By Tim Reid
DENVER, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Fresh from a midterm election landslide, Democrats met in Denver this week united in wanting to deliver voters relief from high costs, but split over how to achieve that, what lessons to draw from their victory and how combative they should be toward President Donald Trump.
Despite the celebratory mood after the November 3 rout of Republicans, tensions between moderates and a restive progressive wing surfaced at the party's first major gathering since its victory,
along with anxiety that the party could squander the opportunity voters had handed it.
The gathering offered an early glimpse of the battle to define its future as prospective 2028 presidential candidates and senior leaders debated how to turn electoral success into a governing agenda while navigating long-standing ideological and generational divides.
The conference, hosted by Majority Democrats, a group that advocates for younger party leaders and against left-wing activism, offered a forum for the jockeying now underway as Democrats debate what lessons to draw from their midterm win and begin the search for a 2028 White House standard-bearer.
Speakers disagreed over whether to embrace a bolder progressive agenda or tack toward the center, exposing competing approaches to lowering food, healthcare and housing costs, while working alongside Trump, who retains veto power for two more years.
California Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive and potential presidential candidate, urged Democrats to stop chasing the political center and embrace a bolder agenda, including universal healthcare, a wealth tax, a $25 federal minimum wage, deep Pentagon cuts and abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
By contrast, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a moderate and another potential 2028 contender, argued the party should move beyond ideological litmus tests, saying voters "don't give a damn" about such debates and care instead about whether Democrats can deliver results.
The breadth of the Democratic victories has allowed moderates and progressives to argue that voters have endorsed their vision for the party's future.
"It's to be expected that there will be a big debate because the Democratic victory was so broad it swept in centrists, southern Democrats and more progressive and left-wing Democrats," Democratic strategist Elaine Kamarck told Reuters.
Trump retains significant executive authority to block much of the Democrats' agenda, complicating the party's efforts to lower costs, the central issue voters gave Democrats control of Congress to fix.
Democrats are projected to hold at least 255 seats to Republicans' 169 in the US House, with 12 contests still undecided. In the Senate, the breakdown will be at least 55-44, with Democrats possibly gaining one more seat in Alaska when vote-counting is completed.
WORK WITH TRUMP OR FIGHT HIM?
One of the most striking debates in Denver centered on how to govern with Trump still in the White House.
James Talarico, the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Texas since 1988, urged Democrats to work with Trump.
"We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any presidency in American history," Talarico said, drawing tepid applause. "We're tired of being pitted against each other."
He found an ally in Iowa Governor-elect Rob Sand, who said he encouraged Democrats at campaign events to applaud Republicans and that partisan warfare will not deliver results.
"The only way we're going to fix that is by fixing it together," Sand said.
Minutes later, US Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Eric Holder, who was attorney general in the Obama administration, largely rejected accommodation with Trump.
Raskin, expected to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in January and oversee investigations of Trump next year, said the Republican Party had become an authoritarian cult of personality.
"We're going to reassert all of the powers of Congress that have been surrendered and abdicated by the MAGA Congress to King Trump," Raskin said. "We're going to enforce the Constitution against him."
Holder warned Democrats against pursuing bipartisanship.
"If we retreat into caution, if we operate out of fear, if we take refuge in the niceties of the old Washington and seek approval from those who have been and are actively dismantling our institutions, we will fail."
There has been a long-simmering debate inside the party over whether to move further left or pursue a more centrist agenda, and this election has only intensified those tensions.
COMPETING VISIONS FOR GOVERNING
Almost everyone who spoke at the conference agreed the party's top priority was lowering costs and improving life for working families.
It was a theme echoed by New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries, set to become US House Speaker, and several prospective 2028 presidential candidates, including Shapiro, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Khanna.
But splits emerged over how to achieve that.
Jeffries, a moderate, was heckled by a group of protesters, who accused him of being too timid to deliver change and called for a House leader who embraced a more populist progressive agenda.
Khanna and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, another progressive who this week challenged more centrist Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for the party's top leadership job in the Senate, called for populist, government-funded economic solutions.
DON'T BLOW IT
There was a collective anxiety among the speakers that the party might squander one of the biggest victories it has achieved in a generation.
Many speakers described the win not as an enduring mandate, but rather a temporary opportunity voters had given them to fix the country's problems.
Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, another potential presidential contender, noted that many Hispanic voters who voted for Trump in 2024 backed Democrats this month.
"It was not, though, a love letter to the Democratic Party," Gallego said. "It is a short-term loan that we need to keep paying, or we will lose it."
(Reporting by Tim Reid, editing by Ross Colvin and Nick Zieminski)
