The Democrats’ shellacking at the polls this week has triggered a feisty battle between the ideological wings of the party about what went wrong — and who bears the blame.

Some liberals say the party didn’t tack far enough to the left to animate the base. Many centrists say it tacked too far to the left and scared away moderate voters in key battleground states. And Democratic leaders are now faced with the difficulty of working to ease the tensions and ally the feuding factions in order to form a unified front against President-elect Trump as he prepares to enter the White House for his second term.

“It will be a big challenge,” said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), former chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

The debate is hardly new. Democrats have repeatedly clashed over the party’s strategy after tough election cycles, and the battle lines are the same now as then, pitting liberals vs. moderates.

But this year the stakes were higher.

Heading into the polls this week, Democrats had warned that Trump was an existential threat to the nation’s democratic foundations, and their fight to keep him from regaining power was was framed as nothing less than an effort to rescue the republic and the institutions that sustain it. Following Trump’s runaway victory over Vice President Harris on Tuesday, the internal dispute over the party’s strategy, message and direction has taken on a new level of urgency and intensity.

For some, the party’s woes revolve around mis-messaging on kitchen-table economic issues, like inflation, wages and the accelerating trend of wealth inequality. For others, the trouble stems from the explosive debate over the Israel-Hamas war. For still others, the problems relate to culture war battles, including that over transgender rights.

Whatever the issue, Tuesday’s election........

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