To give my opinion, the problem is neither the "woke lefties" nor the "centrists". The problem is not that they are turning people off voting for Democrats with their policies. The problem is that the Democrats are increasingly failing to turn people off voting for Republicans. The last half-century of American politics has involved a perpetual campaign by Democrats to convince people that Republicans are racist and sexist and so is anyone who votes for them, and the strategy is starting to fail.
Like, why are we even talking about Democrats losing? They won the presidency, held the house, and still have an outside chance of taking control of the senate. Losing seats from their commanding majority in the house is relatively unimportant politically compared to what they won. Expectations are part of it, nobody is excited to win a close game that was supposed to be a blowout in their favor, but that's not what's causing the panic. What's causing the panic is how they won what they did and how they lost what they did. Between 2016 and 2020, the Democrats gained votes largely among middle-aged white people, particularly men. They lost vote share among every other race of voter. They lost vote share among millenials. They lost a dozen house seats to a very diverse freshman class of Republicans, they're majority women from a half-dozen ethnicities with many 1st or 2nd generation Americans. I know it's not a huge jump here, but even a small demographic shift like this is terrifying to Democrats, because every minority voter that registers as a Republican is another nail in the coffin for the lies Democrats run on.
It's not about which policies the Democratic party decides to pursue. I'm sure they're capable of selling a wide variety of things if they really wanted to. The problem is now they have to, because the writing is on the wall, they can't keep depending on racial division to win elections, they're gonna have to start selling their policies to the people. Like, look at the ongoing BLM movement, and Democrat politicians' responses. Grassroots people put forward specific policy proposals, and Democratic politicians waffle and do nothing and basically say "well, the important thing is that we all agree it's Republicans' fault". Like, the moment it looked like the Republicans in the Senate would vote for police reform, Democrats dropped it like a hot potato. I understand some people here think police reform is genuinely a bad thing, but to those of you who do believe in progress, that should be a big red flag signaling what's going on here: they care less about policy than they do about claiming Republicans are racist. And the thought of losing that cudgel terrifies them.
As a Republican, I've joked that I'm not a big Trump guy but if he got 20% of black voters to vote for him I'd put his face on Mt Rushmore. Not only because that'd be great for the Republican Party, but because it'd be great for the whole of America, including the Democratic Party, to get out of this hole that Lyndon Johnson dug us into.
