{"id":14896,"date":"2025-10-27T15:31:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T15:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/centrist-welcomepac-charts-path-for-dems-with-help-from-axelrod-plouffe-and-others\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T15:31:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T15:31:48","slug":"centrist-welcomepac-charts-path-for-dems-with-help-from-axelrod-plouffe-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/centrist-welcomepac-charts-path-for-dems-with-help-from-axelrod-plouffe-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Centrist WelcomePAC charts path for Dems, with help from Axelrod, Plouffe and others"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Centrist Democrats have a plan for their party to win again: Talk more about the economy and less about democracy. Reject corporate interests and ideological purity tests. Keep the progressive policies that are popular \u2014 like expanding health care and raising the minimum wage \u2014 and moderate on issues like immigration and crime.<\/p>\n

Those are among the takeaways laid out in an expansive report<\/a> Monday from WelcomePAC, which supports center-left candidates, on how Democrats can rebound from last year\u2019s electoral wipeout in 2026 and 2028.<\/p>\n

The 58-page prescription comes as Democrats continue to war over the direction of their party nearly a year after their national shellacking. And it drops a week before a slate of gubernatorial and mayoral contests that will serve as the first major temperature check of the electorate since 2024 and President Donald Trump retaking the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

It features input from a who\u2019s who of top Democratic consultants \u2014 including David Axelrod; James Carville; David Plouffe, a top adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 campaign; Lis Smith; and former Biden White House spokesperson Andrew Bates \u2014 as well as analysts and strategists like Nate Silver, Sarah Longwell and former Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois.<\/p>\n

The report is less an autopsy of the 2024 election \u2014 it spends a scant five pages on former President Joe Biden\u2019s and Harris\u2019 campaigns \u2014 and more so an indictment of the party\u2019s leftward shift since the Obama administration and the donors, campaign operatives and progressive advocacy groups the authors blame for putting Democrats in an unwinnable position.<\/p>\n

It largely echoes what moderate Democrats have been saying loudly for months<\/a> \u2014 that the party should be running to the center and focusing on kitchen table issues.<\/p>\n

It uses polling data to reinforce the message many centrist Democrats believe voters sent the party in 2024: that voters felt Democrats were prioritizing democracy, abortion and identity over top-of-mind issues like the economy, immigration and crime. It argues that moderate candidates tend to overperform progressive ones, citing centrist Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) as models for how the party should message on border security and the economy.<\/p>\n

And Democrats \u201cshould distance ourselves from the Biden administration,\u201d the authors write, \u201cparticularly by critiquing the Biden administration\u2019s approach to border security and the cost of living.\u201d Harris, they posit, lost in part because of her failure to do so \u2014 and because voters couldn\u2019t let go of her past progressive policies even as she ran a more moderate campaign.<\/p>\n

The report doesn\u2019t call for a wholesale rejection of progressive stances. Expanding access to public health care, making the wealthy \u201cpay their fair share\u201d in taxes and raising the minimum wage are all popular with voters, and WelcomePAC believes the party should continue to focus on them. Democrats, the authors say, should emulate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Democratic nominee for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201crelentless focus\u201d on affordability.<\/p>\n

But they also say Democrats should focus less on \u201clower-salience issues where our views are unpopular,\u201d such as transgender athletes. They insist that running against the establishment \u2014 as is en vogue these days \u2014 doesn\u2019t have to mean running toward the left. And they contend that simply running younger candidates \u201cis not a panacea.\u201d<\/p>\n

WelcomePAC made no mention of next week\u2019s gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia. But their strategy will undergo an early test in both states, where the party has put forward a pair of moderate lawmakers with military and national security backgrounds who are running campaigns centered on affordability. Democrats are favored to win both races, though Rep. Mikie Sherrill\u2019s contest in New Jersey is expected to be far closer than former Rep. Abigail Spanberger\u2019s in Virginia.<\/p>\n

WelcomePAC warned against drawing conclusions from the elections heading into 2028 in its report, insisting that \u201cdoing well in midterms and special elections does not guarantee Democrats anywhere close to the same results in a presidential race\u201d because less-engaged voters tend to skip those intermediate contests.<\/p>\n

But Democrats across the ideological spectrum will undoubtedly be scanning the results of next week\u2019s elections in two states that stayed blue in 2024 but shifted toward Trump for signs of what is \u2014 and isn\u2019t \u2014 working for the party heading into a high-stakes midterm election and the critical presidential contest to follow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Centrist Democrats have a plan for their party to win again: Talk more about the economy and less about democracy. Reject corporate interests and ideological purity tests. Keep the progressive policies that are popular \u2014 like expanding health care and raising the minimum wage \u2014 and moderate on issues like immigration and crime. Those are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}