{"id":51306,"date":"2025-12-16T13:17:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T19:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=51306"},"modified":"2025-12-17T01:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:19:15","slug":"coons-democrats-need-to-stop-telling-americans-what-to-feel-and-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=51306","title":{"rendered":"Coons: Democrats need to stop telling Americans \u2018what to feel and believe\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sen. Chris Coons\u2002<\/u><\/a>(D-Del.), a staunch ally of former President Biden\u2002<\/u><\/a>on Capitol Hill, says Democrats need to reevaluate their fundamental message to voters and \u201cstop telling Americans how to be and what to feel and believe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said leaders of the Democratic Party instead \u201cneed to listen\u201d to voters and solve their problems in a way that Americans recognize as genuinely helpful to their goals of achieving financial security and living the American dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coons argues that while the Biden administration passed meaningful legislation to improve millions of Americans\u2019 lives, most \u201cpeople didn\u2019t recognize the impacts of the bills we wrote and the votes we took.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, Coons believes \u201cthat\u2019s why Americans don\u2019t believe us when we preach at them from auditorium stages, cable news desks and social media posts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to get back to the values and ideas that draw people to be Democrats to begin with,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coons, the 62-year-old third-term senator, shared his observations and recommendations for the Democratic Party in an essay published in Democracy<\/u><\/a>, the \u201cjournal of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coons reveals that both his parents were Republicans and that he helped found the Amherst College Republicans as a young man, when he also interned with former Republican Sen. Bill Roth (Del.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Coons began to change his political views after studying abroad in Kenya and living with people who endured \u201cterrible material circumstances\u201d but were \u201csustained by their faith and family\u201d and \u201cwelcomed strangers in openhearted ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His views continued to change when he returned to the United States and visited what he called the \u201cdeep, concentrated poverty of the South Bronx,\u201d which was only a \u201cfew miles from the homes of some of the richest people on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said these experiences instilled in him a desire to create more opportunities for all Americans, including those in underprivileged circumstances, and to \u201cmake sure no one was left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese were the values that inspired me to join the Democratic Party,\u201d he wrote. \u201cToday, I and many others worry that we\u2019ve lost sight of those values, and that we\u2019ve in turn lost sight of how to engage Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He argues that \u201cto win again,\u201d Democrats \u201cneed to offer voters a concise, accessible framework that rests on the ideas that drew me and so many others to the party in the first place: opportunity, security, justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says opportunity must be created through policies to promote affordable housing and quality education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to make sure better jobs are available everywhere \u2013 not just in a few coastal bubbles but also in the towns across the country where so many of us grew up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said government should partner with the private sector to rebuild the middle class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the subject of security, he says Democrats should \u201cfight for the right of all Americans to be secure in their homes, their communities and their bodies\u201d by promoting secure borders, immigration policies that respect humanity, responsible gun ownership and safe schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says Democrats should help Americans keep more of what they earn and strive toward making the economy \u201ca fair playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better achieve justice, he urges Democrats to move away from \u201ccancel culture\u201d and \u201cpurity tests\u201d and instead promote \u201cthe freedom to choose our families, our homes and our futures\u201d and to \u201cspeak our minds and read what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, he argues Democrats need to move past today\u2019s \u201cculture wars\u201d and focus on bread-and-butter issues around the economy, security and personal freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we leave behind the weight of culture wars and focus on improving people\u2019s lives, we can start to rebuild the trust we\u2019ve lost. From there, we can rebuild our coalition. From there, we can rebuild our country,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Chris Coons\u2002(D-Del.), a staunch ally of former President Biden\u2002on Capitol Hill, says Democrats need to reevaluate their fundamental message to voters and \u201cstop telling Americans how to be and what to feel and believe.\u201d He said leaders of the Democratic Party instead \u201cneed to listen\u201d to voters and solve their problems in a way that Americans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":51307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2468,7754,1236],"class_list":["post-51306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-believe","tag-coons","tag-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51308,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51306\/revisions\/51308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}