By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
August 31, 2026
Democrats here in Indiana and across the nation face a test this November.
That test is cognitive in nature. It will be administered to determine whether they can recognize reality.
Sadly, it’s a test Democrats often have failed in the past—most recently in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
That year, they read the massive rejection of President Donald Trump’s constant instability, heedless cruelty and bottomless incompetence at the ballot box as a mandate for them to pursue every item on progressives’ public policy wish list.
It was as if they thought the voters had brought Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal back for an encore. Happy days are here again and all that.
They misread the moment in a big way.
It was true that Americans had had enough of Trump and his fellow Republicans at that point, but their rejection of his disastrous presidency did not mean they were in love with the Democrats’ agenda.
Far from it.
Poll after poll indicated deep anxiety about the directions some of the most visible Democrats wanted to take the country.
Americans may have been upset by the too-regular instances of police brutality, but that didn’t mean they wanted to abolish police departments.
They may have been worried by the crushing student-loan debt under which too, too many American college graduates staggered, but they also didn’t want to reward cavalier irresponsibility or create a system that seemed to punish blue-collar workers who had decided they couldn’t afford higher education.
Most Americans may have desired to fully integrate LGBTQ citizens into the ranks and blessings of society, but not at the cost of jeopardizing the gains made by women over decades.
In short, what most non-MAGA Americans wanted was reform, not revolution.
Even more than that, they wanted either to build or to return to an America in which we could stop screaming at each other and live in peace with our neighbors, fellow citizens and family members.
Regardless of our political differences.
There’s a reason that former President Barack Obama remains not just the most popular Democrat but the most popular political leader in this country.
The former president earned his nickname “No Drama Obama” honestly. His entire approach to public debate was to project a come-let-us-reason-together demeanor that reassured people with its calm steadiness. One felt that his responses to events would be disciplined, not impulsive or reckless.
Most of all, Obama realized that his office afforded him not the power to dictate but the opportunity to persuade. The caution that many Democrats derided while he was president enabled him to achieve more lasting triumphs.
One reason, after more than 15 years of unremitting opposition to the Affordable Care Act, Republicans still tie themselves in knots trying to get Americans to hate “Obamacare” is that he took the time to make a case for it.
Doubtless, Obama would have preferred a single-payer system.
But he realized there weren’t sufficient votes for that, so he took what he could get. Even if he couldn’t get everyone adequate medical coverage, he could get more Americans—millions more—such coverage.
So, he decided not to make perfection the enemy of progress.
This is not a new approach.
FDR himself was not a radical. A son of privilege with a Harvard education, he saw himself not as a revolutionary but as a symbol of a sane center holding the country together while leftist demagogues such as Huey Long and unyielding reactionaries such as Father Coughlin tried to tear it apart.
FDR knew the greatest weapon he had at his disposal was what his cousin Theodore Roosevelt called the White House’s “bully pulpit.”
Franklin Roosevelt’s famed fireside chats weren’t diversions. They were essential to his leadership, proof that he could do something that no other leader in the country at the time could do.
Persuade people who disagreed with him or just remained unconvinced that his approach made sense or at least was worth a try.
He knew that his runaway victory in 1932 was less a triumph for his party than it was a rejection of Herbert Hoover and Republicans.
FDR knew he was given a chance to convince Americans dubious about self-government in general and Democrats in particular that he could make our very human political system work to and for their benefit.
In other words, he recognized reality.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
