Their primary focus should be retaining voters, by broadening the range of opinions which are acceptable within the party.

They are a decade down a purity spiral, which has resulted in the range of acceptable opinions within the party shrinking considerably, and the shunning of many individuals unnecessarily, who either stop voting altogether or find company on the right.

I gave the example above of how the republican party is able to accomodate a significant number of both pro-life and pro-choice members. The Democrats will similarly need to learn to expand their umbrella as well. Perhaps not with abortion rights, but maybe by shedding some of their zero-sum economic thinking, or race-centric thinking.

If they can fix this, they will grow, because their biggest source of new members is young adults becoming eligible to vote, not people they pull away from the right. The Democrats just need to stop churning so many people away.

The Bush era has been the worst disaster for the right wing this century in both the US and potentially globally. He was a warmonger, an economic vandal and an unprincipled man at the helm of a state that flubbed any chance at setting up for meaningful long term success in favour of the patriot act and slaughtering goat herders in the middle east. Under his eye the Republicans exiled the right from cultural relevance for around a decade. The party around him were cut from the same cloth.

There is a reason the modern Republican party went with Trump rather than another person who looked like Bush. The entire Trump story has been the Republicans - without too much recrimination - attempting to purge the remains of the Bush era because they were a gross embarrassment whos legacy has been little short of a disaster. If the US Democrats had undertaken the same purge instead of embracing the leadership of the same era then they wouldn't have tried to run Biden then Kamala.