House Democrat Tells CNN His Party Has ‘Lost Touch’ With a Majority of Americans: ‘Bad Habit of Preaching Down’

CNN’s Manu Raju spoke to several House Democrats over the weekend about what their party needs to do to win back voters after Vice President Kamala Harris’s resounding loss to Donald Trump earlier this month.

“Democrats are in the very early stages in trying to determine what went so terribly wrong for them in the elections. And there is no consensus. Moderate Democrats believe the party shifted too far to the left. Progressives say they struggled to properly convey the benefits of their agenda, and all sides agree they have failed to tap into the deep unrest over economic conditions and the direction of the country,” Raju began to introduce the segment, adding:

So Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, has kicked off a series of listening sessions with his members, which have grown tense at times. And the first postmortem meeting, several Democrats said the party had a lackluster approach to addressing issues like border security and crime.

Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar pointedly told his colleagues ‘Washington language doesn’t work.’ My panel is back. So just to get a sense on the debate that’s happening within the party, this is how two center-left Democrats described what they they believe went wrong for them a couple of weeks ago. What was the biggest mistake that needs to be corrected?

“Well, obviously, we’ve lost touch with the majority of Americans. Democrats have a habit of preaching down to people and telling them that if they don’t 100% agree with our orthodox view, often defined by the far left, then they’re just bad people. They’re morally wrong. And that’s not going to win us any elections,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told Raju.

Raju also played a clip from Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) saying, “We have policy issues that are out of touch with the American people. Our tents got to get bigger. We got to be more accepting of positions all across the spectrum without the shaming and the canceling that goes on in our side of the aisle.”

“Pretty blunt words there. I mean, how do they– How do they accomplish that, though? It’s easier said than done,” Raju added, turning to his Inside Politics panel.

“Yeah. And I mean, it’s interesting because I think there’s ways to see this as a fight ideologically. But so a lot of the people that are folks are blaming or not liberal members of the Democratic Party more like activists than outside groups who sometimes speak for the Democratic Party. And those things can get conflated,” replied New York Times political reporter Astead Herndon, adding:

But I mean, it’s not as if Kamala Harris as a candidate, was walking around talking about deeply progressive issues or talking about identity or talking about big cultural things. I don’t really understand. I don’t really see that if, you know, when I hear Representative Moulton and talk about the lecturing tone that comes from Democrats, I certainly think that could be true.

But on the biggest issue that was probably true for the last four years was inflation. And I think for two years, the Biden White House was basically trying to tell folks their problems weren’t as big or the economy was better than the indicators were telling folks about. And so it wasn’t right, left where that was happening. It was really a party that was in service of an incumbent and an unpopular administration and a bunch of people across right and left who did not have the political courage to stand up and say that some of that was unpopular.

And that cuts across a lot of different groups. I just think some of the ideological hand-wringing isn’t, to me, reflective of the last four years because it was progressive and moderate who refused to face the evidence in front of them.

Watch the clip above via CNN.