A New Dem A-Team

The Democrats need a new team of frontline spokesDems.

Chuck Schumer drones on as he reads from printed texts while peering over his reading glasses. He comes off like a bookkeeper questioning your travel reimbursements. Elizabeth Warren wags her finger in her shrill, school marm scolds. (I know. I’m not supposed to refer to a woman as shrill, but when the word fits, use it.) Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is the face of hip, young, identity-obsessed, very liberal New Yorkers — and nobody likes these people. Ilhan Omar just annoys everyone. And whenever I start to get down on myself for being a grumpy old man, I find a clip of Bernie Sanders. He makes me feel youthful and light-hearted by comparison.

As we like to note with some frequency here at YSDA, the image of the Democratic Party is out of sync with rank-and-file Democrats who are a lot more down to earth and in touch with the rest of America. My party would be so much better off if its elites weren’t its face.

Here are some pols who would do much better at being the voice of the party.

Pete Buttigieg. Nobody communicates more clearly than Mayor Peter. He’s the Bill Clinton of his generation. He thinks on his feet and he has a knack for framing things in a way that makes you think ‘well, yeah, that makes sense.’ He can even weather the howling winds of Fox News. And he’s just naturally positive and likable.

Seth Moulton. A congressman from suburban Boston, Moulton has often been the voice of reason in a party gone mad over identity politics. “I have two little girls,” he said. “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.” He should say that over and over again because that’s how most Americans feel.

Tammy Baldwin. Our own Senator is understated. She gets around the whole state and she delivers for rural Wisconsin. Last year she won the endorsement of the Farm Bureau, the first time that group had supported a Democrat in two decades. There were probably some 50,000 or so Trump-Baldwin voters, and that won her a narrow victory in a Republican year.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She owns an auto body shop with her husband in rural Washington State and holds down a seat in Congress from a reddish district. She voted against Joe Biden’s student loan bailouts, raising the ire of her colleagues. Democrats need to ask themselves why, if they have all of these policies that benefit blue collar workers, those same blue collar workers vote against them in droves. I’ll answer that. People vote more on values and impressions than they do on policy white papers and Democrats don’t come off as the blue collar party. They come off as the party of transgender rights, weak immigration laws and an obsession (perhaps well placed) with climate change. And they talk down to voters: ‘if only you could understand how good our policies would be for you, you’d vote for us.’ Gluesenkamp understands this. She connects with blue collar voters because she’s one of them.

Hakeem Jeffries. The House Democratic Leader has been understated so far — maybe too understated. He may be pursuing a strategy of allowing Trump to hoist himself on his own petard. There’s an old saying in politics that when someone is digging his own grave don’t take his shovel away from him. But at some point, the man who holds one of the two most powerful positions for a Democrat (the other is Schumer) is going to have to articulate the Democratic alternative. Unburdened by a high-profile leftist background, he’s well positioned to do that.

Kamala Harris. Yeah, I know. She lost. But she lost because of things that were either beyond her control (inflation and a worldwide lurch to the hard-right) or things that were beyond her current control (the hard-left stances she had to take as a California politician). But I thought she ran a good campaign. She moved to the center and she represented the party well. She’ll have to be more outspoken in disavowing her earlier hard-left positions — and running for governor of California won’t help her do that — but I don’t think her political career is over. She transformed herself in a way that the entire party must if they want to win.

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