Democrats need to reexamine their intrinsic message to voters and "stop telling Americans how to be and what to feel and believe," Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., wrote in an essay published in "Democracy: A Journal of Ideas."
Coons said that "instead, we need to listen. Then we need to solve the problems they've shared with us."
Coons, who was a staunch ally of former President Joe Biden on Capitol Hill, argued that "in the last few years, it's not just our message that was wrong — it was some of our policies, too.
"People didn't recognize the impacts of the bills we wrote and the votes we took."
"That's why Americans don't believe us when we preach at them from auditorium stages, cable news desks, and social media posts," he added.
Coons emphasized that Democrats "have to get back to the values and ideas that draw people to be Democrats to begin with," adding that "we lost an election in 2024, but more than that, we've lost Americans' trust."
In the essay for Democracy, Coons said that both his parents were Republicans and that he helped found the Amherst College Republicans when he also interned with former Delaware Republican Sen. Bill Roth.
But Coons began to change his political views after studying abroad in Kenya and living with people who endured "terrible material circumstances" but were "sustained by their faith and family" and "welcomed strangers in openhearted ways."
His views continued to change when he returned to the United States and visited what he called the "deep, concentrated poverty of the South Bronx," which was only a "few miles from the homes of some of the richest people on earth."
He said these experiences instilled in him a desire to create more opportunities for all Americans, including those in underprivileged circumstances, and to "make sure no one was left behind."
"These were the values that inspired me to join the Democratic Party," he wrote. "Today, I, and many others, worry that we've lost sight of those values, and that we've in turn lost sight of how to engage Americans."
He argues that "to win again," Democrats "need to offer voters a concise, accessible framework that rests on the ideas that drew me and so many others to the party in the first place: opportunity, security, justice."
He says opportunity must be created through policies to promote affordable housing and quality education.
"We need to make sure better jobs are available everywhere — not just in a few coastal bubbles but also in the towns across the country where so many of us grew up."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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