Former Millennial of the Year Michael Wear writes:

President Trump has been a profoundly antisocial force in our political life. He views the presidency not as a means by which to elevate and ennoble his fellow Americans, but as a way to humiliate his critics and reward cronies. This has been clear for a long time, and I do not expect him to change. It is Democrats who must change. Founded in the early republic as the party of workers and farmers, Democrats must decide who they will be, and what they will be for, beyond opposing Trump.

What America needs today is a Democratic Party with a prosocial vision advanced through prosocial means: to defend human beings as fundamentally social, cooperative, and mutually dependent, both in the way they campaign and in the policies they promote.

Unfortunately, too many Democrats look at Trump and conclude they can use his tools to advance their ends….

Trump has pitted family members and communities against one another, and it’s been heartbreaking and destructive. Rather than strike a contrast with Trump, Democrats routinely suggest that voting against them equates to a personal betrayal of one’s family, gender, and race….

It is ludicrous and self-defeating that a leading slogan for the 2024 Democratic ticket was “mind your own damn business.” For some reason, Tim Walz referred to it as “the Golden Rule,” though, of course, that is emphatically not the Golden Rule in Minnesota or anywhere else….

Progressives who dismiss critiques of Democrats as “false equivalencies” miss the point. It is no coincidence that Trump employs vulgarity, derision, anger, and fear; these are the social and emotional conditions that justify his antisocial politics….

In order to regain Americans’ trust and deserve to govern, Democrats must become a prosocial party that filters all policies, tactics, and communications through a prosocial filter. Put simply, a prosocial filter means that what Democrats support and oppose must meet the test of improving our common life together, rather than just representing a hodgepodge of policies that please certain advocacy groups and the interests they claim to represent….

Democrats generally don’t actively support shoplifting or fare evasion, to be sure. But why is it that when you read criticisms of these behaviors, they are coded as conservative concerns? Rather than offer isolated, defensive pleas that they, too, oppose crime, and a reactionary plan to combat price-gouging as a talking point on inflation, Democrats ought to oppose crime and corruption because injustice makes life miserable, communities distrustful, and robust economic and community well-being unattainable….

They should take New York Rep. Paul Tonko’s lead in seeking to rein in online sports gambling, a societal catastrophe everyone sees coming but acts helpless to prevent. Democrats should revisit their support for the legalization and public proliferation of marijuana in light of new scientific evidence of its harms; even if they do not go so far, their support for the legalization of marijuana must include a social analysis and policy attentiveness to the consequences of legalization….

They can look to Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s service agenda; Senator Chris Murphy’s incisive work to address our nation’s loneliness epidemic and rebuild social capital; Senator Andy Kim’s focus on humble service, rather than self-aggrandizing condemnation or antipathy, following Jan. 6. It’s also worth revisiting Pete Buttigieg’s values-based “Rules for the Road” for his 2020 presidential campaign….

We have become meaner, lonelier, and less considerate as a nation, often in the name of politics. Political ideology is increasingly used to justify and excuse interpersonal cruelty. It doesn’t take a prophet to foresee that in a few years, voters will have had their fill of conflict and cruelty. They will want community again, and they deserve a party that will help them build, nurture, and protect it.