts for Democrats — first with Republicans’ promotion of female athletes, and second with their claims of building a more equitable world.

Following suit, we drown ourselves in the boring and unrewarding defense of the convoluted flipside. Ending racism and uplifting women are core tenets of the liberal ethos. When we fight these executive orders on cable news and at the White House, we forget that voters consume the headlines — written by Republicans and the White House to make us look, well, crazy.

Attention is king, and keeping it is our purpose as a party. When we try to convince people that before lowering their prices, our responsibility is to feed the world’s hungry, make sure transgender athletes can play sports on whichever side makes them feel the most comfortable and bankroll boardroom DEI initiatives instead of putting money back in their pockets — that’s when you lose the person living paycheck to paycheck, whose best interest, objectively, is voting for a Democrat.

In a New York Times/Ipsos survey conducted at the beginning of the year, “Gay/Lesbian/Transgender policy” was tied with abortion as the most important perceived issues to the Democratic party, each with 31%. Following climate change and the state of democracy, “the economy/inflation” ranked fifth, with 17%. Opposingly, 55% of respondents listed immigration as a perceived top issue of the Republican party, followed by “the economy/inflation” and taxes.

Only 4% of Americans listed “Gay/Lesbian/Transgender policy” as one of their three top issues personally. The economy, healthcare and immigration topped that chart, garnering 47%, 30% and 26%, respectively.

Our defensive ideological positions could not be less savvy — if not for our apparent betrayal of public opinion, then for a negligence of our collective instincts as rank-and-file progressives.

A liberal’s job is to contextualize the human experience and to paint the bigger picture. But before we can paint it for our country, we must paint it for our coalition. Our most necessary conversations will be our hardest to have, and we must confront the fact that we will be having them with those who feel deeply affected by the news cycles we have little choice but to avoid.

The truth is we have lost sight of what matters to the average person. And if you look at the numbers, we seem to lack unity in even our perception as a party. A 55% majority of respondents across the political spectrum chose immigration as a top issue for Republicans. People can’t even agree on what Democrats stand for; our top spot was a tie.

Spending invaluable political capital and capacity for keeping the public’s attention on these issues are gambles I am unwilling to make. The more we concern ourselves with things that voters find inconsequential in their day-to-day and, yes, imaginative in their broader reality, the bigger risk we run of delegitimizing our better style of governance and becoming the party of “all talk.”

If we are to advance our causes — of inclusion, general welfare and the liberal world order — then we must compartmentalize our efforts. We do not abandon the fight when we put the average voter’s less pressing issues on the back burner for the sake of winning the next election. We can address those once we’ve played the long game and won.

Our societal dopamine addiction means the pace of progress will never be truly gratifying to us. But you can only hope to pick up the pace of progress by buying into its natural ebbs and flows and taking your wins where you can get them.

In a New York Times op-ed, Democratic veteran strategist James Carville called for a “tactical pause.” I would take this a step further. We have an opportunity to break with our Republican counterparts and take responsibility — we are doing something wrong here. But the good thing is, we have four long years to right this ship and build something truly enduring.

The way you pitch it is this: For the right of trans people to belong and a woman to choose, saving our planet and democracies at home and abroad — we have no choice but to set our priorities straight.

Aidan Klineman is a Medill sophomore. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.