Eighteen months after losing everything, left-leaning activists and unions have a comeback in their sights. All they need is money, aggressive turnout of their 2024 voters, and a president who keeps screwing up on the cost of living.

The Democratic Party could figure out its own problems later.

That was the overwhelming sentiment at the annual summit of America Votes, founded 22 years ago to coordinate the electoral work of left-leaning unions and climate groups. Semafor got an in-depth look at the group’s entire confab, where hundreds of progressive campaigners talked about what worked to motivate anti-Trump voters — and what could win over the people who’d turned on the president.

“Trump wants us to feel overwhelmed, like it’s never going to end — but let’s be clear, it is going to end,” America Votes President Greg Speed said onstage. “MAGA is sowing the seeds of the blue wave, fueled by midterm turnout, if we do our jobs.”

The mood was optimistic, described as a night-and-day shift from last year’s conference, right after MAGA had ripped through the Democratic coalition. As wins in off-year elections revealed cracks in the Trump vote, with younger and non-white voters peeling off from the GOP, the group’s leaders changed their theories about who could be persuaded to vote against Republicans — and how.

Speed’s goal for the America Votes network was to register 1.5 million new voters and persuade 5.6 million more to abandon the GOP, across 34 competitive House seats. The 75 million Americans who’d supported Kamala Harris had turned out more reliably since 2024 than the 77 million who’d supported Donald Trump, and the groups could build on that.

“We’re doing a better job of getting those 75 million back, and they’re doing a sh*ttier job of getting 2 million more than that back, and that will be the single biggest factor in how this election goes,” Speed said. “It’s not buyer’s remorse. It’s not necessarily folks changing their minds.”

While the Democratic Party’s plans overlap heavily with America Votes’, the group doesn’t think the Democratic brand needs to be fixed in order for its work to succeed. Union affiliates like the SEIU and National Education Association will lean on their members, climate groups will run ads blaming Trump for higher energy prices, and they would all share data.

“The coalition has a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more leeway, because they are the closest to the ground,” said Daria Dawson, the group’s executive director. “They are the closest to the communities.”