By Joshua Arnold

Their recent electoral thumping has Democrats distraught. “That was a cataclysm,” exclaimed Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “Electoral map wipeout. Senate D practical ceiling is now 52 seats. R’s is 62.” As a result, prominent Democrats from former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile to Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) have declared that “the Democratic Party needs to be rebuilt.”

As much as this sounds like unified messaging, Democrats are divided over how to rebuild the house. Politico writes that “Centrist Democrats are revolting” from the party’s leftward sprint.

“The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle,” protested Joseph Paolino Jr., a DNC committeeman for Rhode Island. Pennsylvania DNC member Cindy Bass echoed the sentiment, “I’m not interested in anyone who is moving further away from the center. The center is where we have to be.”

Readers may be surprised by the suggestion that there are centrists in the modern Democratic Party, which so often marches in lockstep. Indeed, as far as political records are concerned, these so-called centrists apparently went along with nearly every cockamamie scheme of the far Left. What apparently makes them “centrists” — at least in their own understanding — is that their heart was never in the agenda for radical social change.

Now, these fair-weather centrists have found their voice after radical leftism led Democrats to their worst electoral showing since at least 2004, if not 1988. At least for a moment, centrism appears politically savvy. “The one way to beat a right-wing populist is through the center,” suggested Third Way executive vice president for public affairs Matt Bennett. “You must become the party that is more pragmatic, reasonable and more sane. That’s where we have to go.”

Centrist-leaning Democrats stress the party’s history as a coalition of working-class Americans. “I don’t think the party has fully embraced, and hasn’t for decades, really, working-class people,” complained Laborers’ International Union of North America chief Brent Booker. “A lot of our [union] members own guns. A lot of our members hunt.” The top concerns Booker heard from union members this year were inflation, immigration, and the Keystone Pipeline, not culture-war issues like abortion.

A few Democratic elected officials have uttered specific criticisms of their party’s culturally radical policies. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) recently criticized “folks on the far left who alienate a ton of people,” particularly on transgenderism. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who won reelection in a battleground Long Island district by two points, complained that Democrats have suffered by “pandering to the far Left.” For instance, he said, “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”

Can you imagine a Democratic member of Congress criticizing boys in girls’ sports as recently as October? How an election can shift the cultural winds!

Other Democrats agree, although they are often afraid to say so publicly. “I do think there’s this whole sentiment that we just went too far out there on identity,” a DNC member from California admitted anonymously, “and it allowed the Republicans to really attack us at every turn as a result.”

“I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us,” mused another anonymous DNC member from Florida. “When you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America, and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”

Making such comments anonymously is not courageous, but neither is it without reason. At least one Democratic politician has already faced intense blowback for suggesting the party moderate on its transgender agenda.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) proposed on November 6, “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. 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.”

For that statement, Moulton has faced criticism from the Massachusetts governor, his hometown Salem’s city council pledged to recruit a primary challenger, and leftist protestors assembled outside his local office. A department manager at Tufts University blacklisted his office for student internships (before the university overruled him), and Moulton’s campaign manager immediately quit. Such behavior only serves to prove Moulton’s point and illustrate why so many Democrats are afraid to speak against the transgender agenda.

It turns out that such cultural extremism is electoral suicide. In a post-election survey, Democratic polling firm Blueprint found that swing voters’ most frequent objection to Harris was her excessive focus on “cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” All these voters were swayed by a Trump campaign attack ad concluding with the line, “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.” The ad aired more than 15,000 times, especially during high-viewership events like football games.

Such outcomes strengthen the argument of Democrats who want their party to tack to the center: Why would they incautiously pursue policies aimed to placate a sliver demographic that can turn into such a huge electoral liability?

But other Democrats aren’t buying it. “It’s important not to yield to manufactured panic, and to align with the actual facts before making sweeping claims,” former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, in response to Moulton and others. “Echoing and adopting the panic from the other side is not leading. It’s not meeting people where they are. It’s simply falling prey to right-wing propaganda without checking the facts first.”

Psaki’s argument implies that swing voters — not to mention fellow Democrats — are stupid enough to be duped by baseless propaganda. But a more modest and charitable explanation is that the ad was effective because it matched what people saw with their eyes.

When the Trump campaign paid for an ad claiming that Kamala Harris would be obsessively focused on identity politics instead of economic prosperity, swing voters believed it not because they instinctively believe Trump, or even paid political broadcasts, but because they saw Harris obsessively focusing on identity politics instead of economic prosperity.

But don’t take my word for it. Avowed socialist Bernie Sanders gave a surprising boost to the moderates’ argument, declaring, “It’s not just Kamala. It’s a Democratic Party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics, rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class. This trend of workers leaving the Democratic Party started with whites, and it has accelerated to Latinos and Blacks.”

Some Democratic figures sided with Psaki. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) argued that Harris ran “a terrific campaign” with no fundamental flaws. He characterized the resounding electoral defeat as nothing more than a technical failure. “There’s a couple of groups in the United States — young men and Latino voters — that just did not respond in a positive way to our candidate and our message and our record,” he admitted, but this was merely “a gap that we didn’t close.” Coons would counsel the Democratic Party to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

Meanwhile, others admit the Democratic Party has a problem, but it isn’t their transgender extremism. “The Democratic Party needs to do some serious introspection to understand what went wrong and why our message isn’t resonating or reaching people. But one thing’s for sure — blaming trans kids isn’t the answer,” orated Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.). In a New York Times op-ed, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) also argued that Democrats can keep their transgender policy agenda, so long as they prioritize the top concerns of voters, like the economy, health care, and infrastructure.

(This may strike readers as an unserious argument, but the 2008, 2012, and 2020 elections suggest that, under the right circumstances, American voters will vote for progressive Democrats.)

More than anything, Beshear’s op-ed was a critique of the Biden administration, which neglected the issues voters care about in favor of a radical social agenda — and managed to fumble every single one of them.

Could national Democrats implement the sort of competent, socially progressive administration Beshear envisions? It’s possible, but that would require a level of prudence and pragmatism not currently in evidence. A key reason why is the radicalism of far-Left activists, who think they can call shots in the party and are often proven right. “When the Democratic Party immediately adopts all of its activist messaging as theirs as well, it causes voters to lose confidence in them as anything other than a Trojan horse for an agenda they see as directly targeting their children,” observed National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar.

Unchastised by the Democratic defeat, one group of far-Left activists seek to further radicalize the party. Justice Democrats, a left-wing coalition including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the Squad, plans to resume its strategy of launching primary challenges against Democrats in deep-blue districts. “It’s time to clean up shop in the Democratic Party frankly,” announced group spokesman Usamah Andrabi.

The first test for whether the Democratic Party is capable of reversing its leftward slide will be the upcoming election in early 2025 of a new chair for the Democratic National Committee, who will oversee the party’s formal post-mortem review of the 2024 election. It’s too early to say who will win the job, with over a dozen names still in the running. The lessons learned — or not learned — in that review process could determine the party’s direction for years to come.

At least in some corners, early comments suggest a change in leadership philosophy is unlikely. “I’m disappointed that most of the names I’m hearing are men,” Shasti Conrad, Washington state’s Democratic Party chair, complained. “I hope we get some strong female candidates, too. One of my worries is that one of the bad takes is the party thinks that we’ve tried more diverse leadership, and maybe that doesn’t work.” Maybe what doesn’t work is focusing on identity politics, to the exclusion of any consideration of actual qualification.

Even Sanders is skeptical that Democrats can make the necessary changes. “Whether or not the Democratic Party has the capability — given who funds it and its dependency on well-paid consultants — whether it has the capability of transforming itself, remains to be seen,” he said.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.