[THEPOSTMILLENNIAL] Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman criticized his own party for being ''toxic,'' arguing that the Democratic Party alienates voters by "talking down" to them.
Been goin' on forever. Remember "Vote Your Need, Not Your Greed?" That was either 1988, or maybe even 1984.
Speaking on the podcast Somebody's Gotta Win last week, Fetterman discussed with journalist Tara Palmeri the Democratic Party's losses in 2024 and its growing image problem.
"I think their primary currency was shaming and scolding and talking down to people and telling them 'Hey, I know better than you, or you're dopes, or you're a bro, or you're ignorant or, how can you be this dumb? I can't imagine it. And then, by the way, they're fascist
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
s. How can you vote for that?'" Fetterman said.
Fetterman argued that Democrats
 ...every time you hear the phrase white people , white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
have lost touch with voters, particularly in working-class states like Pennsylvania.
"I know and I love people that voted for Trump, and they're not fascist. They don't support insurrection and those things. And if you go to an extreme, and you become a boutique kind of proposition, then you're going to lose the argument. And we have done that,'' he said.
He pointed out that the 2024 election should be a wake-up call for the left, calling it a ''gut-check kind of vote'' where Americans wanted a party that was "going to protect or project [their] personal view of the American way of life.'' Fetterman also highlighted the Democratic Party's recent struggles with male voters.
"I think that's been seriously eroding for a while. And in some cases, in the conversations I've had, a lot of people, they don't even want to say it publicly, but they just feel like the other side seems like—the men's the problem," Fetterman explained. "Men are to blame. Or their masculinity is toxic. Or unless you're able to conform to our very strict kinds of definition of what we think is appropriate, well then, hey, I'm going to find an alternative. And they've done that. That's absolutely true."
"And once [they've] kind of turned their back on that demographic, it's going to be difficult to rebuild and replace that with those voters, because I think that migration has been an ongoing phenomenon for several years and that has been in front and center in part of the election in '24," he added.
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