Mitch Landrieu, who served as senior adviser to former President Joe Biden, said Democrats need to figure out why working-class voters drifted away from the Democratic Party if it want to win future elections.
In an interview with The Bulwark published Thursday, Landrieu said, “If you want to win, and it’s all about math, you got to figure out how to get people that you used to have that you lost.
According to The Bulwark report, "Landrieu is on a mission to figure out what went wrong."
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He said a significant group that is noticeably distancing itself from the party consists of working-class voters.
Together with a group of pollsters and researchers, as well as notable figures from the party such as former Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), Landrieu has initiated what he refers to as the “Working Class Project.”
He is traveling across the nation, including to areas he believes have been overlooked by Democrats, such as Kansas and South Carolina. During these visits, he engages with labor and faith leaders and supervises research on various subjects, including how people consume media. His team is running numerous focus groups and providing updates to the party on their findings.
“There is no question that we are in a deep hole. And the first thing we have to do is stop digging, and the second thing we have to do is get ourselves out of it. And that has to be intentional. It’s got to be focused,” Landrieu told The Bulwark.
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“What’s surprising about it is how alienated they feel,” Landrieu said of the participants of their focus groups. “It’s not like, ‘Listen, we could have gone one way or the other, and we just thought the Republicans had a better story this time.’ They were really negative on Democrats," he added.
As Democrats confront President Donald Trump's second term, they are convinced that their party needs to deliver an inspiring message at this crucial time. But reports indicate they are struggling to agree on what that message should be.
Landrieu believes the party has a significant cultural gap with working-class voters. Despite making notable policy accomplishments, they struggle to communicate these effectively, he said.“Politically, we were incorrect in not addressing the microeconomic feelings and anxieties of the public, because those are the things that many, many, many millions of Americans touched every day where the infrastructure stuff didn’t.”
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