Waiting for the Democrats’ next big star | Opinion

The Democratic Party has been in a downward spiral of humiliation and self-defeat since November, and its current leaders seem determined to make it worse.

Doubling down on socialism, voting in favor of men in women’s sports and electing progressive activists to head the Democratic National Committee are not signs of a party that has learned its lesson.

So can anyone save the Democrats? The answer is yes, but not anyone we’ve heard of yet.

History shows that when a party is lost in the desert, it takes a leader from the outside to guide them back to power. That’s the lesson of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. So where will the next Democratic savior come from?

Not from the audience of Democrats at Donald Trump’s address to Congress. Their petty displays of disapproval — heckling the president, holding tiny signs, scowling with their arms crossed — belittled themselves, not Trump. It was so bad that Republicans sent the images far and wide. You know you’re in trouble when the other party helps get your message out.

The savior also won’t come from the ideological epicenter of the party. Many Democrats today are pinning their hopes on Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, even though surveys (not to mention elections) consistently show that Americans prefer capitalism to socialism by a wide margin.

Pushing socialism in America is like playing soccer on a football field. It doesn’t matter how great Bernie Sanders is at soccer if he’s playing the wrong sport.

The Democratic savior also won’t come from a blue state like California or New York, or a blue city. So blue are these areas that there is no need to persuade voters or challenge party assumptions.

So where will the Democratic savior come from? From a state where Democrats must prove themselves in battle, likely a red state or at least a purple one. This is where political Darwinism takes its course — where Democrats evolve to endure and only the fittest survive.

History backs this up. When Republicans were out of power in the ‘70s, Ronald Reagan emerged out of blue California. When Democrats were decimated during the Ronald Reagan years, Bill Clinton arose out of red Arkansas. These leaders knew how to win voters outside their parties and also how to fight battles inside their parties.

Democrats need both today. When Democrats today talk of “speaking truth to power,” they are referring to President Donald Trump. But the power most in need of straight talk is the progressive flank of their own party. The only way to make them successful again is for a leader to first make them uncomfortable. It will have to be someone of tremendous courage who has proven their message can win.

It is hard to imagine now what this leader will look or sound like because their rise will not fit the familiar trajectory. They will not come through the pipeline of elite universities, liberal nonprofits or Beltway think tanks. They will not be a cable news fixture or a social media darling — at least not at first.

They will be someone who builds their base in church halls, school board meetings and local chambers of commerce. They will embrace smarter capitalism, safer streets and patriotism. They will talk about kitchen-table issues, not in the focus-grouped way that so many Democrats have tried but from personal experience — maybe from their time on the line at a factory or as an aspiring entrepreneur.

At first, their success will be chalked up to a fluke or a demographic shift. Only in hindsight will it become clear that they cracked the code to Democratic renewal.

For now, Democrats can take heart that no party remains lost forever. But they must also understand that the pendulum does not swing back automatically. It happens when a leader challenges prevailing wisdom and proves, in the unlikeliest of places, that their message can build a movement.

This Democratic savior will come — and not a moment too soon.

Philip Levine, a cruise industry entrepreneur, is a former two-term mayor of Miami Beach and a one-time Democratic candidate for governor of Florida.