>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in a memo.

It was addressed to all who wished to stop Donald Trump and MAGA.

It comes from an organization called Third Way, which aims to help Democrats win more elections by winning the political middle.

The memo contains a list of words and phrases that Third Way says Democrats need to stop using.

Third Way's report says, quote, for a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.

The intent of this language is to include broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace.

The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, and elitist enforcers of wokeness to please the few we have alienated the many, especially on culture issues where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.

End quote.

There are dozens of words and phrases that Third Way wants Democrats to abandon.

They include privilege triggering, centering, safe space.

The unhoused birthing person, Latinx, and more.

After the 2024 election, Democrats were desperate to know what went wrong.

Donald Trump and Republicans gained ground in 90% of American counties, including almost every county in New York state.

There have been a bunch of postmortems.

Third Way is often cited for its work identifying where Democrats have overreached, and its report on language is just one small example.

If you're a Democrat, Third Way says, there is good news.

They believe there's time to build a coalition that can win in more places.

But the organization is clear they believe the future of the National Democratic Party is a lot more.

Abigail Spanberger not so much.

Zohran Mamdani.

And I've invited them on to discuss why and what they want to see next.

The executive vice president for public affairs for Third Way is Matt Bennett, and he joins us now.

Matt, great to have you.

Thanks for joining us on the program today.

>> Well, thanks for having me.

>> Your organization just wrapped a two day conference in South Carolina.

It was titled Winning the Middle.

The Associated Press covered the conference.

And here's what you told them about getting involved in the process of picking the next presidential candidate.

Quote, we're doing it early and we're doing it much, much more aggressively than we did last time.

We've got a team in place that is talking every day to the 2028 ers.

End quote.

Tell us more about exactly what you're trying to do.

>> So as the title of the conference suggests, what we really want to make sure is that Democratic primary voters do the right thing in 2028.

And they pick somebody who I think can fairly be described as a moderate, somebody who can appeal to a broad swath of the electorate in the swing states and the battlegrounds where the election of 2028 will be decided, and someone who will govern as a moderate.

You know, last time we worked very hard to defeat Bernie Sanders, and we were very proud that we did.

So.

We were very happy when Joe Biden won the nomination.

And to be clear, we are Biden supporters and we we liked a lot of what he did.

But as we noted at the conference, a lot of what he did went pretty far to the left.

Bernie Sanders called Joe Biden the most progressive president since FDR, and he thought that was great.

But a lot of voters didn't.

And so this conference is designed was designed to ensure that we are headed towards nominating a moderate and that if that person wins the presidency, that they will govern that way, too.

>> We're going to get more specific on that in just a second, and we'll talk a little bit about this.

Words report, phrases report that I thought was interesting.

But I also think it's instructive, if you don't mind.

You and I talked a little bit yesterday, and we talked about how the Biden administration really got tagged with the idea that they were an open borders administration, that they were a lot of voters, a lot of independent voters did not appreciate their work on immigration.

And, you know, for some Democrats, they say, well, you know, that's nebulous.

Or there were still deportations or whatever the case may be.

You mentioned yesterday something that the Biden administration did right off the bat, right when they got into office.

What was that?

>> Yeah.

So on day one, like all presidents in the modern era, Joe Biden signed a whole bunch of executive orders literally on the first day of his presidency.

And one of them and this was a promise that he made, said that we would not enforce immigration laws inside the country for 100 days.

Now, it was a response to what had happened in the first Trump administration, where Ice had gotten out of control in a kind of different way than we're seeing now.

Remember, there was the child separation stuff.

and it was very brutal and awful and that needed to end.

But what didn't need to end was the enforcement of the law.

And it did.

And so, you know, I don't know what they thought would happen, but what did happen was that there was a surge of refugees and other undocumented people coming to the southern border and entering the country and claiming refugee status.

And that got really, really out of control.

And it was out of control for about two and a half years.

And we just need to stipulate as Democrats that that was a mistake.

And we are never doing that again.

And if we cannot make that claim, if we can't tell voters that we recognize that what happened under Biden in the beginning, he later fixed it with another executive order that did get control back to the border.

But we're not doing that again.

We will, you know, tear ice and CBP down to the studs.

We will get rid of the the thuggish behavior.

We will enforce the law and follow the Constitution, but we will not tell people we're not going to enforce the law ever again.

>> I think it's interesting to note that, in your view, he ran as a moderate.

He really governed as a progressive.

That that didn't maybe serve him or the party well, in your view.

But you also note that in primaries, there's a lot of talk about the challenge that the Democratic Party in particular could have because, you know, the, the, the party base will fall in love with the progressives.

They'll choose a progressive, but then they'll need to run to the middle in the general and they'll struggle.

You've pointed out that again, in your organization's view, it's been a long time since Democrats did put forth a, you know, a pretty far left progressive on the national ticket.

Yes.

>> Yeah.

Look, I mean, I started my career a long time ago on the Mike Dukakis campaign in 1987, and you could kind of quibble about what Dukakis was.

He was kind of a technocratic governor.

But Walter Mondale, the nominee in 1984, was an unreconstructed progressive.

That really was the last time our party did that.

Since 1992, for sure.

We have nominated every single cycle.

We have nominated moderates now, they haven't always won and sometimes they have lost because they were perceived as being farther left than they actually are.

I think that's certainly what happened in 2024, when Kamala Harris was perceived, as her campaign chair said after the election, she was seen by too many voters as, quote, dangerously liberal.

But the, you know, that primary was didn't happen.

That was a kind of whole odd situation where the president stepped aside at the last minute.

We didn't have a primary, but when primary voters are asked to choose, they always choose a moderate, even if they flirt with somebody farther to the left for a while, as they did with Sanders in 16 and 20.

>> Listeners, if you want to call the program, share questions, comments.

If you want to yell at Matt, he's used to it.

if you want to talk about anything you want to talk about, it's 844295 talk.

It's toll free.

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If you call from Rochester 2639994, email the program Connections at wxxi.org.

Or if you're watching on the WXXI News YouTube channel, you can join the chat there.

there's an interesting set of polls that people have been sharing for the last week that show that for the moment, the leading Democrat in the field for 2028 is Kamala Harris.

And far down the list are some of the probably some of the more the Third Way candidates, I would think.

And you know, I think this is also a moment where I think it'd be valuable to hear you talk about a little bit of the history here, Matt.

Number one, the voters are more recently familiar with Kamala Harris, which is probably why she's at the top of the polling.

We don't know that she's going to run again.

She said she might but what the history says about that possibility and what the history says about candidates who might be polling in the single digits or low single digits, whether that is a problem for them at this juncture.

>> It really is not a problem.

Those polls are totally worthless.

I mean, I've seen them, I consume them, I'm in politics, but a poll at this stage, you know, we're three years out from the general election.

We are two and a half years out from anybody making any decisions about this.

It it is based entirely on name recognition.

And obviously Harris has universal name recognition.

And I think Democratic voters are so disgusted by what they're seeing from Trump that they are feeling wistful about the last person to run against him.

And that's not surprising.

However, the Democratic Party has not renominated someone who has lost the general election since we did Adlai Stevenson in 1956, so we don't do that very often.

and I don't think we're going to do it this time.

I think she would have a very, very tough road if she ran for reelection, because we are probably going to want to look to the future and not to the past for our nominee.

>> so the other thing I would note is that in the 1992 cycle, the polling a year from now, the equivalent of a year from now, which would have been in 1990, had Mario Cuomo at about 29% and Bill Clinton at 6%.

And we know how that turned out.

So and that was like a year later in the process.

So I don't think these early polls really tell us anything.

>> Well, if you wouldn't mind, it might be instructive for our audience to get a better look at what your organization does or how it views things, by just kind of giving us a quick take on some of the names that might be in that race.

So, for example, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, governor of California, what do you think?

>> Gavin Newsom kind of contains multitudes.

You know, he he certainly the governor of a very progressive state.

He's done a lot of things as governor and before that, as lieutenant governor and mayor of San Francisco, that people would regard as pretty progressive.

He signed bills that give health care to undocumented immigrants.

He's done a lot of things on trans rights that are, you know, pretty far to the left.

he in the very beginning of his brand new autobiography, he talks about how California was born in genocide, talking about, you know, what happened to Native Americans.

That's all pretty left coded.

And I think it's going to be difficult for him to move away from that.

However, you know, he has tried to kind of moderate his image.

He's gone on some right wing podcasts.

He has podcasts of his own where he had Charlie Kirk on before he was killed.

and I think Steve Bannon.

And so he's trying to broaden himself.

But I think you know, he's got some explaining to do about how he has governed California.

>> Okay.

Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania.

>> Yeah, huge fan of Josh Shapiro.

I think he's great.

and I think you know, he's up for reelection this year in Pennsylvania.

He's going to win probably by a very wide margin.

And coming out of that, he's going to have a lot of wind at his back, because Pennsylvania is, of course, kind of the most important state in the country in the general election is the is the center of the target for both parties.

And, you know, it's the ultimate swing state.

And if he wins in Trump districts, if he wins.

But Trump kind of voters, which is to say, you know, non-college educated voters of all races, which I think he will, he'll have a pretty strong electability argument.

he'll have other things to answer for.

And look, I'm Jewish.

We've never nominated a Jewish person or any non-Christian.

you know, for for the presidency.

I don't know whether it's possible to win.

if you're not a Christian, but I guess we'll find out.

>> Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky.

>> super impressive political background.

The guy has won three times by wide margins, a relatively wide margins in a ruby red state.

And that is a really hard thing for a Democrat to do.

And he's incredibly popular.

He's like 31% approval.

you know, plus 31% approval, which is wild in a place like Kentucky.

So that is a very strong part of his resume.

He is very, you know, clear about his faith.

And he speaks very eloquently about that.

but he's very unknown on the national stage.

And, look, I think for all of this handicapping that we're doing here, you got to remember, and I hate to use a sports metaphor, but it's kind of like watching college baseball players and trying to decide if they can hit a major league fastball.

I mean, maybe, maybe they can.

but, you know, running for president is super hard and very different than being governor.

>> I'm not going to do the whole list.

That's an early look.

I will ask you two more things from the list, and I'm going to grab a couple of phone calls, and then we're going to talk a little bit about Third Way's report on language, which I think is kind of interesting to kind of work through here.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman, what do you think?

I mean, there's a lot of talk that she could end up in this race.

What do you think.

>> She could?

Look, I think she is an incredibly skilled and deft politician.

she has really handled herself brilliantly and built a personal brand that is obviously very broad.

She's enormous.

Number of followers on social media.

She can raise incredible amounts of money.

She's very well known.

But to win the Democratic nomination, it's quite different than the Republicans.

The way that Trump won the nomination in 2016, when the kind of entire establishment was against him, is that the Republican nominee nominating process is winner take all in every state.

So all you got to do is carry a plurality.

And he had a whole bunch of people running against him.

Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and and they were dividing the vote.

And so he was able to carry pluralities to victory.

And that got him all the delegates in these states.

Democrats don't do that.

We do it by proportion and delegate math is complicated and boring.

But the bottom line is this you really got to appeal broadly to win a lot of delegates in our race.

And AOC is super, incredibly popular with the progressive wing of the party.

She is not popular with others in the party, and I think that would make it very hard for her to win the nomination.

But look, she's really young.

I mean, she could run again in like 40 years and still be president.

So she's not out of the conversation for a long time.

>> And finally, on the subject of presidential nominees, from your perspective in the organization, we're talking to, Matt Bennett executive vice president for public affairs for Third Way.

That's a national organization that seeks to help Democrats win by winning the political middle and focusing more on middle ground.

is it your view, Matt?

Is it your organization's view that this is a moment for the Democrats to nominate a governor as opposed to a Jon Ossoff or Mark Kelly or Ruben Gallego, a senator or a member of Congress or somebody who's out of government?

Do you think it should be one of the governors?

>> You know, that's kind of the trope in politics that you've got to be an outsider.

You can't be from Washington, you can't be a senator.

I think Barack Obama kind of exploded that as a as a myth in our politics.

I think you can run from the Senate, but it is harder.

It is a barrier to get over because you're seen as kind of part of the problem by some voters.

But I think if you establish yourself as an outsider, even from within the system, it can be done.

I mean, Bernie Sanders has been in Congress since, I think, 1979, and somehow he ran as an outsider.

so it can be done, but it just requires kind of an additional level of effort.

>> All right.

Let me grab a few phone calls here.

Larry in Rochester first.

Hey, Larry, go ahead.

>> Hi.

Thank you.

Very interesting program.

I'm definitely going to be looking into third party.

Third Way.

Excuse me.

Lifelong Democrat, 50 years.

And I just feel like the party's left me behind.

I just want to say, though, that I think this is a national phenomenon, not a political party.

As illustrated by what's going on with the complete foundational shift in the Republican Party.

I suspect there's something bigger going on in the country.

And it's not just a political party.

>> Thank you.

Larry, don't hang up.

I want to ask you a quick question.

If you don't mind, Larry.

I just want you to.

Can you define how you think the party's left?

You?

>> Cultural issues.

>> Okay.

It's a two word answer.

Cultural issues.

Thank you.

Larry.

Matt Bennett.

You want to weigh in on that?

>> Sure.

I hear it all the time.

First, let me to Larry's core point.

I very much agree.

I think Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party.

I can't tell you the number of people who I know in politics, Republicans who have said I don't recognize my party.

I can't be part of that anymore.

Aiga is not what republicanism was.

You know, as of ten years ago on our side, though, I hear from a lot of folks like Larry who say the same thing about Democrats, that they feel like their party has left them.

And one of the things that we're trying to address is that gap that that people feel left behind, they feel like we're, you know, talking to a group of activists or elites or people that just seem weird to to to folks who are lifelong Democrats but just don't happen to share those views.

And, and even if they don't share the views, the problem is the message we're sending too often is if you don't believe precisely what we believe on these issues, you're bad, you're bigoted, or you're dumb.

And when you tell people they're bad, bigoted or dumb, that tends to make them not want to be part of your party.

And so we better stop doing that.

>> Pat and Geneva next on the phone.

Listen, on WEOS Finger Lakes Public Radio.

Hey, Pat, go ahead.

>> Hi.

So with all due respect, Matt in the preview to the show, one of the things that was talked about was phrases we should omit.

>> Yeah, we're going to talk about that.

>> And, and I and I think one of the phrases that's already been used because Matt already said it is college educated.

So to me that's I'm college educated with a two year degree.

But to me it's an insult to so many people that that, oh, you're not college educated, which they hear is, oh, you're stupid.

Oh, you're, you're you're misinformed.

Which I think many of them are.

because I always say that what I got out of college and actually a lot of it after college, when I got into a mixed crowd of people, was I heard other views other than the ones that I had heard at the dinner table growing up.

And that's what expanded my world and made me into who I am today.

>> Okay, Pat, thanks.

Yeah, thanks for the phone call.

Matt Bennett.

Go ahead.

>> You know, Pat, you put your finger on a really serious problem in the way that people in politics think and talk.

the problem is that educational attainment, that is to say, you know, whether you graduate from high school or not, whether you graduate from college or not, whether you have a college education is a demographic marker.

The way that race, age, religion, income, all of those things are.

And we divide up the electorate in those ways so that we can understand what those various things, what impact they have on the way that people think and the way that they vote.

And the problem with this one is that it is hard to talk about without sounding patronizing or arrogant.

And I think you're right about that.

And I wish that there was a better way of doing it.

but and if anyone out there, any listeners has ideas, please send them to us.

But I think I've heard this before, and I think it's a it's a real criticism, Pat.

>> Thank you.

let me work through a couple of emails here that cover a number of different topics.

First of all, we've got a question just on on how we define a certain term.

David, in Ovid says the problem with the concept of a moderate is that it is a rather nebulous concept.

It shifts over time.

So can you define it?

Matt Bennett Third Way seeks to bring Democrats more to the political middle, less to the from the extremes.

What is the political middle?

>> Yeah.

So first of all, it is true that the concept of moderate does shift over time.

But let me tell you, the concept of conservative and liberal shift over time to when I entered politics.

Conservatives did not believe the things that Donald Trump believes.

and now I guess they do.

And and liberal or the term progressive wasn't even in our lexicon back then.

And now they believe a whole range of things about culture issues and the economy that were not the case, you know, 30 years ago when I started doing this.

So, sure, it has changed over time, the meaning of moderate.

But it's true for everybody.

On the political ideological spectrum as well.

The way that we think about being a moderate is that, first of all, we believe that there's complexity.

We don't think that kind of orthodox, rigid thinking leads to good outcomes in governing.

And if you think about the way places that are governed by one party, you know, operate, they tend not to operate very well, in part because orthodox thinking and rigid thinking can lead to really bad outcomes.

We think you've got to.

So, for example, I'll just give you a couple examples on the economy.

We are capitalists.

We believe that private industry is what drives our economy and what brings prosperity to the broadest array of people.

But we are not unfettered capitalists.

We think capitalism needs to be regulated otherwise.

too much power.

And and money go to the very top.

And and at the expense of people in the middle and on the bottom.

And so we believe in regulated capitalism.

That is a kind of complexity that isn't true for people on the very far left or the far right.

And then, as we'll discuss when we talk about the words memo, we think there's complexity to social issues too.

that that it isn't black and white to think about trans rights or to think about immigration.

On immigration, we believe that what is happening now with Ice and CBP is terrible.

It's unconstitutional, it's immoral.

It's illegal, it's un-American.

But we also think that the laws have to be enforced.

We just think they can be enforced much better.

And so that's the kind of complexity that we believe defines what it means to be a moderate.

>> Okay.

David, thank you.

Sue writes to say, I've heard from white men who work as miners or tradesmen that the Democrats left them.

Either they went to the Working Families Party or they went to Donald Trump.

Democrats haven't protected their wages.

But then Sue says these are people who would have voted for Bernie Sanders.

Probably not the Third Way candidate.

So that's an interesting idea there.

Matsue saying she's talked to plenty of people who do feel that the Democratic Party has left them because it hasn't fought for their wages or their economic lives.

Enough.

What do you think?

>> I think that's a fair criticism.

And I think that if you, you know, look, I served in the Clinton administration, and I think we did a lot of things right.

20 million new jobs.

The economy was booming.

There was a huge budget surplus when we left office.

Things were really, really good.

And we got a lot of things wrong.

I mean, I am a proud son of upstate New York from Syracuse.

Syracuse, like so much of upstate New York, was hollowed out by the, by globalization and by technology that that cost so many jobs and and really devastated communities.

And we did not do enough as kind of center left, the center left, when we were in charge under Clinton and then again under Obama to soften the blow and to ensure that there can be a transition for people that were left out by globalization and technology.

And so I do feel like that is a fair criticism.

And I think the solutions being offered by the extremists in the MAGA movement and by the extremists in my party, like Bernie Sanders, aren't real.

Bernie Sanders keeps talking about Medicare for all to transition our healthcare system to Medicare for all would cost $40 trillion over ten years, 40 trillion.

I don't know where we would find $40 trillion.

And it would mean the end of private insurance.

It would mean that rich people would simply you know, have access to their doctors and everybody else would be part of a nationalized system that would be a chaotic mess trying to get there.

So that's just one example of the many kinds of solutions that that Bernie and others are offering that aren't real.

That will never happen and that aren't going to make anyone's life better.

>> Well, here's a listener who asked us not to use their name, but said, I'm so mad at this man already.

Why should we listen to him as another old white man?

I don't know how old you are, Matt, but you are a white man.

So.

Go ahead.

>> Yeah.

Guilty as charged, white and relatively old.

I'm 61, and I totally get it.

Look, I understand that people want new voices.

I would, you know, suggest that there is a degree of experience that comes with having been doing this for a long time, but we have a whole bunch of young people working for us, and I spent a lot of time listening to them.

>> Well, and so there's a couple of emails maybe related to how you win and how you energize people.

I'm going to read this one from Dell, who says, I take the guest's point, but I can't agree that more of the same is what Democrats need right now.

Consistently, we've seen the Democratic Party run on a middle ground platform and flat out lose despite the disfavored ability of MAGA politics, nobody is excited to vote for a candidate who doesn't excite them.

We keep going down the same road, and it is frustrating to see the party not learning from their lack of imagination.

Gavin Newsom's recent comments that we need to stop talking about pronouns.

As a perfect example, if your stance is that we need to disregard the values and dignity of a community that is being systematically attacked and erased, then it is not a stance I can get behind.

Hold your nose and vote.

Blue is never going to win hearts and minds.

That's from Dell.

Go ahead Matt.

>> That's true.

No one should be told to hold their nose and vote for anybody.

however, Dell, I just disagree that you can't be exciting and run as a kind of sensible moderate.

I think you definitely can.

And if you look at the elections of 2025, in new Jersey and Virginia, you had women running for governor there who did not make viral moments on social media.

They did not you know, cause a huge kerfuffle on late night comedy the way that Zohran Mamdani did in his run for mayor.

and to be clear, he ran a brilliant campaign and is a skilled social media artist.

they didn't have any viral moments, but they did pretty well.

They won by overwhelming margins in tough states.

Abigail Spanberger flipped the state from red to blue.

Mike Sherrill held on to a governor's seat where no party had held on for three terms in a row for 35 years.

That was hard to do.

And by the way, the turnout in Virginia and New Jersey relative to 2024, which is how you measure that against the last presidential, was higher than it was in New York City.

So this idea that moderates can't excite voters and get them out to the polls and get them strongly behind them, I think is wrong.

Josh Shapiro Wes Moore.

Andy Beshear these are all moderate governors with very, very strong approval ratings.

Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, because they get stuff done.

That is what they promise their voters, and that is what they've delivered.

>> I two more quick ones, then we'll take our only break.

We're going to come back and talk about this language report.

Sue followed up to say the message that corporations are not taxed fairly, and it is shifting the burden to regular people is a progressive idea, and it's very popular.

Yes.

She wants to know if you agree with that idea.

>> I do.

And look, we share a lot of progressive ideas.

We're in the same party as the progressives.

And absolutely, corporations are not taxed fairly.

And more importantly, very wealthy people are not taxed fairly.

They not only use all these tax shelters, but even the base tax rates are terrible.

They pay much less on their taxes for capital gains, for the money they make doing nothing.

Then people pay on the taxes for labor, and that is an absolute outrage.

And everyone in the Democratic Party should be fighting against that.

>> Tim writes to say James Talarico the future, and Wes writes to say, this is just Wes from Rochester.

I don't think it's Wes Moore.

Wes says.

Evan, what does your guest think about James Talarico, the Texas Democrat who won his Senate primary last night?

I saw that Joe Rogan thinks Talarico would make a good president, and anyone who can turn Joe Rogan clearly has something going on.

So Wes and Tim want to know what you think about Talarico.

>> I think Talarico is great.

And I was and I'm very enthusiastic about him.

He is running kind of a brilliant campaign.

He's a seminarian.

He talks about his faith all the time in ways that are very authentic and relatable, and I think that's why Rogan said that about him.

He had him on his show and kind of launched him into the stratosphere by by really talking about him in very favorable terms.

And Talarico has performed brilliantly.

He ran a really tough race against Jasmine Crockett down there.

And look, I think everybody in my party is very excited about him.

However, Texas is really, really hard.

He's getting ready to try to kind of climb Mount Everest with no oxygen.

It's it's a R plus 15 state means he's got a really overperform if anyone can do it, I think he can.

But but I just want to be clear that even if he doesn't get there, it's because Texas is such a difficult state for Democrats.

>> Democrats are rooting for Paxton to win that primary.

I think on the Republican side, we'll see.

we're talking to Matt Bennett executive vice president of public affairs for Third Way.

It's a national organization that is trying to help Democrats win more elections and trying to do that by moving Democrats more to the political middle.

Matt is from upstate New York.

He's from Syracuse originally, and we're going to come right back after this break.

We'll share more of your feedback, and we're going to talk about was it something I said?

A short report from Third Way on the language that Democrats use that they want to see.

86.

We'll come right back with that.

Coming up in our second hour, it's our annual Oscar preview with the team from the Little theater and beyond, sitting down talking about the films that are nominated.

Maybe you've seen some of them.

Maybe you haven't seen a movie in a theater in years.

Like a lot of Americans.

And we're going to try to see what we've missed here, get caught up to speed, and it's always a fun time with the team from the little and beyond.

As we talk.

Oscars preview next hour.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

So Third Way released this report late last year on words and phrases that Democrats often use that they say are well intended, but tend to turn off independents and sort of political normies who either recoil from this stuff or think that it's too ivory tower academics, or just think that it's wrong.

So they've categorized it.

I'm just going to read through some of the categories to give.

I'm not going to read all of them, but I just want to give listeners a taste of this.

And then we're going to have Matt Bennett from Third Way talk about some of this.

So there's a category called therapy speak.

And Third Way says these words say I'm more empathetic than you and you are callous to hurting others feelings.

Here are some of the words and phrases in the therapy speak category.

Privilege the word violence, as in environmental violence or violence outside of the context of physical violence, dialoging, othering, triggering, microaggression, centering, safe space and body shaming.

Then there is seminar room language.

Third Way says.

This language says I'm smarter and more concerned about important issues than you.

Your kitchen table concerns are small, and they include things like systems of oppression and cultural appropriation.

There's organizer jargon.

These words say, according to Third Way, we are beholden to groups, not to individuals.

People have no agency of their own, and they include phrases like radical transparency.

The unhoused, housing insecurity person who immigrated.

Then there's gender and orientation correctness, Third Way says.

These words and phrases say your views on traditional genders and gender roles are at best quaint, and they include, for example, birthing person or inseminated person.

Pregnant people, chestfeeding, cisgender, deadnaming, heteronormative patriarchy, and LGBTQ.

I plus.

And finally, there's the shifting language of racial constructs.

Third Way says these words signal that talking about race is even more of a minefield, and you will be called out as racist if you do not use the latest and correct terminology.

They include words like Latinx, Bipoc, allyship, intersectionality.

So Matt Bennett, Executive Vice President for Public Affairs of Third Way you put this report out.

I am sure you heard from some some folks who didn't like it or disagreed with parts of it.

what has generally been the response to this?

>> Yeah, we heard from plenty of people.

Didn't like it, of course.

but we heard more from people who did the most interesting responses we got was I got about a dozen texts from members of Congress.

I'm in fairly regular contact with them, and I won't name any of them.

But what they said was, oh, my God, thank goodness someone did this.

Can you please get my staff to stop?

Stop talking and writing this way because they're the people that are out there talking to voters.

They go home every weekend.

They're in Wegman's, they're talking to people, and no one talks this way in their normal life.

That is just not how people interact.

And when elected officials or candidates or others who represent them do talk this way, they sound really out of touch.

>> Okay.

and, you know, there's there's certainly a lot on gender and orientation.

The Trump, the Trump administration, the Trump campaign sought to exploit that in the last election.

And earlier this hour, you said that on the political left side, where there is extreme.

You said the mistake that Democrats make when they're on the extremes is not seeing nuance.

So I want to ask you what you mean by that.

Last week, we referenced some new polling from Pew that shows that 56% of Americans support trans people in their rights in the workplace, that you shouldn't be able to be fired for being just for being trans that basic civil protections are are in order for trans people, that's 56%.

But two thirds of Americans do not support biological boys and males playing in girls and women's sports.

And a similar number does not support surgical intervention for minors.

And so is that where you are, or is it something else here?

Matt.

>> It's very close to that.

I think that's exactly right.

We are we are absolute libertarians when it comes to adults.

Anyone should live their lives in the truth that they that they feel and that their bodies tell them that they are.

And so this Trump administration assault on trans people is appalling.

they're throwing them out of the military.

They're not allowing them to have passports to show they're they're real sex.

All of that is terrible.

And we stand with everybody on the left in fighting against that kind of bigotry.

And and at the same time, we believe that when it comes to children, there need to be rules.

And in particular, parents need to be in charge.

that isn't always great.

There are bad parents out there, but that's true in every aspect of the life of a child.

the the I think the mistake that the left gets into when it comes to trans rights is that they push too far, that they want to take parents out of the loop, that they want to take sports, local sports leagues out of the loop, and issues of fairness and safety are concerned when it comes to sports and issues of parental rights or concern when it comes to treatment.

So those are the ways that we believe that there really is complexity to these issues.

>> But let me just push on that last point there.

I can imagine some on the left will say, look, if I jump on board with no surgery for minors, no biological boys and men in women's and girls sports, then that's just going to be a win for the cultural right right now.

And they're going to want to go further.

They're going to want to take trans rights away.

They're going to want people to be fired for being trans.

They're they're going to continue to make life miserable for trans people who are routinely made miserable by this cultural war.

And I'm not going to get on board with that.

What would you say to them, Matt?

>> I think that's precisely what they're going to say.

A lot of them do say that.

I just think it's wrong.

There's no evidence that that's how this works.

The slippery slope is the is the biggest myth in American politics.

You can have, for example, rights and responsibilities.

You can have just take guns in an area that I used to work on full time.

Actually, you can have a second amendment that confers an individual right to to own a firearm.

If you're in a law abiding adult, but you can put rules around that and make sure that children don't get access to firearms or criminals.

so we don't believe that it's all or nothing when it comes to any of these issues, whether it's reproductive freedom or trans issues or the rights of gays and lesbians, none of this requires absolutism in any direction.

And I just don't think it's true that if you put rules around, you know sports or or youth medicine, that's going to mean necessarily that you have to have the kind of Trump approach to adults who who are trans.

>> Okay, back to phones and emails, Ben and Charlotte says, I assume the guest has heard of the Overton window.

Being a moderate is technically meaningless.

I think he's out of touch and missed the lesson.

When Hillary Clinton got the Democratic nomination over Bernie Sanders and then lost to Donald Trump, a single payer, Medicare for all universal health care system with examples from Canada system or the UK or NHS being useful, even though each have their own issues, is a mainstream idea at this point.

So that's been in Charlotte, here in Rochester.

So number one, he's using the term Overton window, which is actually I didn't read it.

But that's on your list of terms and phrases that you guys don't like.

Yeah.

So what's wrong with Overton Window?

>> Well, Ben Ben is very plugged in to this world, and the Overton window is the idea that.

And it comes from academia.

It's the idea that if you push an issue kind of to the extreme, you might not get your extremist view, but you will change the conversation.

You'll move the conversation your way.

And look, the Overton window has been proven to work in a whole bunch of ways.

So, for example when it comes to the rights of gays and lesbians we didn't start with marriage.

We started with other kinds of rights, making sure that there was workplace protections for gays and lesbians.

And then the Overton Window moved towards the rights for for everyone.

And ultimately we ended up with marriage equality.

So I don't disagree that the Overton Window can be a powerful force in our politics.

I just don't think he's right about moving the Overton window on the economy in the way that Bernie Sanders wants to move it, and we can have a detailed, substantive or political discussion about that.

>> Well, Monica writes in to say the last thing Democrats need is to be pulled more to the right.

Bernie Sanders is a center left Democrat, calling him an extremist for trying.

Well, here's what she says, she says, calling him an extremist for trying to give us the things that the rest of the developed world has is dishonest at best.

Matt Bennett.

>> I get the point.

and look, if you are looking at Bernie in the context of, you know, the Nordic countries, perhaps he fits right in.

The thing is, Bernie Sanders was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

He's not a Democrat.

In fact, when he runs for Senate, he declines the Democratic nomination because he's a he's a DSA member.

And let's just be clear, the mainstream center left approach to healthcare is the Affordable Care Act that President Obama passed.

It is not Medicare for all.

That just isn't the case in America.

Whatever.

supporters of his might feel about the, you know, most optimal healthcare system for the Western world and whether they think it works very well in Britain at the moment or Canada or elsewhere in this country, it is a fairly extreme idea that would cost $40 trillion.

>> To back to the phones we go in.

Fairport, this is Robert.

Hey, Robert.

Go ahead.

>> Thanks for taking my call.

Hey, your guest talked about fair taxation.

And, you know, I'm looking at the the New York state figures here.

And, you know, I kind of like to hear some specifics on what he thinks is fair.

If you look at New York State, the top 1.8% of taxpayers paid 51.9% of all income taxes in New York State, top 50%, 99.8 lower 50%.

They paid 0.2, in the lowest, 25%.

They didn't pay anything.

They got 2.2% back.

What's fair?

>> Robert?

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Matt.

>> Yeah.

Look Robert's right.

New York has a pretty progressive taxation system.

And and I think New York taxes may be a little high.

Actually, my my parents live in Syracuse, and they pay very high property taxes.

And I know that it's very difficult for a lot of folks up there.

The the thing I was talking about was the federal system, and mostly what I'm talking about is the very, very, very top.

The billionaires and mostly through tax avoidance, they end up paying very little.

and even if they did pay what they were supposed to and they didn't use shelters and offshore accounts and all the rest they're not taxed enough relative to their wealth and relative to the fact that they in many cases, generate wealth not by working, but by investing.

And in our view, and I think this is the view of most Democrats there needs to be more fairness and more progressivity brought to the federal tax system.

>> Robert.

Thank you.

back to the phones.

And Jack in Greece.

Hey, Jack, go ahead.

>> Oh, hi, Evan.

Thanks so much.

Hey, Matt.

I think I haven't heard of your movement before.

I'm a I'm a registered Democrat, and and my gut says I, I agree with you.

I think you're right, I think, but I'm wondering is how broad based is your movement.

And I guess the other thing is I apologize, but if I could rattle off 1 or 2 points, maybe one is have you done any analysis that says, okay, if we move x percent?

However, you measure that more towards the center, how many votes will we lose versus how many might we gain?

For example, you know, for example, I'm also a Catholic and I, I know a lot of folks in my faith vote.

They basically vote on the issue of abortion because the messaging on the right is so hard that, hey, you know, I'm old enough to remember when I think it was the Clintons that said abortion should be, you know, rare, but, you know, protected but rare not.

And today, the messaging seems to be we can't even talk about that issue.

I'm curious.

You know, I think you lose.

We lose a lot of Catholics over that issue.

We see the U.S.

Conference of Catholic Bishops now coming out strongly against Vance and Trump over the border immigration.

So the Catholic Church has a rich history of social justice, but it gets hung up.

The Catholics in the pews get hung up on abortion.

>> Yeah.

Let me just jump in, Jack, just because we're going to lose the program.

But it's an interesting point.

We talked recently on this program about Pope Leo and his first year Pope Bob, the American pope, a baseball fan but pretty remarkably, jumping right into the fray.

Pope Leo has on issues like immigration.

You're right about that.

But Matt Bennett, he says beyond that, he thinks as a Catholic, there's still a trip up that happens with the issue of abortion.

How do you see that?

>> No question.

Jack is right.

The Clinton formulation was that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

And the rare part is important.

It really clangs with a lot of people on the left.

They do not like that.

They don't like the idea that abortion should be limited in any way.

but that's not what Clinton meant.

What Clinton meant was we should work as a as a society to make abortion less necessary to reduce teen pregnancies, to reduce unwanted pregnancies generally.

and I think everyone I can't imagine anyone would disagree with that.

but look this is a red line for a lot of Catholics, a lot of evangelical Christians.

it is been a real problem for Democrats.

Our view is that if you take a more nuanced view the way that Clinton did, maybe there can be an updated formulation that was 30 plus years ago.

but one that stipulates that there are people that believe that abortion is murder and that abortion should be left to there to a woman, her doctor and her family.

I think we have got to embrace complexity around that issue, to.

>> Bob writes in to say, old white guy and former Democrat here, I'm not sure it was the language that was the problem.

I think I understood pretty well that I'm a part of the problem just because of my demographics.

And when that started, most moderate Democrats were silent.

I used to think politics was about ideas.

Now it's about identity and I'm out.

That's from Bob.

Matt.

>> Yeah.

Let me just be clear that we don't think language was the entire problem, or even a large part of the problem.

It was just a piece of it.

I mean, we run a think tank.

We think ideas are super duper important, but language is a signal for and it suggests to people that you're either kind of part of their tribe or you're not.

And we worry that that language that they were using signaled that they were not.

So very much agree with that.

I don't think, though, that Bob is completely out of the Democratic Party.

I think there's a real place for him and for others like him.

but we've got to make sure that our party has a big enough tent for everybody.

>> Okay?

And I'll.

Boy, I could just keep reading emails all day if Matt could just stay all day.

We just.

We'll skip lunch and dinner here, but we're going to wrap in a second.

Charlie writes in to say, Evan, I think the Democrats have a steep hill to climb for two reasons.

Number one, they do not have they do not have or have had a candidate that excites the average American, college educated or not.

Where is the next Obama or Clinton?

And number two, Meg has done an incredibly successful job at demonizing liberals, sometimes with facts, mostly with lies.

And the average American believes the lies.

That's from Charlie.

Go ahead, Matt Bennett.

>> Well, on the second point, I couldn't agree more.

They're really, really good at lying about Democrats and it has been a huge problem.

And it's part of their superpower is kind of shamelessness and willing to lie.

I say that, you know, very Partizan way, but I think that's true.

when it comes to who will lead us out of the wilderness, I will tell you that we don't know yet.

If you'd asked people like me at this point in the 1992 presidential cycle, no one would have said that Bill Clinton's coming along to win the white House for the first time in, you know, it had it would have been 16 years.

And so we don't know who our if there's a kind of savior out there for us.

I think there is.

I think there's going to be somebody that emerges from a very big field of candidates in 2028 and will be very strong coming into the general election, and can beat JD Vance or Marco Rubio or whomever they nominate.

but I can't tell you who that person is.

>> You don't want to choose one right now and say, if I had my pick right now, it would be X.

>> I definitely do not want to choose one right now.

>> Okay.

All right.

hey, last thing in our last 30s, a couple listeners reacted not just to the words or phrases list, but they didn't like hearing patriarchy on their 30s.

Matt, anything you want to say about that particular word on your list?

>> Yeah.

We're not saying that the patriarchy isn't a real thing.

It is, of course, and I'm part of it.

I totally will stipulate to that.

It's just not a word that anybody uses.

And I think Democrats need to be careful not to sound like they're talking to people who are unlike the voters that they are trying to win.

>> Matt, if people want to learn more about Third Way, where would you send them?

>> Third Way.org is our website.

I am God help me still on X the formerly known as Twitter at Third Way.

Matt be.

>> Matt, will you come back and chat sometime?

whether it's before the midterms or next elections or when something strikes, our listeners fancy.

>> Absolutely.

Anytime.

>> Matt Bennett executive vice president for public affairs for Third Way.

He's a native Syracusan.

I don't I don't know, actually the phrase Syracusan that sounds Syracusan.

Syracusan?

he's a he's a western upstate New Yorker, and he's with an organization called Third Way.

We've got more Connections coming up in just a moment.

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>> Okay.

And Jared, we're going to go with Master of Laws.

Oh.

Yeah.

Scott Pukos please.

Amazing.

I'll give you $20.

If you give me a second.

I want somebody just somebody just sent me an email saying that they love Bugonia.

Yeah, I have to go.

No, no, there's nothing worse than.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And my son cannot believe that one of the is very exciting.

He's a real car guy.

He's going to go to the women's voices.

Yeah.

Oh.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

So 75th anniversary of the driving.

we've got a panel with the Great Western New York Film Critics Association on Saturday.

This Saturday.

Yep.

And yours is two settings for ours is up to date.

Master Sunday at Brighton.

we're trying to get.

And we're actually screening an Oscar nominated film on Friday.

Yeah.

This is a really sad make up and hair stylist to make up and hairstyling.

A Japanese film.

Kabuki.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Let me have a look at that.

That's what I look at.

You.

Everybody.

Going to carry everybody?

Thank you very.

So sorry everybody.

Just a reminder.

Get really close to your microphones.

There.

That carry by the way, as in Cary Grant did.

Do you know how few people in this world when they meet my son and they go carry his Cary Grant carry always.

I feel, is like, Cary Grant.

No, I'm like, how about Harry Edwards from Princess Bride?

You know what they said?

What's her name?

Oh, yeah.

I was like, no one.

So much studying.

What's that to do?

So much studying.

I haven't had time.

How young are they?

How many?

One.

George Jimmy Lai baby in line.

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