By Sudarshan Pyakurel

Not long ago, I received an email from Barack Obama. Yes, the President Obama. For a brief second, it felt oddly personal: “Sudarshan, I’m excited to share that later this summer, I’ll get to meet a supporter like you and thank you personally for the work you’re doing.” For a fleeting moment, I imagined he knew me, perhaps my years of advocacy, my voting record, my community work and grassroot organizing. But of course, I knew better. It was a mass email, my name pulled from a campaign database after years of small donations. Still, it made me pause and ask: Why now? Why the personal thank you?

As a naturalized citizen and lifelong advocate of immigrant and refugee rights, I’ve consistently voted Democrat since 2016. I’ve donated to campaigns, knocked on doors, organized grassroots events, social media and rallied others. Why? Because I believed in the promise of progressive policies. But something fundamental has shifted. My loyalty to the party has been slowly eroded, not by a single event, but by years of strategic missteps, political gamesmanship, and emotional exhaustion.

I’m not a political pundit. I’m just a citizen who cares deeply about the impact of policy and the importance of the democratic process. And for the past six months, I’ve been wrestling with one haunting question: How did we end up here again with Donald Trump returning to the White House in 2024?

We knew exactly who Trump was. His first term was not just chaotic, it was a systematic dismantling of civil rights, public health, environmental protections, and global trust in American leadership. We saw it all: xenophobic immigration policies, corporate tax cuts, climate denialism, and ultimately, the violent culmination of January 6th. The signs were clear. Yet, here we are again. Why?

In my view, we didn’t lose in 2016 or 2024 because of voter apathy or third-party spoilers. We lost because the Democratic Party failed us, not once but twice.

In 2016, as a new citizen eager to participate in my first U.S. election, I was already uneasy. During the Democratic primaries, it was evident that Hillary Clinton was favored by the party establishment over Bernie Sanders. The machinery was in full swing to make history with the first female president. Many of us, especially young and new voters, idealistic progressives felt sidelined. Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, and we were told to blame the system. Some even clung to hope that Trump, as an outsider, might disrupt Washington in a good way. We were wrong.

Fast forward to 2020. Democrats rallied behind Joe Biden, a centrist compromise candidate. And we won, barely. With due respect to age, but Biden was an old and tired man. Even then, cracks were showing, but we were told to ignore them. The pandemic, the racial reckoning after George Floyd, and the economic fallout demanded bold leadership. What we got instead were half-measures, obstruction, and bureaucratic fatigue. By 2024, we were exhausted, politically fragmented, and unsure if the party had learned anything.

Then came the 2024 Democratic primaries, or rather, what was left of them. With internal power struggles between Biden loyalists and the Nancy Pelosi camp, Kamala Harris was put forward not as a consensus choice, but as a product of elite maneuvering. Harris wasn’t broadly embraced by progressives, centrists, or independents. She wasn’t given the grassroots runway that Obama had in 2008 or that even Bernie Sanders had built on his own. Instead, she became the establishment’s fallback candidate. Many of us saw right through it, we were choiceless.

There was no real primary. There was no real debate. There was only choreography.

By the time Harris officially became the nominee, much of the progressive base had emotionally checked out. We still knocked on doors, worked overtime on social media campaigns, debated with friends and families. The campaign divided friends, families and even small communities like our.  But we believed in great goods, despite, something was missing; authenticity, energy, and belief. We gave what we could, but it wasn’t enough.

And so, in November 2024, Trump didn’t win: We Lost. Again. Roughly 10 million voters who had turned out for Biden in 2020 stayed home. These weren’t Trump converts. They were tired, fatigued and emotionally and morally exhausted progressive fellows. People like me, who once believed in the promise of a party that claimed to champion the middle class, immigrants, and working people.

Now, many progressive Americans feel emotionally depleted and morally abandoned. Some have left the country. Others have withdrawn from political life entirely. Deep down eveyday I feel that we’re not apathetic, we’re heartbroken.

And that’s when the email from Obama arrived.

I understand the strategic intent. Re-engage the base. Offer gratitude. Stir up nostalgia for the days when Hope and Change weren’t just slogans. But President Obama, with all due respect, now is not the time for email blasts.

What we need is honesty. What went wrong in the DNC between 2016 and 2024? Why were grassroots candidates consistently sidelined? Why was so much money spent on TV ads while field organizing got slashed? Why were billionaires given the microphone while community organizers were told to “wait their turn”?

If the Democratic Party truly wants to rebuild trust, it needs to start by acknowledging its failures, not just celebrating its heroes.

I’m not asking for an apology. I’m asking for accountability. I’m asking for transparency. And I’m asking for humility.

In the future, I will vote for candidates, not parties. I will support those whose values align with action, not just rhetoric. And I will not be emotionally blackmailed by “lesser evil” arguments anymore.

We will survive the next four years. We’ve survived worse. But we deserve better. And we demand better.

So thank you, President Obama, for your email. I won’t be joining the photo op. But I hope someday, someone in the party reads this, not just to respond, but to reflect.

Because democracy cannot be built on marketing. It must be built on trust.

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