Matt Bennett
Appearances
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
The consequences for the country would have been enormous.
Consider This from NPR
Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
I really don't. Look, I share their passion, I understand their anger, and I share the anger. I feel it every single day. I just don't think that's what we need to be doing as a party right now. Because I think ultimately our job is to win back the votes of voters that left us, the people that either stayed home or voted for Republicans in 2024.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
And I really don't think that those kinds of displays are what those voters are looking for. They're looking for a party that is more reasonable in their view Then Trump and the Republicans think we have an opportunity to win that battle, but probably not through displays like that.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
Well, look, it was three weeks into the Trump administration, so the vibe was pretty downbeat. I think everybody there was fairly grim and clear-eyed about the depth of the hole that Democrats find ourselves in at the moment. So we did a lot of hard thinking about what we're saying to voters on cultural issues like immigration and crime and other things and on the economy.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
And I think we all agreed that we have work to do in both areas.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
Well, I think one thing that we concluded was voters felt like, first of all, that we had lost that battle for reasonableness. That somehow Donald Trump, who in my view at least is the most unreasonable national figure maybe in the history of American politics, beat us and was able to argue that he would restore order where the Democrats were offering chaos.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
the border, in the grocery store, on the streets. Now, we have a huge opportunity because he is not restoring order. He is bringing chaos of his own. But we can't rely on that to win. We've got to make sure that voters don't think that we're completely out of touch with how they live their lives, with their values, and what they believe is important.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
So we can't simply minimize their fears about immigration or about crime. And we can't talk to them about the economy and just say, look, the macroeconomic numbers are great when many people are living right close to the edge and just trying to keep body and soul together. And I think that is where Democrats fell short as a party, not individual candidates, but as a party.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
And that's where we must improve.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
Well, some of that is contrast. And I think what we must do is make clear that what Trump is doing now is deeply unreasonable. And as Senator Slotkin pointed out last night, I think very effectively. the kinds of reforms that he promised might be good, but the kinds of cuts that he's bringing are not.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
Instead of a scalpel, Musk is literally bringing a chainsaw to the federal government and cutting things that nobody voted to cut. Nobody went to the polls and voted to stop research in Alzheimer's or cancer. Nobody wanted to cut the park service employees that clean the bathrooms or air traffic controllers or veterans who are trying to help other veterans in crisis. No one voted for that.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
And Democrats must make sure that people understand that that's what they're getting in the second Trump term. So setting the contrast is vital. And then talking about the issues that people care about in ways that they can really relate two, I think is also very important, which is, again, why I thought Senator Slotkin's response was quite good.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
She talked about the economy in very realistic and very simple terms, and we've got to keep that up.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
We're never going to be unified the way Republicans are. I mean, they've kind of become cultish. They just leapt to their feet and cheered no matter what Trump said last night, including when he was making absurd and insulting comments about one of their colleagues. So, no, we're never going to have that kind of slavish uniformity that Republicans under Trump have got.
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Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?
And as Jesse Jackson said decades ago, the Democratic Party needs two wings to fly. We're always going to have a very progressive wing and a more moderate wing. But I think we can rally around some core arguments that we can make about where Trump wants to take us versus where we should be headed. And so, no, we won't speak with one voice, but I think we can be more unified than we are.