President-elect Joe Biden winning the White House office was not the victory we needed. Don’t get me wrong, I know this election was incredibly historic. 

Five states flipped from red in the 2016 election to blue in the 2020 election. Kamala Harris is going to be the first Black, first South Asian and first female vice president. Biden garnered over 78.7 million votes, more than any elected president ever, and that number continues to rise as more ballots are counted. Jill Biden will be the first first lady with a doctorate degree and continue a paying job while living in the White House.

Exit polls showed a good amount of independents and moderates were leaning blue this year. Democrats fortified the blue wall; but many people, myself included, are disheartened as they celebrate.

Though Biden won the electoral votes to become the next president of the United States, this race was heartbreaking. This should have been an easy blue win, not a finger-biting, too-close-to-call, weeklong event.

Trump received over 73.1 million votes – around 10 million more than he got in 2016. In Oklahoma, every single county voted red, and Republicans flipped at least six House of Representatives seats once held by Democrats. This was not a marvelous victory; believing it to be such is a no more than a wistful illusion.

The Pew Research Center showed that Trump’s COVID-19 response took a hit on his approval rating – by August it was at a low 38%. So, racial, sexual, collusion and xenophobic scandals aside, most Americans were disappointed in this administration’s response to the pandemic and wanted a major change. 

Anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project raised over $39 million between July and September of this year to promote the blue agenda. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) had John Kasich, former Republican governor of Ohio, and Cindy McCain, widow to former 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, implore people to choose country over party and vote for Biden. However, Trump still won the white vote. Considering how many people – conservatives and liberals alike – were unhappy with Trump, why didn’t they vote blue?

As happy as I am with our general election win, if Democrats hope to win Georgia’s senate seats in January, turn apolitical voters or even just retain their base, they need a drastic change – and soon.

People are sick of the same rhetoric and uninspiring policies the DNC has been promoting. Democrats need to start not only pushing for their ideas, like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, in a more aggressive manner, but also work to reframe them. Caring for the environment and keeping the cost of healthcare down are not controversial ideas. No one in their right mind wants people suffering from poverty to die because they can’t afford a doctor, and most people don’t see a clean planet as an issue. 

We want change. We want policies that actually help people, not just witness the DNC utilize identity politics to get a vote, then continue to silence a demographic. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, can wear a kente scarf every day for the rest of her life, but who does that help? If she and other moderate Democrats don’t start working on legislation that promotes institutional reform to actually help BIPOC and other minorities, it’s only going to get harder to secure votes.

There must be reform on legislation that advocates for reallocating funds from the $934 billion that will go into the military from October 2020 through September 2021 into education, mental health services or building rehabilitation centers instead of more prisons.

Other than reenergizing their base with a truly progressive platform, the Democratic Party  needs to get politicians who can galvanize a movement. People want to vote for a candidate who motivates them, who inspires them, who fills them with hope – not just a candidate to settle for because of how much they detest the opposite political party.

I’m proud we won, and I did celebrate Trump’s defeat. But this is by no means the end to activism. If anything, this close call should wake up Democrats to rework their platform, reframe their policies and reinvigorate their case.