JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A hundred minutes. That's how long President Trump had the floor literally last night. A hundred minutes that 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 quite a State of the Union.
The historic length of his speech is an apt metaphor for the degree to which Trump and his fellow Republicans have dominated since he returned to office in January. There's been little room left for Democrats to make their case to the American people. But exactly what is the case they want to make? That is a question that Matt Bennett and his fellow moderate Democrats tried to answer at a recent Democratic retreat. Bennett is executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, which is a centrist Democratic think tank, and he joins me now. Hi there.
MATT BENNETT: Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Last night, we saw protests from House Democrats during President Trump's speech. Congressman Al Green of Texas was thrown out. Some other lawmakers walked out. Other lawmakers held up placards or they wore T-shirts with messages of protest. I just want to ask you, this style of protest, do you think it's effective?
BENNETT: 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.
SUMMERS: 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?
BENNETT: Well, look, it was, you know, 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 agreed that we have work to do in both areas.
SUMMERS: Give us a sampling of what some of those conversations were like among you and your fellow Democrats.
BENNETT: 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.
SUMMERS: I've heard you say several times that your party appears to have lost the battle for reasonableness. How does it win it back?
BENNETT: 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, 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 this 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 have got to keep that up.
SUMMERS: That was Matt Bennett. He's the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way. Matt, thank you.
BENNETT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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