After winning a landslide victory in 1964, the Democratic Party lost five of the next six elections. It would likely have been six of six were it not for the Watergate scandal, and even then, Jimmy Carter barely beat accidental President Gerald Ford in 1976. A group of party leaders formed the Democratic Leadership Council in an effort to steer the party back to the center and, famously, helped Bill Clinton win in 1992. Since then, the party has won the popular vote in seven of the last nine elections (inclusive of 1992).
Alas, two of those popular vote wins, in 2000 and 2016, resulted in Electoral College losses. Which is to say, losses. And, of course, Donald Trump won outright in 2024. Once again, some party leaders are blaming it on the party having been captured by the left and urge a move back to the center.
WSJ (“Rahm Emanuel, Teasing a White House Bid, Says Democratic Brand Is Weak“):
Rahm Emanuel, never humble about his political skills, is trying to accomplish something that seems far-fetched even for him: push his Democratic Party—rooted in the identity politics of the left—to the center.
The former congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and diplomat is direct about what he thinks Democrats need to do to win national elections again. He calls the party’s brand “toxic” and “weak and woke,” a nod to culture-war issues he thinks Democrats have become too often fixated on that President Trump has successfully used against them.
While Emanuel is coy about what he wants next for his political career, he appears to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid. He will be the headliner at a September fish fry for Democrats in Iowa, where the party’s nomination process traditionally started until 2024.
The Democratic presidential field is likely to be crowded. “Voters will be lucky,” Emanuel said. “They’ll have a real debate, one we didn’t have in 2024.”
[…]
In his usual frenetic way, Emanuel is positioning himself as a savior for the party even as he has flashbacks of the movie “Thelma & Louise” and its suicidal conclusion.
“I’m tired of sitting in the back seat when somebody’s gunning it at 90 miles an hour for a cliff,” the 65-year-old said over lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Chicago River.
At times, Emanuel sounds like he had already made up his mind to pursue the presidency, sometimes slipping into the past tense of a declared candidate and seemingly testing future stump speech material.
“If you want the country to give you the keys to the car, somebody’s got to be articulating an agenda that’s fighting for America, not just fighting Trump,” he said. “The American dream has become unaffordable. It’s inaccessible. And that has to be unacceptable to us.”
For a dose of populism popular in the party, he added: “The public’s not wrong. They figured it out. The system’s rigged. It’s corrupt.”
[…]
There are a few other potential 2028 Democratic candidates also suggesting party moderation. They include Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, as well as former transportation secretary and 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.
WaPo (“Democratic troubles revive debate over left-wing buzzwords)”:
Maybe it’s using the word “oligarchs” instead of rich people. Or referring to “people experiencing food insecurity” rather than Americans going hungry. Or “equity” in place of “equality,” or “justice-involved populations” instead of prisoners.
As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain.
They contend that liberal candidates too often use language from elite, highly educated circles that suggests the speakers consider themselves smart and virtuous, while casting implied judgment on those who speak more plainly — hardly a formula for winning people over, they say.
The latest debate is, in part, also a proxy for the bigger battle over what the Democrats’ identity should be in the aftermath of November’s devastating losses — especially as the party searches for ways to reverse its overwhelming rejection by rural and White working-class voters.
“Some words are just too Ivy League-tested terms,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). “I’m going to piss some people off by saying this, but ‘social equity’ — why do we say that? Why don’t we say, ‘We want you to have an even chance’?”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — who like Gallego is considered a potential 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful — made a similar point.
“I believe that over time, and probably for well-meaning reasons, Democrats have begun to speak like professors and started using advocacy-speak that was meant to reduce stigma, but also removed the meaning and emotion behind words,” Beshear said, citing such examples as using “substance abuse disorder” to refer to addiction.
“It makes Democrats or candidates using this speech sounding like they’re not normal,” Beshear said. “It sounds simple, but what the Democratic Party needs to do is be normal and sound normal.”
Other Democrats and progressives strongly disagree, saying the party’s problems can hardly be traced to a few terms that, they say, are used by activists far more than by actual Democratic politicians. There are good reasons for using nonprejudiced language and seeking new ways to be sensitive to those who have suffered discrimination, they say — and only bad reasons for jettisoning them in the face of Republican attacks.
“We are simply asking people to consider the language they are using as we move toward shared goals,” said Daria Hall, executive vice president of Fenton Communications, a progressive communications firm. “It is important to acknowledge the human element within populations and to recognize how they identify themselves. Language evolves; it always has.”
The divides are not clear-cut. But some Democrats are emphasizing a need to embrace centrist, common-sense ideas in a plainspoken way, while others say the key is to trumpet progressive, inclusive policies that fit the angry populist mood.
Recent years have seen a pattern of progressives embracing new terms that conservatives turn against them. From “woke” to “critical race theory” to “gender-fluid,” Republicans have long excelled at using such “politically correct” terms to depict Democrats as out of touch.
“Honestly, Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing,” said Allison Prasch, who teaches rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Republicans maybe aren’t so concerned about saying exactly the right thing, so it may appear more authentic to some voters.”
She added, “Republicans have a willingness to paint with very broad brushstrokes, where Democrats are more concerned with articulating multiple perspectives. And because of that, they can be hampered by the words and phrases they utilize.”
Against that backdrop, a crop of youthful, up-and-coming Democrats is arguing that liberals need to abandon what they portray as a series of constantly evolving linguistic purity tests.
Gallego derided the term “Latinx” — which avoids the gender binary suggested by “Latinos” and “Latinas” — as “stupid,” saying few Hispanics use the term. He also recalled once being told not to describe his own background as “poor,” but rather as “economically disadvantaged.”
“Not every person we meet is going to have the latest update on what the proper terms are,” Gallego said. “It doesn’t make them sexist or homophobic or racist. Maybe they are a little outdated, but they have a good heart.”
Monocausal explanations for something as complicated as a national election are almost always wrong. While it’s true that Trump won all seven of the swing states, it’s also true that his overall vote margin was among the smallest ever. He won by only 1.6 percentage points and didn’t quite capture a majority of all votes cast. And was part of a global anti-incumbent wave.
And, again, Democrats won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020, so they’re not in anywhere near as dire shape as they were after getting blown out in back-to-back elections in 1984 (Reagan carried every state except Mondale’s Minnesota) and 1988 (Bush won 40 states and 426 Electors).
Still, while I’m skeptical Rahm Freaking Emanuel is the savior, he, Beshear, and others are on to something.
As someone whose PhD is about to turn 30, I’m certainly not opposed to the language of the academy. It’s quite helpful in its place and often points to real issues in society. Terms like intersectionality and white privilege convey important concepts in a crisp shorthand easily understood by those steeped in the professional jargon.
At the same time, they’re not only confusing but potentially insulting outside their academic context. You’re simply not going to convince a tradesman who’s climbed from poverty to the upper middle class through years of hard work that he’s privileged.
Similarly, while I laud the intent of trying to replace slave with enslaved person, it comes across as artificial and pointy-headed. Slave is a word that’s been around for centuries and is imbued with deep meaning that instantly conveys with a single syllable. Enslaved person, by contrast, is stilted and clunky. It tries to retroactively restore humanity to those held as human chattel, but comes across much like Ford’s attempt to claim Poland was never under Soviet domination.
What’s not quite clear from these conversations is whether Emanuel and company think this is simply a messaging problem or part of a broader need to rethink policy positioning. Is the problem the use of Latinx? Or is it their stance on issues like transwomen in women’s sports? Is the problem calling those here in violation of our immigration laws undocumented rather than illegal? Or is it about actual policies?
Two other quick thoughts occur to me in this context.
First, it’s noteworthy that the Democrats are having this conversation. They fully acknowledge that they lost the 2024 election and are trying to figure out how to win the next one. That’s in stark contrast to the Republican response to their 2020 loss.
Second, continuing the long-running OTB theme of weak parties, it’s not obvious what the institutional Democratic Party can do about any of this. If Emanuel, Beshear, or another more centrist candidate wins the 2028 nomination, they’ll naturally take the party along with them. Conversely, if an AOC wins the nomination, the party will naturally shift in that direction.
Recall that the GOP famously conducted an “autopsy” of their 2012 loss, concluding that it needed to be more inclusive: “We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities. But it is not just tone that counts. Policy always matters.”
They nominated Donald Trump in 2016.
