Ending the party’s reliance on non-white voters and finding a middle-class message for white, blue-collar voters is critically important, and could put Republicans at a real disadvantage. For example, pulling the support of 40 percent of the white vote could give them Florida in the next cycle.

“The best thing for Democrats to do is to retool their message and policies and not be so focused on offering this basket of goodies for this group, and this basket of goodies for that group,” ” said Michelle Diggles, an elections analyst with Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank in Washington. “They need to focus on a shared message and values.”

But without an improvement among blue-collar workers, more elections like the one they saw last month might be on the horizon.

A second emerging idea is to show up everywhere. Hindsight is 20/20, but Hillary Clinton could have spent more time in Michigan and Wisconsin, where she barely campaigned and lost narrowly.

Ironically, her first rally with Obama was supposed to be in Green Bay, Wis. The event was canceled because of the terrorist attack in Orlando, Fla., and never rescheduled.

After the disastrous result, Democratic operatives indicated it was impossible to perceive that Wisconsin would be a battleground state, but the lesson will likely stick that the party shouldn’t overlook any state, however sewed up it might seem.

A third idea is to make sure Democrats are not held hostage in Congress to the far left, liberal base of the party.

This idea, however, might be hard to carry out. With Obama fading from the scene and a Democratic minority in the House and Senate, progressive advocacy groups are set to expand their influence over party leaders in Washington — much as conservative groups did over congressional Republicans during Obama’s tenure.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was the architect of the last Democratic majority in the Senate and understands the importance of pragmatic politics when it comes to winning seats beyond liberal strongholds. But it’s unclear that he’ll have the freedom to maneuver, as he did when he was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2006 and 2008.

“He’s looking over his shoulder from the left. Everything he does, they question,” a Democratic lobbyist in Washington said, on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.

Some analysists point to a fourth idea, one that should be easy to achieve: Go into the election with a candidate other than Clinton.

These analysts say Democrats may be overreaching to the 2016 results, because Clinton was loaded down with baggage that hurt her campaign, such as the FBI investigation into her private email server. Clinton was up against a candidate in President-elect Trump who had a unique ability to drive an unprecedented level of votes out of rural and exurban counties.

And, she had a difficult time relating to the working-class voters that have been a bulwark of the Democratic coalition for generations, much like John Kerry did in 2004. That has some thinking that a new candidate might solve many of the Democrats’ problems, and that the Democrats aren’t in such bad shape.

“I don’t understand this rush to fix a problem we haven’t really diagnosed yet,” said T.J. Rooney, a former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.