Last summer, I met up with an old friend in St. Louis. We talked about the election and the Democrats' lack of a cohesive message. We talked about everything we could get a large number of Democrats to agree on. Pro-choice, against locking up immigrant kids in cages, some form of universal health care, racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights. All of it comes down to one theme that Democrats could own: Basic fucking human rights.
Pete was on to this in attempting to reclaim terms like liberty and freedom.
“The real challenge for the Democratic Party, and its presidential candidates in particular, is to figure out how to reverse the Right’s stranglehold on our political vocabulary,” he wrote. “I don’t have a quick solution handy, but I’m pretty sure that if the Dems don’t act fast to reclaim our language, they risk losing the word battle before they realize they’re fighting it.”
He wrote that in 2003. We’ve lost the word battle by now.
https://newrepublic.com/article/155533/pete-buttigieg-still-fighting-last-war
Democrats need to find the next battle and go ahead and win it.