Across the country, Democrats remain deep in despair, accompanied by more than a bit of lingering disbelief that they lost to Donald Trump a second time.

This is all compounded by the powerlessness of seeing the Senate and House also run by Republicans, mostly Trump apparatchiks, to go along with a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees who seem in a mighty deferential mood.

It is a sad and worrisome time in blue America.

To the extent they regarded Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 as an electoral college fluke, no similar rationalization can apply to 2024. That most recent election was a thorough defeat, plain and simple.

While the current distress is understandable, it behooves Democrats to pair that with a good deal more introspection. To the extent Democrats have learned any lessons at all over the past ten months, they are mostly the wrong ones.

A single column is hardly sufficient for a complete autopsy. But let’s try.

The Democratic Party has become largely a coastal enterprise with but a smattering of inland enclaves, including Colorado. It is a wraparound coalition of the well-off and the inner-city dispossessed, but with a void in between. Much of middle America has written the party off as elitist, condescending and out of touch with broadly held values.

On issue after issue, from police funding to racial set-asides to bathrooms and athletic rosters, Democrats chose to take the 20 percent side of 80-20 issues. That is always a prescription for defeat.

Much has been made of the outsized influence of “the groups,” D.C.-based, left-leaning advocacy organizations staffed mainly by young true-believers freshly marinated in the uncompromising progressivism of college and university campuses. Such types held sway in the Biden White House. Until Democratic office-holders learn to put such out-of-the-mainstream activists in their place, more setbacks lie ahead.

In whatever order you pick, three issues led to the party’s 2024 debacle. Those being runaway inflation due at least in part to government overstimulation, uncontrolled immigration and the whole mix of righteousness that fell under the umbrella of “woke.”

Inflation is almost always a political killer. On other matters, as painful as it is for Democrats to acknowledge, Trump was actually closer to the center point of public opinion than what has become of Democratic orthodoxy.

To complicate their anguish, Democrats also face several structural challenges. Educational attainment has become the biggest determinant of party affiliation. Those with college degrees tend to be Democrats; those without vote Republican more often than not. Guess what: Only 38 percent of the country has such a diploma. Once again, Democrats are on the short end of the equation.

Democratic voter registration has been declining relative to Republicans and unaffiliateds since 2020. Moreover, for countless years, higher voter turnout worked to the advantage of Democrats. That is no longer the case as turning out that marginally-engaged, low-propensity voters now favor the GOP.

Add to this the demographic fact that conservative households are producing far more babies than their progressive counterparts.

Movement between states benefits Republicans. Texas, Florida and such Sunbelt states are growing while New York, Illinois and other blue strongholds are shedding population. Colorado’s numbers are now flat while California is ever more dependent on immigrants to stay even.

As a result of some states growing while others decline, the electoral math will get even more challenging for Democrats. Trump won the 2024 electoral vote over Kamala Harris by 312 to 226. Applying the projected distribution of electors following the 2030 census, the tally would have been 321 to 217. Under such a map, it will not be enough even if Democrats win the so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Democrats can decry the Senate all they want. The institution is not going away anytime soon. The House may change hands next year and move back and forth as the political winds shift. But the Democrats’ deficit in the Senate looks locked in until they can regain competitiveness across the vast swath of middle America.

Further, Democrats should not ignore the hard reality that as goes the Senate, so goes the Supreme Court during these polarized times.

There are many conclusions to be drawn, but the dominant one is unmistakable. Unless and until Democrats can appeal in flyover states to middle and working-class Americans – many of them white, male and lacking college degrees – it will be a long slog with many more election night wakes than toasts.

The Democratic Party suffered through such a period in the 1980s, losing three straight presidential contests by decisive margins. Given the nature of Republican rule in the current moment, Democrats and the broader mass of voters cannot allow history to repeat.

Democrats may be driven by their utter contempt for Donald Trump, his henchmen and all they represent. But the harsh reality is that they lost to him and would likely do so again so long as the same singers are yodeling the same tune.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann