Dem Strategist Tells NYT the Party Is ‘In the Toilet’ to End 2024 – Those Who Won Elections ‘Ran Against’ the ‘Brand’
Screenshot/CNN
A Democratic Party strategist told The New York Times on Monday that her party’s brand was “in the toilet” with voters and that elected officials who were successful won their elections by charting their own paths.
Times opinion contributing writer Frank Bruni hosted what the paper called a written online conversation. He was joined by podcaster Anat Shenker-Osorio, former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan, and Lis Smith – who was Pete Buttigeig’s 2020 senior campaign adviser.
The quartet spoke in-depth about where Democrats go after an election in which they lost the White House and the Senate, and Republicans kept their slim House majority.
Addressing Shenker-Osorio, Ryan, and Smith, Bruni noted President-elect Donald Trump was four weeks from being inaugurated for a second term and commented Democrats were attempting to find their footing.
He asked, “In your opinion, what’s the one biggest reason behind — the key factor explaining — what happened to Democrats in 2024, and tell me why it, er, trumps all the others?” Smith replied:
The Democratic brand is in the toilet. Many of the Democrats who succeeded this cycle — our best over-performers in House races, for instance — are people who ran against the Democratic Party brand. Trump tore down the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but he also expanded his vote the most in our bluest and most urban areas.
Bruni followed up, asking Smith, “’The toilet’? Yikes, Lis, that’s severe. Do you really think it’s that bad?”Dem Strategist Says the Party’s Brand Is ‘In the Toilet’
Smith doubled down in her response, telling Bruni, “When the best way to win as a candidate is to run against your own party, it’s that bad. Our candidates down ballot are good. It’s what the ‘D’ next to their name means (the status quo) that people don’t like.”
In his assessment of what went wrong, Ryan told Bruni:
The Dems got pinned as the status quo party on inflation, instability, insecurity and every other issue facing working people. Trump was the change candidate in a year when 65 percent of people thought we are on the wrong track. And they failed to redefine themselves on the culture issues on which they were on the other side of 60 percent to 70 percent of Americans.
Asked if she agreed the Democratic Party brand was in “the toilet,” Shenker-Osorio replied, “Well … toilets have clear utility, so perhaps the comparison is even ‘generous.’”
The podcaster concluded Trump was more successful than Vice President Kamala Harris at getting his party’s base fired up to vote.
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