By Bill Lucia, Washington State Standard
U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, said this week that his party’s brand is “broken” and that criticizing President-elect Donald Trump would not be enough to get it onto a more successful track.
The harsh assessment is notable coming from Smith, who has served in Congress since 1997 and is the party’s top member on the House Armed Services Committee.
“The Democratic Party brand is broken, and we desperately need to fix it if the party is ever going to have any hope of appealing to a majority of people in this country. Economic policy and messaging is the worst part of that, but certainly not the only part,” Smith said in a video he shared via his account on the social media platform X.
“Our messaging and our policy to most Americans seems to be aimed at a small group of people that fit certain pre-ordained categories,” he added. “It is too narrow in its focus, and it doesn’t help that whenever anybody questions this, the typical response is the person questioning it has to be some combination of ignorant, bigoted or racist.”
Smith’s comments come as Democrats embark on a round of soul-searching after searing losses in the November election. Trump roundly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, sweeping seven battleground states and making gains among voting blocs and in places across the country that have traditionally leaned Democratic.
The GOP also took control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats and held their majority in the U.S. House.
Smith, who represents a district that includes parts of Seattle as well as areas east and south of the city, has been openly frustrated with the party’s trajectory this political cycle.
On July 8, he openly called for President Joe Biden to step aside as the Democratic candidate in the presidential race within hours of the president telling members of the House Democratic Caucus he wouldn’t. Smith was the first congressional Democrat in Washington to do so following Biden’s flawed debate performance against Trump in late June.
Nationally, Washington was something of an outlier in this year’s election. Trump scored the same paltry 39% of the state’s vote as he did in 2020. Republicans did not pick up seats in Congress and, at the state level, they will remain minorities in both chambers of the Legislature and will continue to hold zero statewide offices heading into 2025.
All but two of Washington’s 12 members of Congress, including the state’s two senators are Democrats. But they will wield limited power on Capitol Hill as a new Trump era gets underway.
“We need to listen to the American people, figure out what we are missing,” Smith said. “It’s not going to be enough right now for we Democrats to simply criticize Donald Trump.”
“There’s a lot to criticize. But we’ve done that,” he added.
Smith said he’d be doing a series of conversations in an attempt to get the party headed in a new direction.
“The time for quiet conversations behind closed doors, to keep it in the family, has passed,” he said. “We have to be honest with the American people about our faults or limitations, listen to them and fix this going forward.”
Reporter Jerry Cornfield contributed to this story.
This story originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.