Usually after a big loss, like the one we saw in the 2024 election, the losing party limps away and attempts to figure out what went wrong. There has been some of that since Trump was re-elected, but maybe you've noticed that the conclusions that were quickly drawn about where Democrats needed to moderate don't seem to have sunk in very much. This week the Atlantic published a piece asking the obvious question: Why won't Democrats take their own advice?
Immediately following the 2024 presidential election, Democrats seemed to be in rare agreement: They had moved too far to the left on cultural issues, and it had cost them. The day after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, for example, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts told The New York Times, “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” In that moment, the floodgates seemed poised to open...
In fact, in the ensuing 10 months, the floodgates have mostly stayed closed. With a few exceptions—notably California Governor Gavin Newsom and, less notably, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who hasn’t won an election since 2015—Democrats have avoided making comments similar to Moulton’s, whether regarding trans athletes or other high-profile social issues on which the party is vulnerable, such as immigration and climate.
It's not fair to say that no Democrats have learned their lesson. There have been a few who have at least made some effort to moderate and to engage people across the aisle. This comes from a Washington Post story published last month.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled to Tennessee to appear on a podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan, a conservative, tattooed former Navy SEAL, who opened the show by handing Newsom a Sig Sauer pistol that the Democratic governor proclaimed “too cool.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) joined a podcast a few days later hosted by Ted Nugent, the pro-Trump activist and onetime hard rocker, to discuss his support for allowing hunting in the Keystone State on Sundays.
Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel appeared on the Megyn Kelly Show, hosted by a former Fox host, where he said that a man cannot become a woman — then joked that given the likely reaction of his fellow Democrats, that answer would require him “to go into a witness protection plan.”...
“There is no question the party is starting to get the message. I’m delighted to see other members of the party speaking out,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts), who faced a backlash from other Democrats when he complained after the election that the party was afraid to discuss issues like trans athletes. “There are a number of issues where we have lost the trust of American voters because we are not listening to the concerns of the majority of Americans.
You can add to that, former VP Kamala Harris. Her new book, 107 Days, seems partly aimed at shifting her positions back toward the center on some of these 80-20 issues.
Kamala Harris in her new memoir expresses reservations about transgender athletes competing on girls’ sports teams, echoing other national Democrats who have voiced a position long associated with conservatives...
“I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports,” Harris writes. “With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways to do this, without vilifying and demonizing children.”
Do any of these people really believe what they are saying? I think probably not. But they are at least smart enough not to stare down a losing fight when their interest is in winning elections. But how far can they go with this before the cancel culture elements of their own partly create a backlash?
These Democrats may simply be acting on their sincere beliefs, and it’s not yet clear which of them will run for president. But their statements are concerning liberals who say they risk caving in to objectionable, even bigoted, views rather than fighting against them, and that Democrats will never win by presenting themselves as diluted Republicans.
“It is never a winning strategy to sacrifice vulnerable communities,” said Brandon Wolf, national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “People are craving leaders who are bold, who are willing to stand up to bullies, and who say unequivocally they are unwilling to compromise on values and freedom in this country.”
It may make sense for Democrats to appear in conservative venues, Wolf said — but only if they stick to their principles.
“I can appreciate the politicians who are trying to bring truth and a dose of reality to spaces that are very often void of them,” he said. “But my advice would be, when we enter those spaces, that we come rooted in rock-solid values, that we refuse to concede the right-wing frame.”
Again, I don't think this has much to do with sincere beliefs. I think it has everything to do with triangulating. It's a recognition of the fact that some of these issues are electoral losers which can drag a candidate down in a general election. Harris and Newsom saw it happen and are thinking about running again so they need to moderate. But most of the people in their party still seem afraid of what the Human Rights Campaign will say about them. So they remain silent.
And it's not just trans issues. I wrote a post yesterday about the fact that Democrats still haven't adopted a sensible position on immigration. Some proposals have been made but no one is really championing any of them. Josh Barro suggests the new ideas still strike many on the left as extreme even though they are winning issues.
The mental block that Democrats have here relates to an instinct about deportations: a feeling that it’s presumptively improper to remove an unauthorized immigrant who has settled in our country if that migrant hasn’t committed a crime unrelated to immigration. These people have been here a long time, the idea goes. They’re not causing trouble.
But if we build a system where people very often get to stay here simply because they made it in — the system that prevailed during most of Mr. Biden’s term — then we don’t really have an immigration policy, and voters won’t have any reason to believe us when we say our new policy will produce different results about who comes here...
If we force voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s overly harsh approach and our overly permissive one, we will continue to lose on the issue.
Maybe Gov. Newsome or Kamala Harris will take this up too. But for the most part, the fear of being targeted by the left still has most Democrats sitting on their hands. If they refuse to learn the lessons from their most recent loss, they will likely repeat the same outcome in the next election.
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