Woke baggage weighs down Democrats’ economic message

As Democrats attempt to unite around a new economic populism, Republicans can hardly believe their luck. Five months after President Donald Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris to win a White House encore, Democrats are still refusing to jettison the politically damaging progressive dogma on cultural issues — blunting any advantage they stand to gain on the economy. That’s certainly what many Republicans believe. “Their populist economic message would probably be effective except it has all this other baggage,” said veteran Republican strategist David Carney, who is based in New Hampshire and counts among his clients Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

The working and middle-class voters Democrats need to improve their competitiveness in national elections aren’t going to listen to the party’s pitch on the economy, Carney elaborated, if they stubbornly cling to progressive positions on key cultural issues, like supporting transgender women in female sports, but also policies Republicans derisively tag as “DEI” — diversity, equity and inclusion — as well as a perceived intolerance for voters who oppose abortion rights on religious grounds (and yet other perceived intolerance, more on that in a bit).

Carney and other GOP operatives I’ve spoken with aren’t reflexively critical of the “fight oligarchy” message promulgated by two of the country’s leading progressives, New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders.

Suspicion of big business runs deep in the US, especially among Republican voters loyal to President Donald Trump. And although billionaire technology mogul and White House advisor Elon Musk is something of a folk hero on the right, his favorable ratings overall have dropped, with 49% of registered voters viewing him negatively in a late March poll from Harris and Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies. Just 39% viewed Musk positively.

So the effort by some Democrats to reinvigorate their party’s economic agenda with a populism that identifies Trump and Republicans in Congress with corporate America and wealthy titans of industry isn’t necessarily something to sneer at, some Republicans tell me. Still, Democrats can’t simply change the subject to the economy and hope swing voters will automatically trust them.

Transgender rights, and particularly Democratic support for trans women and girls playing female sports, is one such political wedge, as is support for DEI, or “woke” policies. Democrats generally use “DEI” to refer to policies that treat all people equally, with a special focus on making sure such equality applies to historically marginalized ethnic and social groups.

Republicans tend to see DEI as reverse discrimination that is unconstitutional and antithetical to meritocracy. Recent polling from NBC News shows voters are split on DEI programs, but the outcome of the 2024 presidential contest in the crucial swing states, with Trump sweeping Harris in all seven, suggests the issue was and remains a loser for Democrats.

Yet here’s Tim Walz, the progressive Minnesota governor and Harris’ running mate, talking about DEI during a town hall meeting he co-hosted in the Lone Star State with Democratic former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke: “We let ( Republicans) define the issue on DEI and we let them define what ‘woke’ is. We got ourselves in this mess because we weren’t bold enough to stand up and say: ‘You’re damn right we’re proud of these policies. We’re gonna put ‘em in and we’re gonna execute ‘em.”

That’s what Carney would call some heavy baggage.

The Republicans’ dismissive view of Walz and his ilk might reek of standard, partisan overconfidence. It might be just that. But in fact, many Democratic insiders agree.

“Republicans were able to define Democrats as being out of sync on these issues,” Larry Ceisler, a public affairs executive in Pennsylvania active in Democratic politics, told me during a telephone conversation. “With all that’s at stake; I don’t think trans girls playing sports is a hill to die on.”

Ceisler said this despite believing Republicans are “misleading” and “just plain cruel” on this issue, noting very few trans women are active in female sports. But he does not want Democrats to blow an opportunity to recover lost ground being handed to them by Trump. And other Democrats are telling me much the same.

That opportunity is on the economy, typically voters’ highest priority. Trump was elected largely to secure the Mexican border and reduce inflation. The president has delivered on the former. But on the latter, Trump is pursuing aggressive protectionist trade policies. The implementation of myriad tariffs, that rather than bringing down the cost of goods, services and housing that exploded under his immediate predecessor, President Joe Biden, are fueling fears of higher prices.

Evidence of disillusionment with Trump’s handling of the economy is beginning to show up in opinion polls — and at the polls. Democrats just captured a ruby red state senate district in Pennsylvania, the most coveted swing state of the 2024 White House contest.

But producing big wins in the 2026 national midterm elections, never mind in the next presidential race, is going to require Democrats to reconnect with voters who have increasingly turned to the GOP during the Trump era because they have felt rejected by the left.

This is not just about a simple disagreement over whether and how trans women should be allowed to play sports. It’s not even, really, about disagreements over abortion rights, gun rights and climate change. It’s about how working class and culturally conservative middle-class voters who used to be reliable Democratic voters defected to the GOP because they grew tired of, from their perspective, being disrespected, belittled and mocked.

Some Democratic insiders blame the so-called coastal elites that have come to dominate their party since the turn of the century. This trend has been accelerated by Trump, who has simultaneously converted disaffected, culturally conservative Democrats and sent college educated professionals scurrying left.

“There’s a subset of mainly White, affluent progressives whose counter-culture messages and tendencies — like ‘defunding the police’ or insulting people of faith — alienate voters of every background,” Andrew Bates, who worked as a top aide in Biden’s White House communications shop, told me.

“We should be proud that the values we’re fighting for are rooted in the best traditions of American culture and can unite big majorities of Americans when framed that way,” Bates added.

Which brings us back to “fight oligarchy.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are nominal political outsiders, regular critics of the Democratic establishment and proud progressives who are beloved by leftwing base voters — qualities that have advantages in today’s political environment.

During a recent swing through western and midwestern states, their “fight oligarchy” tour attracted boisterous crowds of thousands who ate up their pitch about standing up to Trump and Musk. If the voters want populism, give them populism. Right?

Some Democratic operatives are dubious, notably those intent on putting the party in a better position to win back the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. “There weren’t any swing voters at those rallies,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank in Washington DC. “And this ‘fight the oligarchy,’ which was on their podium sign and was the theme of the thing — that excites educated liberal voters. It does not resonate with the working-class voters who may have voted for Democrats in the past and didn’t in ’24.”