Winning Is Not Building

"Ten years on this fucking beach. Let's go home."
— Odysseus, leaving Troy
"What if… he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night?"
— Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, to Penelope

The Odyssey as interpreted by Christopher Nolan, 2026

President Trump was first elected ten years ago. Democrats have felt the plight of Odysseus – languishing on the beach for a decade; desperate for leaders who can articulate the costs of inequality and corruption without falling victim to a reactive but limiting populist rage.  

As Democrats are likely positioned to regain some federal power this Fall, how do we, as a nation, move from simply witnessing yet another pendulum-swing election to building a nation where we can govern again, deliver for people again, where leadership helps America grow from diagnosis to cure? I am not asking as a party strategist – I am asking as a citizen who will have to live through the choices that get made this cycle.

Odysseus' journey began with a victory, but it was the rage and retribution of the Greeks – the sack of Troy – that cost him the way home.  If Democrats run on vengeance and then claim a mandate for retribution, if they then pour ten years of rage back into the halls of power – they will lose any moral authority and any potential to rebuild the trust our institutions need to re-earn. Worse, they will confirm American’s most cynical suspicions about politics: they are all about other people's power and point scoring, and they have nothing to do with taking care of people or delivering on promises that matter in people's everyday lives. To see vengeance as justice, and retribution as accountability, could cost this country a decade of wandering that we cannot afford. We can't afford to wait for true leadership in our nation’s highest offices.

Feeling and mirroring people's pain, articulating the roaring inequality of American life with clarity and conviction, is not a window to a better future. It is how we become clear and convicted about the present we need to fix: It is not a plan to fix it. And it is not how we fix it. People want leadership to create conditions for them to build thriving lives and remove obstacles that impede them – not just point to who to blame for their challenges. Leadership is about moving from clear articulation of the present as felt by people (diagnosis) toward a better and different and specific future (cure) – toward effort on the work – not toward blame and not more diagnosis. 

One of the many ongoing misinterpretations of how Democrats and the anti-MAGA majority of the country are evolving and what victories like El-Sayed’s in the Michigan signify about November, is that we are witnessing a generational ideological drift. El-Sayed et al, rising of DSA influence, and the emergence of increasingly viable independent candidates who fail to conform to party orthodoxies is first and foremost about people responding to energy and authenticity, not policy. These emerging candidates are cultivating a deep belief that they are ready to try to solve the problems Americans feel are the biggest impediments to their own thriving.

Before stepping into civic leadership, El-Sayed was an epidemiologist rebuilding Detroit public health systems. Cure demands we accept the responsibility of power and shape a direction beyond response – beyond counterbalance – beyond the reactivity that shapes the actual work of doing for each other what we cannot do alone. Cure demands that we shift our posture from fight to build.

The way the Democrats avoid ten years of wandering is to avoid the cause of Odysseus' journey: he got lost because of how he won. Yes, work must be done to ensure we win – we cannot and should not take victory for granted. And yes, winning matters because leadership matters – the whole world is feeling that every day. But we need to be attentive to how we win and how we lead. The way to prevent getting lost is to refuse to allow rage, however justified, shape how to win and how to use power.

Service over retribution – justice over vengeance. 

The path forward is the deep commitment to making each other's lives better by doing together what we can't do alone - and to collectively removing barriers and impediments that allow people to thrive. And we can begin to not only demand but expect more from leaders if we make the work of building our daily work, too. If we begin that work now, the post-election shift from fight to build won’t feel so foreign. If we develop builder's habits now, if we shape our engagement with a focus on service, if we run campaigns on cure not diagnosis, our default posture will be to serve first. And leaders seeking to meet us where we are (at best) or just tell us what they think we want to hear (more commonly) will have to shift their orientation toward service, too. At this moment we are the calvary – no one else is coming to fix what is ailing our civic life. So we do that by doing the work, by being of service – volunteer, show up for a local planning meeting, seek out places to be in community with difference – and not just protesting, not just calling out others, but calling ourselves in to the work of building better stronger communities. Serve others full stop.