Latest news with #BlueDogs
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Centrist Democrats are convinced they hold the answers to their party's problems
Democrats are still staring down bleak polling numbers about their party's brand, even as President Donald Trump's favorability also has dropped. The answer to Democrats' troubles at WelcomeFest, the moderate Democrats' Coachella, include: purity tests are toxic, being unpopular on the social media site Bluesky is cool and winning again means running to the center. That's the gospel speakers preached on stage Wednesday in the basement of a Washington, D.C., hotel, where hundreds of centrist elected officials, candidates and operatives gathered to commiserate over the 2024 election results and chart their version of the path forward for the Democratic Party. 'There's a hunger for people to work together, to try to find solutions and to talk in common sense terms,' said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who won a much-heralded special election in 2024 by calling out his own party on immigration policies. 'I think that there's a lot more elected officials that are willing to speak up about that because they don't want to lose,' Suozzi told reporters after his appearance. Wednesday's daylong conference, which represented a who's-who of center-left Democratic politics, from analytics guru David Shor to Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin to New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, was the latest sign that moderate Democrats believe they are ascendant in the party, looking to influence its posture heading into the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential primary. Seven of the 12 House Democrats who won in Trump districts last year participated in the event, including Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Adam Gray of California. 'Most Americans are Blue Dogs,' Gluesenkamp told writer Matt Yglesias, and noted only 10 Democrats remain in the once-robust Blue Dog Caucus. 'Politics has become irrelevant to most people because it has excluded the things that touch their life. It's about making politics more relevant to more people.' But the rifts within the Democratic Party are still evident. Speakers railed against progressive groups like Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and Indivisible, who they said forced the party into unwinnable positions — and weren't focused on winning majorities. 'When you read the documents of the national Indivisible group, they spell it right out, as plain as day, that they're throwing out the Blue Dogs and New Dems,' said Golden. 'Their goal is to divide the Democratic coalition until they are 100 percent in the image of the progressive caucus.' Progressives, for their part, called WelcomeFest a 'convention of corporate ghouls' that represents 'a massive step backwards for a Democratic Party that just lost working-class voters at a historic level,' said Usamah Andrabi, Justice Democrats communications director. 'Everyday people are not interested in elitist, technocratic, piecemeal solutions to the massive crises they're facing. They just rejected that exact Democratic Party in November,' Andrabi said. 'Voters want to see a Democratic Party that unites the working class against the handful of billionaires and corporations robbing them blind.' Andrabi also noted that Justice Democrats focus on safe Democratic House primaries, not competitive seats. Liam Kerr, a co-founder of Welcome PAC, which launched in 2022, said now that the 'leftist fever dreams died down,' they're growing a movement with 'a sense of, 'We need to think differently, we need to do things differently.'" "It's attracting a lot of people who are kind of a full generation behind the last wave of centrist Democratic entrepreneurs,' Kerr added. Data analyst Lakshya Jain kicked off the opening presentation by arguing that Janelle Stelson, a Democrat who challenged Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), was a better performing candidate than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2024. 'This seems like a really controversial idea on Twitter, but I suggest that the Democratic Party take lessons on how to win elections and how to win voters from people who have won more votes than most other Democrats,' Jain said to applause. 'If we run candidates that D.C. finds appealing, we're probably going to lose. There's an inverse correlation between what you guys all find appealing and what the median voter finds appealing.' And like any other Democratic event in 2025, WelcomeFest was interrupted by protesters, who shouted at Torres during his interview. They were played off by the producers of the event, who blasted Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain.'
Politico
4 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Centrist Democrats are convinced they hold the answers to their party's problems
Democrats are still staring down bleak polling numbers about their party's brand, even as President Donald Trump's favorability also has dropped. The answer to Democrats' troubles at WelcomeFest, the moderate Democrats' Coachella, include: purity tests are toxic, being unpopular on the social media site Bluesky is cool and winning again means running to the center. That's the gospel speakers preached on stage Wednesday in the basement of a Washington, D.C., hotel, where hundreds of centrist elected officials, candidates and operatives gathered to commiserate over the 2024 election results and chart their version of the path forward for the Democratic Party. 'There's a hunger for people to work together, to try to find solutions and to talk in common sense terms,' said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who won a much-heralded special election in 2024 by calling out his own party on immigration policies. 'I think that there's a lot more elected officials that are willing to speak up about that because they don't want to lose,' Suozzi told reporters after his appearance. Wednesday's daylong conference, which represented a who's-who of center-left Democratic politics, from analytics guru David Shor to Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin to New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, was the latest sign that moderate Democrats believe they are ascendant in the party, looking to influence its posture heading into the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential primary. Seven of the 12 House Democrats who won in Trump districts last year participated in the event, including Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Adam Gray of California. 'Most Americans are Blue Dogs,' Gluesenkamp told writer Matt Yglesias, and noted only 10 Democrats remain in the once-robust Blue Dog Caucus. 'Politics has become irrelevant to most people because it has excluded the things that touch their life. It's about making politics more relevant to more people.' But the rifts within the Democratic Party are still evident. Speakers railed against progressive groups like Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and Indivisible, who they said forced the party into unwinnable positions — and weren't focused on winning majorities. 'When you read the documents of the national Indivisible group, they spell it right out, as plain as day, that they're throwing out the Blue Dogs and New Dems,' said Golden. 'Their goal is to divide the Democratic coalition until they are 100 percent in the image of the progressive caucus.' Progressives, for their part, called WelcomeFest a 'convention of corporate ghouls' that represents 'a massive step backwards for a Democratic Party that just lost working-class voters at a historic level,' said Usamah Andrabi, Justice Democrats communications director. 'Everyday people are not interested in elitist, technocratic, piecemeal solutions to the massive crises they're facing. They just rejected that exact Democratic Party in November,' Andrabi said. 'Voters want to see a Democratic Party that unites the working class against the handful of billionaires and corporations robbing them blind.' Andrabi also noted that Justice Democrats focus on safe Democratic House primaries, not competitive seats. Liam Kerr, a co-founder of Welcome PAC, which launched in 2022, said now that the 'leftist fever dreams died down,' they're growing a movement with 'a sense of, 'We need to think differently, we need to do things differently.'' 'It's attracting a lot of people who are kind of a full generation behind the last wave of centrist Democratic entrepreneurs,' Kerr added. Data analyst Lakshya Jain kicked off the opening presentation by arguing that Janelle Stelson, a Democrat who challenged Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), was a better performing candidate than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2024. 'This seems like a really controversial idea on Twitter, but I suggest that the Democratic Party take lessons on how to win elections and how to win voters from people who have won more votes than most other Democrats,' Jain said to applause. 'If we run candidates that D.C. finds appealing, we're probably going to lose. There's an inverse correlation between what you guys all find appealing and what the median voter finds appealing.' And like any other Democratic event in 2025, WelcomeFest was interrupted by protesters, who shouted at Torres during his interview. They were played off by the producers of the event, who blasted Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain.'
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - There should be more tough talk under the Democrats' big tent
Most Democratic operatives will tell you today that the Democratic Party thrives as a 'big tent.' And truth be told, ours remains a remarkably diverse institution, with constituent elements from every part of the country that span a broad swath of ideological viewpoints. In many cases, that diversity is the key to Democrats winning in conservative-leaning districts. For example, this past cycle, we saw 13 Democratic congressional candidates, nearly all of whom were backed by New Dems or Blue Dogs, elected in districts that supported Trump at the presidential level. Without being able to field candidates who differ ideologically from their more progressive peers, those seats would almost certainly have been lost. But you wouldn't necessarily know this listening to Democrats talk at the national level, including those enamored of the large crowds drawn by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). That's because, in Washington, Democrats often cede too much political ground to the loudest and most organized fringes of our large coalition. In the name of keeping the peace internally, we have allowed politicians and activist groups from our left-most flank to seize an outsized role in defining the party's national brand. This, in turn, has opened the doors for our political opponents on the right to paint the left's most politically toxic policies and messaging as core beliefs of all Democrats. Some Democrats might be tempted to ignore this problem for the time being, or even dismiss it as a real issue altogether. As Trump 'floods the zone' with attacks on our democratic norms and continues to tank the stock market with his tariffs, too many Democrats are more than content to sit back and focus solely on opposition tactics. However, this approach is a little different from what got us here in the first place. The first step to stopping Trump and stemming the rising tide of authoritarianism is to engage, at long last, the debates we've largely muffled within the party. This starts by recognizing that the historic strength of the Democratic Party is directly tied to the support it draws from the nation's working-class voters, and subsequently acknowledging that the agenda that now defines our brand has clearly failed on that front, as polling has shown in the aftermath of November. When examining this problem, we tend to endlessly debate whether the working-class rejection of our party is more on economic or cultural grounds. Set aside the fact that so many more minority voters within the working class voted for Trump this time around, despite his continued race-baiting and xenophobia. What we need to accept is that the far left has driven Democrats to embrace a series of issues that are both economically and culturally at odds with what most working-class voters say they want. Take some examples from when the Democratic Party was popular among working-class voters. In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to punish employers who hired illegal immigrants, and complained that Republicans were cynically welcoming undocumented laborers into the country to drive down labor costs. He argued that undocumented immigrants should pay a large fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line if they wanted to earn legal status. But today, these positions are considered controversial within the Democratic coalition because the far left rejects anything that casts illegal immigrants as anything but hapless victims. As a result of Democrats' perceived shift to the left, working-class voters who are citizens view Democrats as both culturally unaligned with their concerns and as responsible for driving down working-class wages. Is it any mystery why they were tempted to support MAGA? The great irony here is that, when elected, former President Joe Biden embraced an agenda pretty much in line with Obama's rhetoric. The fact is Biden's administration deported illegal aliens at a faster pace than Trump had in his first term. This illustrates another key weakness for our party: Even when we do pursue policies with widespread appeal, we fail to tell the story for fear of offending activist groups. As a result, even in this circumstance where Democratic policy is aligned with working-class sensibilities, the influence of pro-immigration, progressive groups on our message-making overshadows our actual record and undermines our political appeal. A similar story defines the fight for energy independence. The Biden administration green-lit record amounts of oil and gas production inside the U.S., but the White House almost never made mention of this fact for fear of drawing the ire of climate activists. Contrast this to the celebratory announcements made when the Biden White House paused American liquefied natural gas export projects. Voters in Pennsylvania heard about that and they resented it. To be clear, most working-class voters are sympathetic to the cause of addressing climate change. But the majority of Americans prefer an 'all of the above approach' which considers impacts on jobs, energy bills, and national security all at once. They are also open to pragmatic ideas that don't jive with progressive dogma, like using natural gas as a cheaper, cleaner alternative to dirtier fossil fuels as more renewables come online. The days must end of refusing to rock the boat in the name of party unity. As Democrats, we must do two things at once: be a united front against Trump's unconstitutional power grabs and address the messaging and policy issues within our own ranks that have sidelined us to the minority. If we only focus on the former, and fail to redefine the politically toxic parts of our brand, we stand little chance of winning back working Americans and building the large, durable majority needed to defeat the MAGA movement. Stuart Malec is the national political director at Progressive Policy Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
06-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
There should be more tough talk under the Democrats' big tent
Most Democratic operatives will tell you today that the Democratic Party thrives as a 'big tent.' And truth be told, ours remains a remarkably diverse institution, with constituent elements from every part of the country that span a broad swath of ideological viewpoints. In many cases, that diversity is the key to Democrats winning in conservative-leaning districts. For example, this past cycle, we saw 13 Democratic congressional candidates, nearly all of whom were backed by New Dems or Blue Dogs, elected in districts that supported Trump at the presidential level. Without being able to field candidates who differ ideologically from their more progressive peers, those seats would almost certainly have been lost. But you wouldn't necessarily know this listening to Democrats talk at the national level, including those enamored of the large crowds drawn by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). That's because, in Washington, Democrats often cede too much political ground to the loudest and most organized fringes of our large coalition. In the name of keeping the peace internally, we have allowed politicians and activist groups from our left-most flank to seize an outsized role in defining the party's national brand. This, in turn, has opened the doors for our political opponents on the right to paint the left's most politically toxic policies and messaging as core beliefs of all Democrats. Some Democrats might be tempted to ignore this problem for the time being, or even dismiss it as a real issue altogether. As Trump 'floods the zone' with attacks on our democratic norms and continues to tank the stock market with his tariffs, too many Democrats are more than content to sit back and focus solely on opposition tactics. However, this approach is a little different from what got us here in the first place. The first step to stopping Trump and stemming the rising tide of authoritarianism is to engage, at long last, the debates we've largely muffled within the party. This starts by recognizing that the historic strength of the Democratic Party is directly tied to the support it draws from the nation's working-class voters, and subsequently acknowledging that the agenda that now defines our brand has clearly failed on that front, as polling has shown in the aftermath of November. When examining this problem, we tend to endlessly debate whether the working-class rejection of our party is more on economic or cultural grounds. Set aside the fact that so many more minority voters within the working class voted for Trump this time around, despite his continued race-baiting and xenophobia. What we need to accept is that the far left has driven Democrats to embrace a series of issues that are both economically and culturally at odds with what most working-class voters say they want. Take some examples from when the Democratic Party was popular among working-class voters. In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to punish employers who hired illegal immigrants, and complained that Republicans were cynically welcoming undocumented laborers into the country to drive down labor costs. He argued that undocumented immigrants should pay a large fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line if they wanted to earn legal status. But today, these positions are considered controversial within the Democratic coalition because the far left rejects anything that casts illegal immigrants as anything but hapless victims. As a result of Democrats' perceived shift to the left, working-class voters who are citizens view Democrats as both culturally unaligned with their concerns and as responsible for driving down working-class wages. Is it any mystery why they were tempted to support MAGA? The great irony here is that, when elected, former President Joe Biden embraced an agenda pretty much in line with Obama's rhetoric. The fact is Biden's administration deported illegal aliens at a faster pace than Trump had in his first term. This illustrates another key weakness for our party: Even when we do pursue policies with widespread appeal, we fail to tell the story for fear of offending activist groups. As a result, even in this circumstance where Democratic policy is aligned with working-class sensibilities, the influence of pro-immigration, progressive groups on our message-making overshadows our actual record and undermines our political appeal. A similar story defines the fight for energy independence. The Biden administration green-lit record amounts of oil and gas production inside the U.S., but the White House almost never made mention of this fact for fear of drawing the ire of climate activists. Contrast this to the celebratory announcements made when the Biden White House paused American liquefied natural gas export projects. Voters in Pennsylvania heard about that and they resented it. To be clear, most working-class voters are sympathetic to the cause of addressing climate change. But the majority of Americans prefer an 'all of the above approach' which considers impacts on jobs, energy bills, and national security all at once. They are also open to pragmatic ideas that don't jive with progressive dogma, like using natural gas as a cheaper, cleaner alternative to dirtier fossil fuels as more renewables come online. The days must end of refusing to rock the boat in the name of party unity. As Democrats, we must do two things at once: be a united front against Trump's unconstitutional power grabs and address the messaging and policy issues within our own ranks that have sidelined us to the minority. If we only focus on the former, and fail to redefine the politically toxic parts of our brand, we stand little chance of winning back working Americans and building the large, durable majority needed to defeat the MAGA movement.
