Former Democratic House Judiciary Committee chief counsel Julian Epstein said Thursday on “Fox News Live” that Democratic politicians were unpopular because they kept going down the “welfare state and identity politics” rabbit hole.
Epstein said, “The numbers are bad. Nationally, the generic approval numbers, for the midterms are not good. The general approval numbers of congressional Democrats and the party itself are not good. And that’s because, Kevin, we’ve talked about this a great deal. Democrats keep going down sort of the same rabbit hole. They think that the welfare state and identity politics are the answer to everything. And that’s not where the voters are. And until they break away from that, their fundraising numbers and their approval numbers are going to continue to be way below where they ought to be.”
He added, “70% of American voters are moderate or conservative. Progressives probably represent somewhere between 10 and 20% of voters. Yet they are the people that have sort of hijacked the Democratic Party. And so when I say that the welfare state and identity politics are the answer to everything, that’s the progressive liturgy. That’s the progressive belief. Democrats have a real opportunity. If the centrists could just step up on health care, for example, where there’s a lot of affordability anxiety, there’s just not enough competition in the system. The welfare state approach that is embodied in Obamacare is not working in terms of controlling costs. Same with housing. There’s a huge opportunity for centrists to sort of seize the mantle right now. And say, hey, there is a deregulatory framework which could explode the production of new housing, which is what we need to lower housing costs. But Democrats don’t do that. They default again back to the welfare state, overspending and back to the regulatory state. And that is not meeting voters where they are.”
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