Democrats this week suffered a stinging rebuke in elections up and down the country. The damage was most notable in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin won a state that Joe Biden carried by 10 points just a year ago. But there were warning signs elsewhere, too – from the party’s eroding support in the southern suburbs of New Jersey to its still-declining fortunes in Hispanic areas of south Texas, where Republican John Lujan flipped a heavily Hispanic state legislative district which Biden won by 14 points last year.

Although depressing, these results are not entirely surprising. Even as Biden triumphed in the 2020 presidential election, there were ample signs that the suburban voters who propelled him to victory were keeping their options open. Democrats won the presidency, but declining suburban support nearly cost them the House of Representatives. In the Senate, they fought Republicans heroically but unsatisfyingly to a standstill, splitting the chamber 50/50. Voters rejected Trump, but they seemed not to want to pass complete control of government to his opponents, either.

These latest results confirm that not much has changed since, and Democrats have only themselves to blame. They have enjoyed unified control of the federal government for a year, but have spent their time trapped in negotiations with one another over a pair of legislative packages covering infrastructure, climate and social welfare. Even seasoned pundits find the process confusing and opaque and, for the busy ordinary voter, the problem is multiplied tenfold. At a time when the coronavirus and its associated scourges – inflation, joblessness and parental panic over their children’s education – are still stalking the land, the party is struggling to break through because it’s too busy talking to itself.

There’s a risk that Democrats – or, more precisely, one faction of them – react to this week’s results in a way that makes the problem even worse. Already, “moderate” senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been the main roadblock to Democrats passing large, popular social welfare bills. They are backed, though more quietly, by other senators and House members who fear that the party will be punished if its agenda becomes too bold and too progressive. If moderates decide that this week’s results represent the beginning of just such a backlash, they may force the party to abandon its plans and retreat into a defensive crouch.

This would be an enormous mistake. If Democrats are to reverse their fortunes, they have to be bold and rack up big accomplishments. Rather than backing off expansive legislation, they should double down on it. If Democrats pass an ambitious package to fight poverty, expand healthcare, assist families with childcare expenses, and introduce paid family and medical leave, there will be no mistaking what they stand for. Republicans, meanwhile, will be left arguing against programs that are standard throughout the developed world and – more importantly – popular in the United States as well.

Nor is there much reason to believe that Democrats’ recent electoral setbacks resulted from being too progressive. Although a socialist candidate for Buffalo mayor lost out to her moderate rival and a police reform measure failed in Minneapolis, these results reveal nothing about the popularity of the party’s mainstream economic agenda. Democrats struggled not because they appear too progressive, but because, after months of infighting, they don’t appear to stand for anything.

The need to move quickly and boldly is underlined by looking at the other factors that are draining the party’s support. The first is inflation, where the party’s plans to expand the social safety net in the future don’t do much to help voters struggling with rising prices right now. Although economic policymakers expect this period to pass relatively quickly, there is little the White House can do to address the fastest price increases in a generation. Even worse, the policymakers might be wrong, leaving Americans still struggling as the midterms approach. Their inability to do much about inflation increases the party’s need to act elsewhere if it is to demonstrate that it can deliver concrete improvements in people’s economic situation.

Finally, the outsized role played in the Virginia election by concerns about the teaching of so-called critical race theory in schools is another reason Democrats badly need to change the conversation. As the party has retreated into bickering among itself, the political debate has become increasingly dominated by hyped-up culture war issues to which Democrats struggle to respond.

It may be true that concerns about critical race theory are mainly a form of manufactured outrage designed to activate white grievance, but describing them as such doesn’t seem to be a winning political strategy. Even as the party crafts a new message about school curricula which disassociates it from the warped image put forward by the right, it also needs a more concrete response – one that emphasizes how the party is investing in the nation’s schools and families, including through improved access to childcare and paid family leave.

But to do that, they need to actually pass the legislation that will create these programs. The painful truth Democrats have to face is that, to many voters, even imaginary claims about critical race theory feel more real right now than the social welfare programs being debated in Congress. To flip that calculus and show that Democratic governance can benefit the country while the culture war is designed to hold it back, Democrats have to be big and bold. Otherwise, they – and, given the Republican party’s extremist turn, the country – are in serious trouble.

• Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University, and host of the podcast America Explained