Why Democrats need their own Donald Trump (or Bill Clinton)

To kick off my new show — “Out of the Wilderness” — I talked to longtime Democratic strategist and thinker

Ruy Teixeira

of the

The Liberal Patriot

on Tuesday about what went wrong for Democrats in 2024 and where the party needs to go to begin to reclaim power in the country.

Ruy’s diagnosis? Democratic elected officials are terrified of pissing off interest groups that they believe control the base of the party. And that fear has led to them being on the wrong side of 80-20 issues like biological males playing sports with girls and other cultural touchstones.

What’s the solution? Democrats need their own version of Donald Trump — not the bullying and the untruths but rather someone willing to take on the entrenched forces within the party and show a different way to win. (Ruy also cited Bill Clinton as someone who was able to challenge accepted orthodoxy within the party — and ride it to victory.)

Ruy also made what I think is a critical point about the current president: “The median working-class voter does not hate Donald Trump.”

Which means that no matter how much liberals hate him, the way forward for the party is not to focus on Trump to the exclusion of everything else.

Ruy presents three pillars of what Democrats should be talking about:

1. Cultural centrism

2. An abundance agenda

3. Patriotism

He explains each concept in depth toward the end of our chat.

Thank you

Neil Paine

,

Terry White

,

Richard Bailey

,

Light Comes In

,

Anne Smith

, and many others for tuning into my live video with

Ruy Teixeira

!

This is the first episode of my new weekly show “Out of the Wilderness” — a Substack Live series aimed at answering the question of how Democrats got to this bad political place and how they can climb out.

The best way to take part in these conversations live is to download the Substack app. Which you can do here:

My “Out of the Wilderness” episodes are FREE to anyone. But, in order to continue to do this sort of independent journalism — calling balls and strikes no matter what uniform the batter at the plate is wearing — I need your financial support.

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