A top Democratic adviser who worked on the campaigns for Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris said that the party needs to move away from “extremes” within the party.
Philippe Reines, who served as Hillary Clinton’s press secretary and helped her and Vice President Harris prepare for debates with Donald Trump, said that the Democratic Party was too beholden to a minority of its members and needed to be “reoriented” to connect with voters again.
The comments came as the dust settles on the 2024 election, in which President-elect Donald Trump won the popular vote for the first time in his political career.
Speaking on CNN, Reines said: “Nobody wants to be kowtow to the extremes of their own party. The majority should rule, and the majority of Democrats don’t agree with the things that we are being tagged with. I think Democrats believe in common sense stuff more than you realize.
“Most Democrats I know think there’s a huge problem at the border. Most Democrats I know think that males at birth shouldn’t play in women’s sports and vice versa.”
Newsweek reached out to the Democratic National Committee for comment.
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Reines said that the party needed to be broad to include voters from a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs, but that it went both ways.
“You can have a healthy conversation within a party, and you have to have a room within a party for all this, but at the end of the day, if you have some of these issues that are 8-20 across the country, you really have to figure it out,” he said.
“This is still at 50-50 country. For us to go forward and be representative of tens of millions, we have to reorient it. We can’t be afraid to say it. The other cultural stuff. The woke stuff. The PC police stuff.
“You’ll see Republicans who say they’re afraid to say it. I’m afraid to say it. If congressmen are afraid to say it, how can any of us say it?”
Reines was a key player in both the 2016 and 2024 elections. For Clinton and Harris’ debate preparations, Reines played the part of Donald Trump, advising the candidates on the best way to beat him rhetorically.
However, his analysis differed from that of other big Democratic names. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent aligned with the Democratic Party, said that the party had abandoned working-class voters and needed to refocus on progressive values.
Following Harris’ loss, Sanders wrote: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
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