At least a few Democrats have decided that the reason Democrats didn’t perform well in the 2024 elections was because they were too far left, even though Harris ran a very moderate campaign:

As they begin to dissect their collapse in the presidential election, some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America.

Those existential concerns, according to interviews with more than two dozen DNC members, are shaping the earliest stages of the race for DNC chair and, in the absence of a formal party autopsy, blame-casting among members about the causes of Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat.

“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,” said Joseph Paolino Jr., DNC committeeman for Rhode Island. “I’m going to look for a chair who’s going to be talking to the center and who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day.”

Or as one DNC member from Florida put it: “I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us. You know, 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.’”

Admittedly, gormless dipshits are gonna dipshit gormlessly, but what’s disturbing is professional Democrats have internalized right wing and centrist critiques, as Nicholas Grossman noted (boldface mine):

Then it hit me: The big success of the US right over the last decade or so, helped by a cadre of centrists, is convincing a lot of people that the Democratic Party is whoever you think is the most radical, most annoying person on the internet. Therefore, voting Republican is a vote against them.

This also explains claims like Harris lost because she pushed “Latinx.” She, Walz, and their surrogates didn’t use that term or put it in ads. Their main pitch to Latinos was their pitch to everyone: middle class economics. But some online say Latinx, and maybe even berated Yglesias to as well.

Same point applies to blaming Harris’ loss on gender pronouns or wokeness or “defund the police.”

They didn’t run on that.

Biden made “fund the police, fund them” a signature line. Senate Dems voted unanimously against defunding the police. Republicans called for defunding the FBI.

So if Democratic leadership and candidates are already following these “common sense principles” — and calling your own ideas “common sense” is a red flag — then what should they do differently?

Tight control of all left-of-center discourse on the internet? Even if desirable, impossible.

An asshole like Yglesias would argue Democrats need Sister Souljah moments, where they attack progressives. But I would argue these candidates need to attack the right wing and centrists who are misrepresenting them. If you ran a moderate campaign, attack those who claim otherwise as liars–because they are liars.

Make no mistake about it: there are a bunch of centrist pundits for whom a large part of their business model revolves around attacking idiotic pronouncements about Theory by “ButtTwinkie420” who has 200 followers on social media. Of course, Mx. ButtTwinkie isn’t the one (mis)spending all of the billions of dollars Democrats raised this cycle alone.

But moderate Democrats are going to have to start defending themselves aggresively–and if they can’t, then maybe moderate Democratic politics and policies are failures.