Consider This from NPR - Can democrats find their way out of the wilderness?

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

A hundred minutes — that's how long President Trump had the floor — literally — last night.A hundred minutes he used to lay out his agenda, his grievances and what he argued are the accomplishments of his first six weeks in office.This all came during his "joint address" to Congress — the State of the Union that's not a State of the Union.Since Trump returned to office in January, there's been little room left for democrats to make their case to the American people. Democratic moderates think they have an answer for Trump 2.0. What does their playbook look like? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Heckling a president during a speech isn't new. What was unprecedented Tuesday night as President Trump addressed the nation in a joint session of Congress was a lawmaker being escorted out for such heckling. We won the popular vote by big numbers and won counties in our country. Texas Democratic Representative Al Green stood up after Trump said voters gave them a mandate when they elected him last fall. Green waved his cane as he yelled at the president. You don't have a mandate to cut Medicaid.

House Speaker Mike Johnson gave warnings. Members are directed to uphold and maintain the quorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions. And when that didn't work, Green was removed from the House chamber. The chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order. Remove this gentleman from the chamber. This was one of several ways Democrats protested

the president's speech last night. They also held signs throughout the speech with phrases like, That's a lie or Musk steals. Many wore pink to try to make a statement. Some walked out during the speech. Others skipped the event altogether. This has been some Democrats approach to Trump's first six weeks in office as he's aimed to slash the federal workforce, tested the separation of powers, and reshaped the global order. Democrats don't control any of the levers of power, so they protest. But we also saw a different

approach Tuesday night. My dad was a lifelong Republican, my mom a lifelong Democrat. But it was never a big deal because we had shared values that were bigger than any one party. For their response to Trump's address, Democrats chose a senator who won last November in a state that Trump carried. Alyssa Slotkin is a centrist from Michigan. She framed Trump's agenda as an attack on the middle class. President Trump is trying to deliver an unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends.

He's on the hunt to find trillions of dollars to pass along to the wealthiest in America. And to do that, he's going to make you pay in every part of your life. But she also said Republicans and Democrats should work together to fix America's immigration system. She cited Ronald Reagan approvingly and even agreed with Trump that the government should run more efficiently, though she strongly criticized his quote, chaotic approach. It was a speech aimed squarely at moderates. Because whether you're from Wyandotte or Wichita, most Americans share three core beliefs. That the middle class is the engine of our country, that strong national security protects us from harm, and that our democracy, no matter how messy, is

unparalleled and worth fighting for. Consider this. Democratic moderates think they have an answer for Trump 2.0. What does their playbook look like? From NPR, I'mity Leader Hakeem Jeffries acknowledged last month that Democrats don't have much power. Republicans have repeatedly lectured America. They control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It's their government.

What leverage do we have? So as they think about how to try to push back on Trump, Democrats are also thinking about how to win the next election. What's the case they wanna make? That's a question that Matt Bennett and his fellow moderate Democrats tried to answer at a recent retreat.

Bennett is the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way. That's a centrist Democratic think tank. When I spoke to him earlier today, I asked him if he thought that Democrats' protests during the joint address were effective. I really don't. Look, I share their passion. I understand their anger and I share the anger. I feel it every single day. I just don't think that's what we need to be doing as a party right now. Because I think ultimately our job is to win back the votes of voters that left us, the people that either stayed home or voted for Republicans in 2024. And I really don't think that those kinds of displays are what those voters are looking for. They're looking for a party that is more reasonable in their view than Trump and the Republicans. I think

we have an opportunity to win that battle, but probably not through displays like that. I want to turn now to the retreat that you helped organize in February. You got a group of moderate Democrats together for a day and a half. And I understand that was a group that included some elected officials, consultants, folks who worked on campaigns. In a couple of words, what was the vibe like? Well, look, it was three weeks into the Trump administration, so the vibe was pretty downbeat. I think everybody there was fairly grim and clear-eyed about the depth of the hole that Democrats find ourselves in at the moment.

So we did a lot of hard thinking about what we're saying to voters on cultural issues like immigration and crime and other things and on the economy and I think we all agree that we have work to do in both areas Give us a sampling of what some of those conversations were like among you and your fellow Democrats Well, I think one thing that we concluded was voters Felt like first of all that we had lost that battle for reasonableness, that somehow Donald Trump, who, in my view at least, is the most unreasonable national figure

maybe in the history of American politics, beat us and was able to argue that he would restore order where the Democrats were offering chaos, at the border, in the grocery store, on the streets. Now, we have a huge opportunity because he is not restoring order. He is bringing chaos of his own. But we can't rely on that to win. We've got to make sure that voters don't think that we're completely out of touch with how they live their lives, with their values, and what they believe is important.

So we can't simply minimize their fears about immigration or about crime. And we can't talk to them about the economy and just say, look, the macroeconomic numbers are great when many people are living right close to the edge and just trying to keep body and soul together. And I think that is where Democrats fell short as a party, not individual candidates, but as a party, and that's where we must improve. I've heard you say several times that your party appears to have lost the battle for reasonableness. How does it win it back? Well, some of that is contrast. And I think what we must do is make clear that what Trump

is doing now is deeply unreasonable. And as Senator Slotkin pointed out last night, I think very effectively, that the kinds of reforms that he promised might be good, but the kinds of cuts that he's bringing are not. Instead of a scalpel, Musk is literally bringing a chainsaw to the federal government and cutting things that nobody voted to cut. Nobody went to the polls and voted to stop research in Alzheimer's or cancer. Nobody wanted to cut the park service employees that clean the bathrooms or air traffic controllers or veterans who are trying to help other veterans in crisis. No one voted for that and Democrats must make

sure that people understand that that's what they're getting in the second Trump term. So setting the contrast is vital. And then talking about the issues that people care about in ways that they can really relate to, I think is also very important, which is again why I thought Senator Slotkin's response was quite good. She talked about the economy in very realistic and very simple terms, and we've got to keep that up. At the same time, we have noted that you come from a more moderate perspective. There are progressives in your party who might disagree with some of what you've said. I want to play

you a cut of tape. It is from Virginia's Democratic Senator, Tim Kaine. He spoke to my colleague, Michelle Martin, this morning. I think it was Will Rogers who said, I don't believe in organized political parties. That's why I'm a Democrat. We pride ourselves on being iconoclastic and individualistic. Matt Bennett, it's sort of a funny line, but I do kind of wonder, can the party marshal the discipline to reach out to voters with a unified message? We're never going to be unified the way Republicans are.

I mean, they've kind of become cultish. They just leapt to their feet and cheered no matter what Trump said last night including when he was making absurd and insulting comments about one of their colleagues, so no we're never going to have that kind of slavish Uniformity that Republicans under Trump have got and as Jesse Jackson said decades ago The Democratic Party needs two wings to fly. We're always going to have a very progressive wing and a more moderate wing. But I think we can rally around some core arguments that we can make about where Trump

wants to take us versus where we should be headed. And so, no, we won't speak with one voice, but I think we can be more unified than we are. That was Matt Bennett. He's the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way. Matt, thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Alejandra Marquez-Honse, Connor Donovan, and Jeffrey Pierre. It was edited by Courtney Dornig.

Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Sommers.