Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) wants Democrats to rebrand themselves as the party of “common sense” to win back voters.
During an interview with Politico, Masto, the new honorary chairwoman of the Moderate Democrats PAC, outlined a strategy for her party to rebound from devastating losses last fall.
“The loudest voices oftentimes that get picked up and amplified by the press and social media are the far left and far right,” she warned. “[But] commonsense Democrats are the only group that really outperformed in the 2024 election … That’s our path forward.”
She called on her colleagues to talk about the economy and immigration, matters that Republicans won on during the 2024 elections. Vulnerable Democrats who won battleground Senate seats during the 2024 elections also campaigned on those matters and won, Masto said. She argued that her party needs to adopt similarly centrist, bipartisan strategies to escape its slump.
“If they [voters] care about what’s happening at the southern border, we talk about it,” Masto continued. “We talk about securing that southern border, but we can also talk about doing that and also doing comprehensive immigration reform at the same time.”
Masto represents Nevada, a swing state that President Donald Trump flipped red for the first time in two decades in November. Yet Masto’s colleague, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), managed to keep her Senate seat amid a tough challenge from Republican Sam Brown by leaning on a consistent bipartisan message.
Masto’s calls for a new tone followed other Democrats’ pushes for the party to move toward more moderate politics.
In February, the center-left group Third Way gathered moderate Democrats for a retreat. The group argued that the party’s path to winning back working-class voters, whom Trump captured in droves last fall, could come by pushing back against “forums that create ideological purity tests,” “far-left influence and infrastructure,” and “far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging.”
“In the wake of this election, where it became so evident that the things that the Left was doing and saying deeply hurt [Kamala] Harris and downballot Democrats, a lot of people are looking to us, not just Third Way, but the moderates in the party, and saying, ‘We got to do it your way, because the other way ain’t working,’” Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett, who helped organize the retreat, told Politico.
After Republicans embraced the “big open tent” party approach during the 2024 election, which earned them record support, Masto argued Democrats need to drop ideological litmus tests, such as “purity tests” that limit the party’s capacity to grow. Her demands came as Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have presented a mixed message for voters on ideological conformity.
Some centrist Democrats, including Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), have similarly slammed their party for pushing “purity tests” on matters such as whether biological males should be allowed to compete in female sports. After Republicans gained the White House and both chambers of Congress last fall, Moulton was ridiculed by some of his colleagues for suggesting that Democrats’ progressive tilt on transgender matters could have caused voters to turn to the GOP.
“There are many who, shouting from the extreme left corners of social media, believe I have failed the unspoken Democratic Party purity test,” Moulton said last November. “We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue. We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters, and that needs to stop.”
Other Democrats, such as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), have distanced themselves from a full-scale rejection of purity tests, saying they would welcome voters “in our movement,” but only on certain conditions.
“We should unite around controlling rents, breaking up corporate monopolies, and raising the minimum wage,” Murphy said during a February interview with the Advocate. “If people agree with us on these core economic issues, we want them in our movement.”
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has reiterated a similar viewpoint. He said he wants to rid the party of purity tests while calling on colleagues to stick to a progressive message on economic populism.
Casar “has a way of talking to folks that’s in line with our message,” Shad Murib, chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party, told the Austin American-Statesman. “Let’s get rid of the purity tests and work on bringing back working-class voters.”
Bennett said he is concerned that the focus on economic populism is turning back into the ideological litmus tests Masto is trying to avoid.
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“Demanding economic populism is its own form of purity test,” he said. “There’s a lot of different approaches to the economy that can appeal to working-class voters, that involve honoring hard work, ensuring that everybody has an opportunity to earn a good life, and that doesn’t involve ‘fighting the oligarchs,’”
“If that becomes their litmus test, then we’re right back in the same boat,” he added.