As Democrats face the reality of President Trump’s second term, they share a fundamental belief: This moment calls for an inspirational message from their party.
They just cannot decide what, exactly, that should be.
In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.
And in a first step toward elevating new leaders, an election this weekend for chair of the Democratic National Committee, the party chose a candidate, Ken Martin of Minnesota, who said he planned to conduct a post-election review largely focused on tactics and messaging. Mr. Martin said he had not determined the parameters of the review, other than that he was not interested in discussing whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should have sought re-election.
More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party that is struggling to define what it stands for, what issues to prioritize and how to confront a Trump administration that is carrying out a right-wing agenda with head-spinning speed. Governors, members of the Senate and the House, state attorneys general, grass-roots leaders and D.N.C. members offered a wide range of views about the direction of their party.
Their concerns are spilling out into public, as the country’s most powerful and prominent Democratic politicians air sharp disagreements over how aggressively they should oppose Mr. Trump.
“We’re not going to go after every single issue,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said in an interview. “We are picking the most important fights and lying down on the train tracks on those fights.”
