Democrats Are Scheming To Market Themselves As Moderates To Regain Power — Here’s How We Can Stop It

By Bill Wilson

There is a growing concern among Democrats and pundits that after a crushing defeat in the 2024 presidential election and persistently low rankings in public trust, the Democratic Party doesn’t need modest tweaks to win back the public but requires a complete overhaul.

Left-wing strategists have been fixated on the idea of returning the party to a slate of “economic issues” as poll after poll finds Democratic voters are growing weary of the party’s barrage of social-justice propaganda and lack of action on the economy and the border.   

Pundits are suddenly interested in the Democratic Party’s ability to recruit a fleeing species — moderates — and lure them back into the fold under the pretense of rekindled interest in economic issues and a pseudo-burial of their radical social justice agenda.  

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released June 19 found Democrat voters assert by a 38-point margin — 62 percent to 24 percent — that the party should replace Democrat leaders with new leaders. The survey also found double-digit gaps between the policy priorities Democrat voters say they want Congressional Democrats to focus on, and the priorities they say party leaders are focused on. 

This spring, an alarming poll from Democratic-leaning research group Navigator Research circulated on the left and underscored just how much the party’s support among middle-class voters has shrunk due to a mismatch in priorities.

According to the Navigator poll, which surveyed voters in 62 competitive House districts across the country, voters said by fourteen points — 56 percent to 42 percent — that the Democratic Party is not looking out for working people. Less than half of voters — 44 percent — believed the Democratic Party “respects” work and even less — 39 percent — said the party “values” work.    

These bleak numbers are prompting many on the left to call for a more “moderate” Democratic Party in order to get ahead in next years’ election. 

In an opinion piece by James Carville and Stanley B. Greenberg for the Washington Post, the authors forecast an optimistic Democratic “earthquake” in the midterm elections, due to the party nominating moderate candidates with broader appeal.  

The authors acknowledge that, “the great majority of Democratic voters hate the activist, elite agenda that dominated the Democratic Party under President Joe Biden.” They are right about that part, but the Democratic Party actually becoming more economically responsive and less ideologically driven is highly speculative.

Democrats really aren’t here out of a change of ideology. They are backed against the wall with rock-bottom rankings in public trust, two-thirds of their voters calling for a complete replacement of Congressional Democrats, and a historically meager lead in the generic congressional ballot surveys against President Trump’s party, despite aspirations to repeat the 2018 “blue wave”. 

Liberal elitists responsible for the Democratic Party’s utter abandonment of the middle-class and elevation of a set of fringe social issues that poll constantly near the bottom in terms of public priorities have not had a change of heart. Instead, they are beginning to realize they are on the brink of extinction unless they attempt to market themselves as economically motivated “moderates” in the upcoming midterm elections.

Nonetheless, the calls for an economy-focused “moderate” agenda are everywhere.  

David Brooks, an opinion columnist at the New York Times, highlighted the need for Democratic reform in a recent op-ed, pointing out that Democrats are continuing to lose on policy issues because they have distanced themselves from the middle and working classes and aren’t getting the “big moral questions” right.

Elsewhere, opinion contributors Patrick Doherty, Rich Pelletier and Peter Brown echoed this call for reform and a “radical center wing” in a recent opinion piece for The Hill. “To unleash that economic potential, this new wing of the party will have to cast aside ideology, myths and disinformation for what works in practice and at scale”, they wrote. “We like to call this approach radical centrism.” 

Are die-hard progressives really embracing a moderate economic agenda that appeals to the needs of the American people — lower crime, a secure border, and America First economic policies? In short, no.    

In the recent New York City mayoral upset, left-wing primary challenger Zohran Mamdani who has backed a slate of radical priorities, beat out former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. Mamdani’s win has triggered a vehement round of Democratic infighting, as progressives lauded the self-described democratic socialist, and pragmatists fretted over Mamdani’s victory driving economically-sensitive moderates further toward the right. 

The voices calling for moderation are calling too late. Through decades of a relentless campaign that consistently alienated working Americans, demeaned white Americans, demanded allegiance from minorities and young people while undermining them at every turn, and created a horrific environment of open borders, crime, dwindling economic opportunities and crushing inflation, Democrats have lost the people.

In a widely-circulated finding from the post-election survey by the Blueprint strategy group, one of the most important reasons voters chose to back President Donald Trump over Kamala Harris — after inflation and illegal immigration — was Harris’ focus on radical cultural issues.  

According to the survey, voters said, “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class”. Harris’ focus on radical social issues over the economy was the top reason swing voters chose Trump, according to the survey.

Ruy Teixeira recently pointed out in his piece for the Liberal Patriot that the vast majority of swing voters (two-thirds or more) who supported Trump over Harris agreed that the following statements for Democrats were extremely or very accurate: not tough enough on the border crisis; support immigrants more than American citizens; want to take money from hard-working Americans and give it to immigrants; want to promote transgender ideology; don’t care about securing the border; have extreme ideas about immigration; aren’t doing enough to address crime; and are too focused on identity politics.

Americans trust conservatives on a majority of frequently cited issues of importance, from immigration and inflation to taxes, crime, foreign policy, the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even combatting corruption according to a detailed YouGov survey of conducted May 16-19.  

In fact, the only somewhat highly-ranked issues that Democrats lead on are two issues that present an opportunity for conservatives to fill the void and reclaim swing voters in aggregate: healthcare and the environment.  

Healthcare has ranked as the third or fourth most important to Americans — right after immigration and the economy/inflation — depending on the poll for months. The environment ranks lower but only by a few percentage points and it is notably higher among swing voters. 

The modern right under President Donald Trump has adopted a renewed focus on national wellbeing — a focus on immigration reform, secure borders, structuring trade and foreign policy initiatives to favor Americans, and even a renewed focus on physical health under the agenda of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Through this approach, President Trump has built one of the most diverse coalitions in history, unifying moderates, Hispanics, young people and middle-class voters around the America First cause.

Modern conservatives have come a long, long way in terms of adopting a slate of citizens-first, people-first priorities that appeal to a broad coalition of voters. The final two issues are addressing healthcare reform and balancing protection for land and water with industrial needs. Without Democrats monopolizing these two issues, the party offers nothing to moderates and swing voters that conservatives can’t do better on.     

Reform absolutely means rejecting failed power-grabs which were progressives’ go-to approach to healthcare and the environment in recent years. Conservative reform does not mean entering nonsensical global agreements like the Paris Climate Accord or structuring a Canada-style healthcare system that delivers subpar results at best and a system of death at worst. But these issues can’t be ignored by conservatives either. 

The solution from a conservative lens is accountability for both government and industry, not draconian top-down solutions. Conservatives need to hold industry accountable when it poisons the environment, injects harmful non-foodstuffs into the market to turn a profit, or cuts corners on insurance payouts leaving families stranded and bankrupt. However, industry must also be worked with to find acceptable solutions to healthcare costs and allow the excavation of natural resources in a way that does not strip mine the nation.

If these two issues are addressed on the right at scale, conservatives will truly have become a collective dedicated to serving the people at every level and can appeal to a broad coalition of Americans far beyond what Republicans dreamed of just fifteen years ago. The exact opposite can be said for the Democratic Party, a party that has repeatedly abandoned the American people in pursuit of power and self-interest.

Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.

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