Is a Common-Sense Faction of Democrats Rising?
Encouraging developments from the wilderness.
Over the past four years, we at The Liberal Patriot have written extensively about what we view as the weaknesses of the Democratic Party. This includes losing their identity as a party that looks like—and represents the interests of—the working class; catering more to a professional class of academics, influencers, and interest groups whose attitudes and priorities are often unrepresentative of the country’s; becoming less willing to embrace patriotism and traditional liberal commitments to things like free speech, due process, and equality of opportunity; and struggling to effectively govern many cities and states, precipitating a population exodus, often to red states.
If you’ve read us for any period of time, you likely also know that we generally think Democrats would be best served by, among other things, moving more toward the median voter, especially on cultural issues. Numerous polls make clear that voters think Democrats have moved too far left, which has left them increasingly out of step with many Americans and created electoral headaches, especially in contests for the presidency and U.S. Senate—as evidenced just last year.
On the heels of their dismal 2024 showing, it appeared Democrats inexplicably weren’t interested in changing course. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of this came during the party’s February DNC gathering, which at times felt like something out of a Democratic Socialists of America meeting. Aside from one lonely voice, the party seemed to triple down much of what has let it astray over the past decade. Separately, prominent Democrats have been recycling some of the same rhetoric about “fascism” that Kamala Harris employed during the campaign to no avail.
However, there have recently been encouraging signs that at least some Democrats are looking to chart a new path. The first came from Democratic voters themselves. After Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, roughly equal shares of the party’s voters said they wanted Democrats to become more liberal (34 percent), become more moderate (34 percent), or stay the same (31 percent). But after their second loss to Trump, most want a new direction, with a clear plurality (45 percent) saying they want the party to moderate. Meanwhile, the share saying they want a more liberal party dropped five points to just 29 percent.
What’s notable about this development is that it comes at a time when the party’s base has become more liberal than ever before. Today, the split between liberal and moderate Democrats is roughly 55–45, respectively. Perhaps expectedly, an overwhelming share of self-identified moderates (62 percent) support greater moderation. But nearly a third of liberals also want a more moderate party, while not even a majority (45 percent) say they want the party to move further left. This is likely wise, considering the country continues to lean right overall.
Recent evidence also suggests that most Democratic voters care about bread-and-butter issues that resonate with many Americans. Despite impressions that Democrats prioritize social justice issues above all else, a survey from the group More In Common found that the top three issues they cared about were inflation (40 percent), abortion (29 percent), and healthcare (29 percent).
None of this means that Democratic voters support Trump or his second-term policy priorities; quite the contrary. But when judging the future of their party, many now seem to want a new direction.
It’s not just voters, either. Some politicians and operatives are also beginning to vocalize support for change. Last month, former South Bend Mayor and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg went viral for expressing discontent over how the party has approached certain hot-button cultural issues. Buttigieg captured the balance that Democrats will likely need to strike—not abandoning their values of inclusivity and protection of society’s vulnerable but also not reducing everyone to their immutable characteristics:
What do we mean when we talk about diversity? Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one’s mistreated because of them—which I will always fight for—or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia? Which I have also experienced. [This] is how Trump Republicans are made. […]
If we were more serious about the actual values and not caught up in the vocabularies and trying to cater to everybody only in terms of their particular slice of combinations of identities versus the shared project…if we thought about it a little bit differently, things like diversity would be…an example of how we reach out beyond our traditional coalition.
Politico also reported this week about a group of center-left political operatives and elected officials that met last month to help plot a path back to power for the party. One result of the gathering was a five-page memo that both analyzed how Democrats lost the support of the working class, including on cultural issues and the economy, and offered ideas for how to remedy those disconnects.
On the cultural front, the memo argued that the party has become out of touch with the sensibilities of many Americans and operates as a kind of exclusive club wedded to orthodoxies that cannot be challenged. Echoing Buttigieg, they state that Democrats overemphasize identity politics and don’t offer a positive message rooted in a national identity, and that the party alienates people when it adopts language and terms that most people don’t use, such as “Latinx” and “pregnant people.” They additionally are often seen as defenders of unpopular institutions like government bureaucracy, media, and academia but critics of institutions that are an important part of many people’s lives, such as churches and the police. Much of the blame falls on decisions that have allowed the party’s left flank to shape its direction.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ overemphasis on social and cultural issues has come at the expense of any type of coherent economic message. In this void, voters have come to see the party as “favoring excessive regulations, inefficient spending, and programs that don’t benefit them,” including pushing “anti-growth” climate policies. There is also a sense that the party “vilifies” wealth, despite many Americans aspiring to one day become rich.
The memo recommends that Democrats address their cultural deficits by distancing themselves from the far left and embracing shared values and cultural alignment in lieu of identity politics. It argues the party should eschew language of “faculty lounges” in favor of plain talk that resonates with more people and avoid “overly moralistic or condescending” messaging. Importantly, the memo’s authors also call on the party to elevate more moderate voices by building new talent pipelines and pushing back against “the groups.” On the economy, they recommend speaking about wealth in more aspirational terms while also recognizing voters’ real concerns (rather than ignoring it).
Time will tell what direction Democrats choose. We may not get a glimpse of their decision until the 2028 presidential primary. But it’s clear that many Democratic voters are searching for a new direction, and at least some party members are beginning to signal that they hear them.
And in the Senate yesterday Democrats blocked a measure that would prohibit trans girls competing with girls in sports. Showing that they still favor progressive ideas instead of ideas that Americans want. They haven't learned a darned thing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/03/03/senate-vote-transgender-athletes-womens-sports/
The column is advising Democrats to hide what they've become over the past twenty years or so starting when they became the anti-Iraq War party (a war we did win, btw.) Now they are the pro-Ukraine War party which doesn't make sense when you think about it.
There is much to be hidden. The response to covid when Democrats acted like Bolsheviks needs to be relegated to the American memory hole if possible, as does the five months of rioting in the run up to the 2020 election in which the Democrat left began imagining America without police or laws against theft. The fascist tactics used against Trump in which they tried to jail and confiscate the property of a candidate for President of the United States needs to be soft-peddled. Pronoun idiocy was a peculiar way to persuade heterosexual Americans, that is to say the vast majority of them, to pledge allegiance to the Democrat Party and allowing people with testicle to compete with women in women's sports did not warm the hearts of families with athletic daughters.
They will have to hide the fact that they believe in abortion up until birth and that abortion is a legitimate and easy form of birth control.
Democrats, who have been the anti-war party for most of my baby-boomer life, are suddenly petrified by the Red Menace in a country on the other side of the world that has for much of its ethnic life been part of the Russian Empire. They also pledge allegiance to Europe and NATO, even though the US has spent a large portion of it's wealth in defending Europe in two world wars in the last century and providing 200,000 soldiers for half a century to defend it from the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.
Yes, there is much to be hidden and much lucubrating to be done to fashion a platform that causes Americans to forget all of the above.