Fmr Obama Advisor Says Dems Let GOP ‘Brand’ Them As ‘Cultural Elites’ Who Alienated Working-Class Voters

Former President Barack Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday on his podcast that the Democratic Party has allowed Republicans to brand them as “cultural elites,” which he claims is why working-class voters have left the party.

Following President-elect Donald Trump’s win on Tuesday evening, Democrats and political pundits appeared puzzled by the former president’s landslide victory in both the Electoral College and popular vote. On “Pod Save America,” Pfeiffer told guest and anti-Trump Republican strategist Sarah Longwell that while critiquing Democrats for “woke” ideology is popular among the party’s strategists, the party is also struggling with working-class voters due to losing the “branding war” to Republicans.

“It’s such a hard thing because there’s been a bunch of people — like a great way to get attention right now is to go on like Fox News, and say, as a Democratic strategist, and say, ‘Democrats are too woke. They do all these things, like they should stop saying Latinx and all these things,’” Pfeiffer said. “Then you’re like, ‘Well, when did Kamala Harris do those things … in this campaign.’”

“So I say that only because we have a broader branding problem as a party. We have allowed the Republicans to brand us as the party of cultural elites. So we have this cultural disconnect from working-class voters of all races that is preventing them from liking us,” Pfeiffer added. “Despite the fact that we just laid out our policies and Trump’s policies in a blind taste test, they’re gonna pick ours almost every single time — on economic issues, right? Higher minimum wage, tax cuts for the middle class, raising taxes on the wealthy, protect Social Security, Medicare, all those things. But they don’t trust us to do those things because they don’t believe that’s who we’re fighting for or what we’re focused on. So we’ve absolutely lost a branding war here and we have to, I think, for the party we have to really think about how we fix that.”

Pfeiffer went on to highlight similar struggles within both Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and former President Barack Obama’s, noting how Trump reshaped the GOP’s image to their advantage during his 2016 campaign.

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“That was one of the challenges for Kamala Harris was that she started as a blank slate. So she immediately adopted … She cannot be unique in the Democratic Party. Democrats had a lot of these same challenges when Barack Obama became the nominee, but because he had time to build up name ID and introduce himself, he could be different than that caricature,” Pfeiffer continued.

“Trump, same way — Republicans had this opposite problem of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, cut Social Security and Medicare. Like we had done a very good job as a party of branding the Republicans as sort of plutocrats who want to cut your Social Security, Medicare, and take your health care away. Trump, comes along, redefines the party and it’s sort of this America first nationalist way,” Pfeiffer said. “Despite having a bunch of policies that are going to hurt working-class people they think — they’re more likely to trust him because he seems, which I know is insane because he’s a billionaire with a gold toilet in his own airplane, but he is seen [as] more culturally similar because the anti-establishment, I guess, than Democrats do. No matter where, how Kamala Harris was raised or what her personal story was.”

During her campaign, undecided voters and former Democrats criticized Harris for being out of touch with everyday voters as she appeared on stage with celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, JLo, and Beyoncé. With support from Hollywood elites and billionaire donors, Harris raised nearly $1 billion over the course of her campaign.