A Welcomed(?) Response

Thoughts on Welcome’s Deciding to Win

I—like many of you in the Democratic space—read through Deciding to Win, created by Welcome, the centrist organization that hosts WelcomeFest every year. WelcomeFest featured some interesting takes, most notably where guests said they believed unions were the most significant detriment to the Abundance Agenda — confirming what many feared about the anti-labor sentiments behind it — and included a who’s who of centrist, moderate Congresspeople.

According to authors Simon Bazelon, Lauren Harper Pope, and Liam Kerr, Deciding to Win “aims to provide the most comprehensive account to date of why Democrats lost and what our party needs to do to win again.” They claim to draw on hundreds of polls and academic papers, dozens of case studies, and 500,000 survey responses to compile their findings to “give ourselves the best chance to win.”

They recommended five changes Democrats should make:

1️⃣ Focus on an economic agenda centered on lowering costs, growing the economy, creating jobs, and expanding the social safety net.

2️⃣ Advocate for popular economic policies (drug price negotiation, making the wealthy pay their fair share, $15 minimum wage) rather than unpopular ones (student loan forgiveness, EV subsidies, Medicare for All).

3️⃣ Convince voters we share their priorities — the economy, cost of living, health care, border security, public safety — and focus less on issues voters think we emphasize too much (climate change, democracy, abortion, identity and cultural issues).

4️⃣ Moderate positions on immigration, public safety, energy production, and identity/culture issues.

5️⃣ Criticize the outsized influence of corporations and the ultra-wealthy — but without sounding like socialists.

I have to admit, I went into this already biased — expecting repurposed Third Way takes and a condescending chastising of progressive politics. But I dug in anyway because I’m interested in an all-of-the-above approach to winning on the Left. So — like many of you — I have thoughts. Here’s what they got right and what they got wrong.

Credit where credit is due. The authors make some excellent points — many of which I do agree with.

Focusing our policy agenda on economic growth and opportunity is essential if we want to win back working-class Americans again. Expanding prescription drug negotiation, making the wealthy pay their fair share, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour — all extremely popular and entirely achievable.

But here’s the real issue:
Democrats have talked about these things for years… just too cautiously and too conservatively. We nibble around the edges. We propose half-measures. We water down the bold ideas that would actually close the obscene wealth gap in this country.

As I wrote previously: the blueprint exists — FDR’s New Deal, labor-forward populism, economic justice — but we’ve spent too long governing like we’re still terrified of Ronald Reagan’s ghost.

The report also correctly points out something that should ring in every strategist’s ears:

Most voters think Democrats don’t share their priorities.

And that’s not because we don’t care — it’s because we spend so much time reacting to Republican cultural attacks that we bury our strongest message: “We want you to thrive.”

But this isn’t black-and-white.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We don’t need to throw LGBTQ+ people under the bus just to talk about inflation. We don’t need to sacrifice immigrant communities to show we care about the economy. We don’t need to pretend public safety and racial justice are mutually exclusive.

We can lead with affordability and wages and still stand proudly in our values. The authors say we should defend our morals — and they’re right! But then they turn around and imply we should mute those morals whenever the polling dips. That’s not courage. That’s fear.

Another point where they’re spot-on:
Corporate power is rotting our democracy from the inside out.
Money has warped policy outcomes against working people for decades.

But the report badly misinterprets what that means. Wealthy donors don’t drive progressive policies — they’re driven by popular demand. Billionaires didn’t invent movements like the Fight for $15; workers won them.

Finally — hallelujah — the authors admit Democrats rely too heavily on old-guard consultants and message-tested political Mad Libs. We keep falling for the Magic Word Fallacy — believing there’s some perfect sentence that will unlock the electorate.

Meanwhile, Republicans are:

✅ Dominating digital

✅ Setting the agenda

✅ Taking risks

✅ Investing everywhere

Democrats need to be bolder, faster, and less afraid of new tactics — not hiding behind the Clinton-era playbook like it’s sacred scripture.

Bold ideas + bold messaging = winning energy.

Timid ideas + timid messaging = “Why bother voting?”

On the whole, Welcome does name the right challenges. But they still prescribe the same cautious centrism that keeps causing them.

❌ What It Gets Wrong

Okay, now that we’ve given them credit, let’s talk about where the analysis… falls apart.

First, and this is a big one: they only looked at voters. Like, literally only the people who already participate in elections. What about the one-third of the country that didn’t vote last year? Tens of millions of Americans — many of whom are working class — didn’t show up because they believe politics doesn’t help them. They see Congress spend billions on foreign aid, while they struggle to afford groceries, rent, child care, and healthcare. They are not “lazy nonvoters.” They’re people who feel the government has failed them. If we want to expand the electorate, we need to understand what will bring them back into the fold — not just cater to those who already show up.

And then there’s the claim that Democrats have “moved too far Left.” I’m sorry, but… have they looked around? The Overton window has shifted. Issues once deemed “radical” — like marriage equality — are now standard Democratic Party planks. Progress is not extremism. Support for LGBTQ+ rights is up. Support for abortion rights surged post-Dobbs. Labor organizing is at its most popular point in decades. Americans aren’t recoiling at progressive values — they’re frustrated that Democrats aren’t fighting hard enough for them.

The report also oversimplifies some incredibly complicated issues. Just saying “immigration” doesn’t capture the nuance of what voters believe. Most people support legal immigration and don’t think families should be torn apart. They’re mad that the system is broken, not that immigrants exist—same thing with student debt. People don’t hate debt relief because they hate students — they hate that the system got so predatory that millions were forced into lifelong financial crisis just to pursue higher education.

And here’s the big messaging failure they ignore: priority isn’t the same as popularity. Just because voters rank cost of living above climate change doesn’t mean climate isn’t important to them. It just means rent is due on the first of every month, while sea level rise feels abstract by comparison. We need to be able to walk and chew gum.

Which leads to another glaring issue: they seriously underestimate media distortion and the gap between perception and reality. If all you ever hear about Democrats is from Fox News, far-right influencers, and conspiracy-driven Facebook groups calling us “anti-American Marxists,” then yes — you might think Democrats don’t share your values. Biden didn’t become unpopular because his policies were unpopular — he became unpopular because he never effectively countered the constant right-wing messaging machine.

This goes beyond candidates and labels. It includes policies and ideas as well.

“Socialism” is an evil, dirty form of government that sinks foreign corrupt countries and was what the Nazis were trying to enact, according to what people are told and spew on the internet. To them, it’s anti-American, but those same people still wouldn’t want to overpay to use privatized roads, emergency services, schools, or any other public service that stems from socialist ideas. They fully embrace the freedom that those public services give them.

“Medicare for All” is communism that will make everyone sick and overcrowd our hospitals. But those same people want to be able to receive medical care without going into debt and embrace the idea of free preventative care during times of epidemics.

“Regulation” prevents growth that only a free market can provide. Yet all these same people still lose their minds when prices go up at the grocery store and want to know what the government is doing about it.

That is not the same as “Democrats went too far left.” It’s a communications war we keep losing.

They also ignore the “Democratic Penalty” entirely. In red-leaning states, having a “D” next to your name is sometimes the kiss of death — even if your policies are popular. We’ve seen it repeatedly: Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, Heidi Heitkamp… Candidates who should’ve been a natural fit for working-class voters — but lost or nearly lost because the brand has been successfully demonized.

What it means is that Democrats need to build more organizational power in these areas and ensure they are visible in everyday life to refute those claims. It’s easier for someone to vilify a stranger than to demonize a neighbor.

And please — the perfect-candidate mythology has to die. The authors list a bunch of centrist Democrats they think we should replicate everywhere — but AOC can’t win in rural Washington, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez can’t win in the Bronx. The country is not a monolith. People vote for someone they know, someone who shows up, someone who listens. We need more people who look like, talk like, and live like the people they want to represent from their communities. Not a poll-tested Frankenstein candidate engineered and parachuted in from a D.C. lab.

Finally, on money in politics, they are right that voters hate the corrupting influence of wealthy elites. But then they bizarrely imply that progressive ideas are only popular because big donors fund them — which is just not true. Billionaires didn’t build movements like union power, racial justice, and reproductive freedom. They were built by people organizing. Meanwhile, corporate interests have spent decades rigging the economy against workers — and Republicans have successfully branded us as the out-of-touch elitists. If Democrats want to reclaim economic populism, we should be pointing out who’s actually hoarding wealth and rigging the rules.

✅ To sum it up:

The problem isn’t that Democrats are too progressive.

The problem is that Democrats sometimes sound like they don’t believe in their own agenda.

We don’t lose because we fight for too much.

We lose because we fight for too little — and let Republicans define us.

✅ Conclusion: Bold or Bust

So while I commend the authors of Deciding-to-win on what they are trying to do, there is much left to be desired — and this feels very much like running to the middle and punching left again. And that has never worked, especially not last year for Vice President Harris.

Because here’s the truth: America isn’t asking for smaller dreams. They’re asking for leaders who will fight like hell for them — not for shareholders or lobbyists or whatever consultant said the “safe” thing polls best with suburban dads.

We can’t fix a system that’s rigged against working people by nibbling around the edges. We can’t build a multiracial working-class coalition by telling parts of that coalition to sit quietly in the back. We can’t win back trust by sounding like we’re afraid of our own values.

Democrats must lead with conviction — not apology.

We win when:

• We name who’s screwing people over (corporate landlords, private equity, price-gouging monopolies)

• We fight for broad, visible improvements in people’s daily lives (lower costs, higher wages, good housing, safe communities)

• We show up everywhere, not just where it’s comfortable

• We expand the electorate, not just chase the fraction who already vote

We are the party that built Social Security, Medicare, the 40-hour work week, the Civil Rights Act, marriage equality, and the first major climate legislation in history. That’s not “too left.” That’s popular. That’s the majority. That’s winning.

So yes, Democrats need to be bolder in their approaches and braver in their fights — and that doesn’t mean retreating to old habits of centrist, moderate politics. It means remembering who we are at our best: the party that takes on entrenched power and delivers for working people.

Not a party trying to squeeze into whatever polling box the consultants drew up this week.

If we choose boldness, clarity, and economic justice, we can build a coalition big enough to win — and win big.

If we don’t?

Well, the authors of Deciding to Win already gave us the title of the sequel:

Choosing-to-Lose.

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