Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) laid out a vision for the Democratic Party’s path out of the political wilderness at a Jewish Democratic Council of America conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, outlining what they see as the party’s weaknesses and missteps, and the ways that Democrats can most effectively stake out and message positions in the second Trump era.

Both men are viewed as aspiring leaders of the Democratic Party: Schatz is making a bid for the No. 2 slot in the Senate Democratic Caucus and is widely believed to have ambitions to become Democratic leader, and Murphy, also a member of Democratic leadership, has long been seen as having presidential or Senate leadership aspirations.

If Democrats want to start moving Republican states back into contention, Murphy argued, they will need to have “some really hard, difficult conversations.”

“And an example of that is a conversation as to whether we want to become a big-tent party again,” Murphy said, “or whether we want to do what we’ve been doing, which is to say, ‘If you don’t agree with us on these sorts of litmus test issues, whether that be choice or guns or climate or gay rights, then we’re not interested in you.’”

He said that the “tentpole” issues for the party should be “populist, progressive economics” and support for democracy, “but after that, we’re up for the conversation. That’s a really hard thing for us to do, but if we really want to expand the map, I don’t have a lot of other great ideas.”

Schatz said that it’s not enough for Democrats to run up the vote in major cities in the hopes that will outweigh continual losses in rural areas. That strategy, he said, may help Democrats win in midterm cycles but sets them up for failure in presidential years.

“In all instances, there are opportunities for us to pick up votes, among veterans, among rural people, among the elderly who depend on Social Security, and so there are states and counties and congressional districts where opportunities abound, whether that materializes in one or two or four election cycles,” Schatz said.

Schatz argued that the core problem for Democrats is that “people agree with us, but they don’t like us,” an issue that he said can’t be resolved through policy or sloganeering. He said that Democrats also need a “vigorous” nominee and standard-bearer who can highlight the party’s achievements and accomplishments and to whom people feel they can relate culturally.

But at the same time, he said that Democrats don’t need to wait to push back on the Trump administration until they have settled on a clear leader for the party — he argued that many will emerge.

Democratic messaging and tactics, he continued, need to be more “authentic.” “Part of the reason people are irritated with Democrats is there’s a sense that we’re walking around algorithmically calculating wherever we are and trying to be relatable. And I think we should just be ourselves.”

As Democrats look for opportunities to push back on the Trump administration in high-profile ways — such as Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) record 25-hour Senate floor speech — Murphy said that such actions must be “organic.”

He added that Democrats need to be more “willing to make mistakes” and exist in a less scripted fashion on social media. And he argued that they need to join and be active on TikTok, where he said conservatives are currently dominating the political conversation.

And, he said, Democrats need to focus on taking action, rather than pontificating about what President Donald Trump or Democrats are or should be doing.

Schatz slammed the Democratic consultant class, saying, “there’s something not working in the operative ecosystem,” which he said seems to reward operatives with higher opportunities even if they lose.

He said that the Harris campaign had done its best under difficult circumstances but argued that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee had been dominated by a “social, political, professional climbing vibe, as opposed to a mission-driven” atmosphere that should acknowledge that campaigning is “going to be hard and it’s going to be miserable, and you’re going to have a cheeseburger, and you’re going to sleep on a couch, and you may or may not get unionized, and you may or may not get paid, and you’ll get a bonus if you win, but the main bonus is you did an important thing.”

Murphy agreed, saying that “the consultant class in the Democratic Party is not working for us” and is instead plagued by “an incestuousness in which everybody sort of gets taken care of regardless of performance,” icing out new ideas.

Murphy said he expects that the upcoming reconciliation bill will be easier to message on than some of the other legislation and issues that Trump has pushed through in his first 100 days in office, if Democrats focus intently on anticipated cutbacks to Medicaid and other healthcare funding.

Schatz agreed, saying that House and Senate Democrats — who ultimately sparred over strategy on government funding earlier this year — should be in complete alignment “from [John] Fetterman to [Bernie] Sanders” in opposition to the reconciliation bill.

“There are a lot of difficult things to message. Abrego Garcia is ticklish, there’s lots of challenging stuff for us to talk about and we’ve got to navigate that stuff,” Schatz said, referring to the El Salvadorian native who illegally entered the U.S. as a teenager and was arrested by immigration agents and sent to a prison in the Central American country over alleged gang ties. “This [reconciliation] stuff is not very hard and not very complicated. I think the only danger we have is our tendency to get in the weeds.”

Schatz honed in on the economy as a key pressure point Democrats can exploit, given the current and expected economic difficulties generated by Trump’s tariff policy.

“If we can’t message on the economy, we should close up shop. I’m serious. We have a very strong case to be made that this man is the first president, maybe ever, who’s destroyed the American economy on purpose,” he argued.

On the economy, Murphy said that Democrats should focus less on assistance programs and more on policies that “make work pay,” from increasing the minimum wage and collective bargaining rights to antitrust policy.

Murphy said he had few quibbles with how former Vice President Kamala Harris had run her campaign, but said that the results showed Democrats were not viewed as “credible messengers on fighting corruption or on preserving democracy because this version of democracy has not been working for people very well.” He said the party had also failed to highlight anti-corruption issues.