Declaring Their Party Spineless, Democrats Try an Economic Populist Pitch
A number of frustrated House Democrats who said their party had a “weak and undefined brand” announced on Tuesday that they had formed a new group to dig out of their crisis, called the New Economic Patriots.The group is the brainchild of Representative Chris Deluzio, a 40-year-old second-term congressman from a competitive district in Pennsylvania, who criticized members of his own party as wimps in a speech on the House floor on Tuesday and called for Democrats to channel a “fighting spirit of economic populism” that he argued could lead them out of the political wilderness.“Too many in our party have lost their way and it’s time to wake the heck up,” Mr.Deluzio said, later declaring: “The era of a spineless Democratic Party must end.”The answer, he said, was for the party to focus on appealing to working people on economic issues, but it was not immediately clear how his plan was different from what many in the party have already been advocating.
Still, Mr.Deluzio’s effort is the latest sign that Democrats, relegated to the minority in Washington and desperate to find a more coherent message after their devastating 2024 losses, are still mired in a politically fraught debate about how to move forward.Mr.
Deluzio has highlighted his status as a young lawmaker who outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in a critical district in a key battleground state as he makes the case for why he is the right person to help lead his party out of its funk.In an interview, Mr.Deluzio said the “progressive” and “moderate” labels did not work anymore given that his entire tattered party needed to be restructured around an economic populist message that he said had been co-opted by the right.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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