Lee Steele settled into a front-row seat at the Center for American Progress headquarters still deflated from a year of Donald Trump.

Washington's premiere progressive policy and advocacy incubator had summoned a meeting to deliver a definitive, final report on the trends emanating from Hillary Clinton's harrowing 2016 presidential election loss and how Democrats should respond to them.

Like many of the liberal attendees, Steele – an activist from Gloucester, Massachusetts – had come to Washington to hear some hopeful signs about the future of her party.

"I hope I walk out of here less depressed," she muttered to no one in particular.

And yet, almost a full year after Trump's election, Steele sat through a sobering conversation on Wednesday that openly recognized that the lessons of last year's great Democratic defeat haven't been fully established or accepted, and that the proper way forward remains mired in deep, contentious debate.

"Have we learned the lessons from 2016 as we apply them to '17, '18, '20? I don't think yet. I just want to be sober about this," said Matt Morrison, co-executive director of Working America, an affiliate group of the AFL-CIO. "I don't know that anyone here wants to imagine Mitch McConnell with 60 votes in U.S. Senate, but that's a very real possibility unless we actually learn our lessons."

The problem is that liberal activists and those populating the traditional Democratic power center still don't agree on the solutions. Clinton campaign veterans are so consumed by Russian election interference, they've stubbornly papered over innumerable self-inflicted miscalculations and mistakes. At the same time, the most fervent tribe of Bernie Sanders supporters can't get past their notion that the primary was rigged – a sentiment that gained stinging credibility due to an op-ed Thursday by former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile in Politico.

Brazile says she discovered that the Clinton campaign had forged an "unethical" fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee in August 2015, a full year before she officially clinched the nomination over Sanders. The early agreement gave Clinton control over the DNC's fundraising, staffing and strategy through the primary, according to Brazile.

"If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead," Brazile wrote. "This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party's integrity."

The revelation might be essential to party healing in the long-term. In the near-term, it only pours more gas on a fire that was already simmering.

A second 2016 autopsy, helmed by two progressive authors that chose to title it: "The Democratic Party in Crisis," pins ongoing tensions squarely on DNC leadership for being exclusionary.

"Siding with the people who constitute the base isn't truly possible when party leaders seem to be afraid of them," write progressives Karen Bernal and Norman Solomon, in a report sponsored by the liberal group, Action for a Progressive Future. "Retaining control of the national party apparatus has meant locking the doors of the Democratic National Committee to ward off groundswells of participation."

Their report claims the DNC has failed to make the protection of voting rights a staffing priority and should be actively promoting single-payer Medicare for all and free public college tuition as official policy planks. Essentially, they seek the Bernification of the Democratic Party.

A DNC spokeswoman did not return an email seeking comment.

Even Democrats who've moved long past the Clinton-Sanders war are wrestling with fundamental questions about how the party can win again.

Redouble efforts toward mobilizing loyal constituencies like African-Americans and Latinos or make a concerted pitch to win over white working-class males? Pour resources into the biggest ticket, highest-profile races on the ballot or retrench for the long-haul and invest more money in local candidates and ballot initiatives? Feverishly resist Trump at every turn or be more selective in choosing the most resonant policy battles? 2018 or 2020?

The CAP report was designed to point a way past these onerous questions: Democrats shouldn't have to choose between motivating their base and renewing efforts to win back white non-college-educated voters in the Rust Belt. They must go beyond the fight over identity politics versus economic populism with a laser-focused agenda that attracts a cross-racial, cross-class coalition. And they must match Republicans' year-round organizational reach in order to slowly regain the trust of communities that have turned away from them.

For instance, Clinton performed 6 percentage points worse than former President Barack Obama did with white non-college educated voters, according to the CAP research. But at the same time, black turnout nationally shrunk by 4.5 percent in 2016, including a massive drop of 19 percent in Wisconsin, which Clinton never visited and lost.

Just as conservative-aligned groups like Americans for Prosperity have turned into a permanent political presence with footsoldiers across key states, Democrats could use a similar year-round engagement presence, especially in far-flung areas that have been largely ignored.

"Same thing has to be true for the Democrats," said Ruy Teixeira, a senior CAP fellow. "You chip away at the massive deficits you've been running among these white non-college voters."

Then, there's the messaging headache. The CAP authors praise Clinton for addressing a heap of different substantive economic issues, but acknowledge that Trump's promises were pithier and clearer, no matter how disingenuous and unrealistic they were.

"I think when Trump said 'I'll bring back those coal jobs and I'll bring back all those manufacturing jobs,' I think a lot of voters knew that that wasn't going to happen. But I think they actually heard more empathy in those bombastic, false statements than they heard from progressives talking about complicated job retraining programs," said E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post opinion writer, who moderated the CAP discussion.

There's not much indication Democrats have improved their ear on this. When House Democrats rolled out their new agenda in July titled, "A Better Deal," it was widely mocked as a poor man's pizza slogan.

Earlier this week, when Senate Democrats took aim at the GOP tax plan, it tweeted out a graphic that claimed it "is in the upside down," a reference to the Netflix hit "Stranger Things." Nonetheless, it left people guessing at what exactly they were trying to convey. Hours later, a follow-up tweet acknowledged the meme was "pretty bad."

The CAP panel also raised doubts about the scorched-earth strategy of incessantly tarring Trump as a horrible human being, citing the attack-driven television advertising campaign administered by the Clinton campaign.

"It was almost all about how Trump did and said a lot of really terrible things that are bad for women, bad for minorities, bad for Latinos, bad for blacks. It didn't work," said Teixeira. "Not only did it not chip away at white non-college support, it didn't actually do a very good job of mobilizing minorities either."

He added, "We have to remember that what we're most outraged about and what we absolutely should continue to be committed to opposing is not necessarily the message that is going to produce the desired result."

But on this point, there appeared to be even a break between the panelists. Would a strictly economic-based policy argument really be a more powerful instrument against Trump?

"An economic message is not as likely to get eyeballs," Morrison said. "What's going to generate attention, viewership? Trump generates attention and viewership. He hacked the media."

It's not unnatural or unhealthy for the out-of-power party to wrestle with these questions and even struggle with them, but there's a growing urgency among Democrats to find unity around some shared strategies as a midterm election year approaches.

The Democrats are 0-for-4 in special House races this year in GOP districts, but Tuesday's gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia look like an opportunity for them to break their dry spell.

The party is desperate for a tangible win – anywhere – to calm anxious nerves among all factions.

At the conclusion of the CAP presentation, Steele was in better spirits, despite lingering divisions on how exactly to proceed.

"I feel, like, activated," she said.

Though she believed eventually Trump would "crash and burn," doing himself in, she seemed open to playing the role of converter.