PITTSBURGH — Gino has been a registered Democrat all of his life. Still is. He voted for Democrats up and down the ticket and even worked for some, beginning with former President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996. He voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in November and said he would have voted for Joe Biden had the former president stayed in the race.
Gino, who asked for his last name to be withheld so he could speak freely, doesn’t support President Donald Trump but is wondering what the heck is going on with his beloved party.
“What is our message?” he asks in frustration, adding, “I am not just talking about what was happening in last year’s election cycle. I mean right now. What are we doing to win over voters who left us? You know, the working class we used to champion.”
A lawyer by trade, he says sending elected officials out on the cable news networks to channel a message like Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Govs. JB Pritzker (D-IL) and Tim Walz (D-MN) isn’t the answer.
“Murphy, Sanders, Walz, Pritzker, Crockett, and Ocasio-Cortez all represent states or districts where you don’t really need to win over many Republicans or conservative Democrats to win elections, or any at all. So their messages on social media or on the Sunday shows are all off if you want to win our state or Wisconsin or Michigan,” he said in exasperation, adding, “And you have to win those states to win not just presidential elections but also the majorities in the Senate, House, and governors’ offices.”
Connecticut, Illinois, Vermont, and Minnesota are all states where Democrats are heavily favored in statewide elections. Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s (D-TX) district in Dallas is rated by the Cook Political Report a plus D+27, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) district is rated a D+28.
“These are not the right messengers because their message is one of constant resistance and leaning in on ridiculous positions that don’t appeal to the average voter who used to be gettable for my party,” he says in frustration.
“Right now we are waiting for Godot, and I don’t see that emerging anytime soon,” he said, referencing the Samuel Beckett play about two men debating under a tree while they wait for someone named Godot. Neither man was certain they were even at the right tree.
Rotimi Adeoye said the Godot reference was pretty on point. That’s because his party has engaged in often absurd arguments among itself in the public arena with no one emerging to shine a light on what its purposefulness is for voters.
Adeoye, whose Democrat pedigree includes stints as a communication strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, special assistant to former Sen. Bob Casey and statewide volunteer here for former President Barack Obama in 2012, is out front with his frustration with his party.
Adeoye said his perspectives come from his family of immigrants. His parents migrated to Doylestown in Bucks County in the 1980s from Nigeria and as a whole are very diverse politically.
“So the way that I think about politics sometimes is sitting at my Thanksgiving table. I have my aunt and uncle who voted for Trump, but I have my mom who is this diehard liberal, and I’m always kind of feeling like I am, how do I get my aunt and uncle to agree with me on an issue,” Adeoye explained.
“And I think that’s something that Democrats have forgotten is how do we talk to people that disagree with us in a way that makes them still feel like they can be a part of our party?” he said.
Both Rotimi and Gino agree on why their party is at best stuck right now and at worst cratering. Two new polls released this past Sunday showed Democrats reaching historic lows in approval ratings nationwide — with NBC News numbers showing that only 27% of people say they like the job Democrats are doing. CNN’s numbers released the same day showed Democrats favorability at 29%, the lowest favorability rating in the 33-year history of the survey.
Adeoye, who is a contributor at MSNBC and is now attending law school, said his party lost on the things it was always very good at: connecting with people on the cost of living, safety, and security, all while conveying a love of country.
“While my family’s heritage is so important to me, our family has always had this kind of enduring faith and love for this country. And I think it’s really the job of Democrats to kind of figure out how can they build a party that speaks to the possibilities of America,” he said, adding, “I think some Democrats have this view of America that I don’t think resonates, which is just a sad and gloomy story and attacking kind of who we are.”
Adeoye said he does not think that approach is the best way to build a party for the future. That is why he is working with a group of Pennsylvania Democrats on a report looking at not just why Harris lost but also a long look at the future of the party.
“One of the biggest issues I see with the Democratic Party right now is they’re very just reactive to Trump. It is really all about what did Trump do today? How did we respond? How do we respond to what Trump is doing?” he explained.
Something he said he has yet to see is a Democrat put out their own vision from the country that isn’t just what Trump did or responding to it.
“I think that gets us to the Waiting for Godot reference,” he said. “We are really waiting for something or someone to show up instead of just saying here’s our purpose, here is what we believe. We have a vision on economics. This is what we believe in. We want to talk about it. Instead of just saying this is what Trump did today. We’re so angry about it and responding.”
Adeoye said he watched in exasperation his party’s inability to connect with the working class, and that’s not just the white working class.
“I think that’s my biggest frustration with the party right now. We always want to say we are the party of the working class, and if this election showed anything, it shows that we’ve really lost that ability. And so we need to think about how we actually reach the working class if we’re truly going to say we represent them.” he said.
He also believes when both his party and journalists default is to make everything about race, you lose people. “I think that doesn’t move the party forward because the No. 1 issue that every single American says is cost of living and making sure that they can take care of their family and their kids. And I think the more that we don’t talk about that and talk about other issues, we’re distracting from our core message,” he said.
Adeoye said he wasn’t all that surprised by the data released today by the Democratic firm Blue Rose Research looking at what happened in November. If all registered voters had turned out last year, it showed, Trump would’ve won the popular vote by 5 points instead of 1.7 points.
POLLS? TRUMP IS IN A BETTER PLACE THAN DEMOCRATS
“I think Kamala Harris’s message really missed out on telling a story of how people’s economic situation has been suffering for a while and how she was going to make it better, something that Trump did very effectively and ultimately let him win,” he said.
It’s something his party is still getting wrong.