Democrats are rethinking the “weird” targets they put on Republicans’ backs as they compete to rebrand the Democratic National Committee.
After voters delivered his party stinging losses in the White House, Senate, and the House last week, DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison is not expected to seek a second term to keep his position next year. Other candidates are already scrambling to take his place, as some DNC members call for a centrist chairman who can make the Democratic Party popular again with voters.
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Part of their strategy is a rejection of the “weird” allegations Democrats tried to pin on Republicans, and prominently on Vice-President elect J.D. Vance, during the 2024 elections. The message appeared to backfire after the GOP made historic gains on Election Day, eating into historically blue voter blocs with messages about Democratic support for policies such as covering transgender operations for prisoners and endorsing sex changes for children to argue that Trump represented the truly normal party.
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“I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us,” a DNC member from Florida told Politico. “You know, when you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”
Another DNC member from California said: “I do think there’s this whole sentiment that we just went too far out there on identity, and it allowed the Republicans to really attack us at every turn as a result, and that we just essentially did not focus on just the everyday issues of Americans.”
Democrats began the “weird” attacks in July, with many soundbites jabbing Vance for his “childless cat lady” comments he made during a 2021 interview. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) joined top Democrats in labeling the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird,” taking the messaging well into the homestretch of the campaign.
But Republicans shot back, often pointing to the Left’s stance on transgender policies to argue that Democrats belonged to the “weird” party.
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Vance called the attacks “a lot of projection” during a Fox News interview in August, adding that they came “from people who want to give transgender hormones to 9-year-old kids and want biological males to play in women’s sports.”
Meanwhile, Trump spent his time on the campaign trail talking about the economy and inflation, issues that polls showed were of top importance to voters. Weeks ahead of Election Day, his campaign released an ad portraying Harris as out-of-touch with “normal voters” that made staggering gains in states across the country.
With the attention-grabbing tagline: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the ad targeted Harris’s support for providing transgender operations to prison inmates, including illegal immigrants.
The ad captured Trump’s appeal to voters who felt sidelined by Democrats who they felt prioritized out-of-touch progressive agenda items over solving issues that hit closer to home. The message served to flip the race across every state 2.7 percentage points in Trump’s favor, per a New York Times report.
“The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle,” Joseph Paolino Jr., DNC committeeman for Rhode Island, said this week. “I’m going to look for a chair who’s going to be talking to the center and who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day.”
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The campaign to replace Harrison, the current DNC chair, is set to take place over the next few months. It will likely signal how the Democratic Party plans to regroup from its losses last week as it eyes a comeback for the 2026 midterm elections.
The multiple names floated as possibilities to helm the DNC include U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who was formerly the Democratic mayor of Chicago. Wisconsin Democratic Party leader Ben Wikler Party is another possible contender.
