Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
Over the next month, The New York Times is running conversations with Democrat leaders on one of its podcasts about how the party will “win back the voters who moved toward” Donald Trump. I’ll just go ahead and summarize what each subject is likely to say, which is some variation of “We need better messaging and media strategy, and regarding our policies, no changes necessary.”
Such was the series’ inaugural episode, in which freshly sworn-in Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona did the same dance his party has been doing since November. On the one hand, he claimed that Democrats failed to “meet the moment,” and on the other, he didn’t name a single one of his party’s policies that voters rejected.
Like every other Democrat leader, Gallego hung the party’s defeat on everything but its grotesque policies that directly ignited wild inflation, flooded the country with millions of destitute migrants, and sparked two foreign hot wars that are sucking enormous U.S. attention and resources.
My favorite parts of the interview were when Gallego, who won his election by less than 100,000 votes (against Kari Lake), theorized on the best ways for his party to speak with voters — which is always described by Democrats as if they’re trying to learn how to communicate with nonverbal prehistoric tribesmen. “I mean, so one of the things I did is I would host morning tacos at work sites, right, during the election,” he said. “So I would go set up, knowing when the 5:30 a.m. shift was coming off, and I’d set up tacos. And I’d hand out tacos to the dudes, and I’d talk to them about life. And we have to understand where they are. We have to understand what they’re hearing.”
Gallego went on to say working-class Latino men are forming their political opinions by “hearing it from the one dude that heard it from WhatsApp, or the one dude that’s listening to talk radio.” He said, “There’s no one saying like, Well, actually, I heard from another guy that Democrats are actually doing this. Doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen because there’s no way for us to give them that information, because we’re not going to where they are.”
This is the irksome language Democrats excel at when they either have no idea what they’re talking about, or, more commonly, don’t want to admit they’ve made a royal mess on the mattress. Democrats don’t have talk radio and WhatsApp to plead their case? Yes, they do. They’re not at some difficult disadvantage of the medium. They’re invited everywhere. But fewer and fewer voters are interested in what they’re selling.
In another portion of the interview, Gallego offered up my favorite excuse for the Democrat electoral failure of 2024: They weren’t busy showing up on podcasts. “What else is the difference is that the way Trump communicates is actually more apt to get younger Latino men voters, because where they gather their information, where they listen to politics, is where Trump is more often, versus where we are,” he said. “He’s on podcasts all the time. He’s at U.F.C. fights. He’s at all these things where they actually see him being a real quote unquote man. I also warned Democrats about that. We needed to get out there.”
Gallego also said he had “wanted President Biden to go to the Copa America game and sit next to some Latino celebrity.” Of Democrats, he said, “Let’s go to some boxing matches, right? Let’s take some Democrats to boxing matches where a lot of Latinos are.” It would have been fun to watch, if not for the reasons the senator had hoped for. (The thought of Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi pretending to enjoy mingling with minorities is hilarious.)
It’s all the same. They insist their problems were rooted in being unable to speak some undefined but apparently highly complicated language (“quote unquote man”) and say nothing of how they ruined everything with the destructive policies they enacted.
Sending Joe Biden to a cage match was not going to make him popular. Trotting Kamala Harris out to sell empanadas was not going to change anything. There isn’t a podcast in the world that would have convinced middle-income voters their personal finances were solid.
There will be a different Democrat interviewed by the Times at the end of this week. He will say the same thing as Gallego.