In Politics and Communication in America, Denton and Kuypers discuss the five functions of political language theorized by Doris Graber in 1981. As Denton and Kuypers explain, in one of those functions, “a great deal of political rhetoric and language deals with reflecting on the past and predicting the future” (45).
When you click on the “About” link on the website for the Ohio Democratic Party, it takes you to a page that explicitly defines the party in terms of reflecting on the past and predicting the future. A section containing the first two paragraphs seeks to define the Democratic party as “the party of everyday people” and reflects on the past by providing a description of the ideals that the website claims provided the original basis for the Democratic party. In the next section, consisting of five paragraphs, the website continues to reflect on the past by providing a story of the development of the party throughout the 20th century. Following this section, the website further reflects on the past by offering a couple of paragraphs that narrate what has happened to the party over the last decade.
Finally, then, the website titles its last section, consisting of two paragraphs, “Looking Ahead: The Roadmap to Victory.” Here it clearly turns its attention to the future, as suggested by the “Looking Ahead” title. The website provides specific claims that it will deliver winning results by “building grassroots support in all 88 counties, energizing and empowering local communities, and developing a powerful infrastructure to deliver Democratic victories up and down the ticket.” These statements offer predictions for what the party will do in the future, building off its past.
As a side note, this portion of the website has apparently not been updated in at least 5 years, since it discusses 2010 elections as the future. (Perhaps this lack of updating exemplifies something that conveys why the Ohio Democratic Party has struggled recent elections.) Still, this example is useful because it demonstrates how a particular political entity — in this case a state branch of a political party — has explicitly used reflecting on the past and predicting the future to define itself.