Centrist Democrats are convinced they hold the answers to their party's problems

Democrats are still staring down bleak polling numbers about their party’s brand, even as President Donald Trump’s favorability also has dropped. The answer to Democrats' troubles at WelcomeFest, the moderate Democrats’ Coachella, include: purity tests are toxic, being unpopular on the social media site Bluesky is cool and winning again means running to the center.

That’s the gospel speakers preached on stage Wednesday in the basement of a Washington, D.C., hotel, where hundreds of centrist elected officials, candidates and operatives gathered to commiserate over the 2024 election results and chart their version of the path forward for the Democratic Party.

“There's a hunger for people to work together, to try to find solutions and to talk in common sense terms,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who won a much-heralded special election in 2024 by calling out his own party on immigration policies.

“I think that there's a lot more elected officials that are willing to speak up about that because they don't want to lose,” Suozzi told reporters after his appearance.

Wednesday’s daylong conference, which represented a who's-who of center-left Democratic politics, from analytics guru David Shor to Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin to New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, was the latest sign that moderate Democrats believe they are ascendant in the party, looking to influence its posture heading into the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential primary. Seven of the 12 House Democrats who won in Trump districts last year participated in the event, including Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Adam Gray of California.

“Most Americans are Blue Dogs,” Gluesenkamp told writer Matt Yglesias, and noted only 10 Democrats remain in the once-robust Blue Dog Caucus. “Politics has become irrelevant to most people because it has excluded the things that touch their life. It’s about making politics more relevant to more people.”

But the rifts within the Democratic Party are still evident. Speakers railed against progressive groups like Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and Indivisible, who they said forced the party into unwinnable positions — and weren’t focused on winning majorities.

“When you read the documents of the national Indivisible group, they spell it right out, as plain as day, that they're throwing out the Blue Dogs and New Dems,” said Golden. “Their goal is to divide the Democratic coalition until they are 100 percent in the image of the progressive caucus.”

Progressives, for their part, called WelcomeFest a “convention of corporate ghouls” that represents “a massive step backwards for a Democratic Party that just lost working-class voters at a historic level,” said Usamah Andrabi, Justice Democrats communications director.

“Everyday people are not interested in elitist, technocratic, piecemeal solutions to the massive crises they're facing. They just rejected that exact Democratic Party in November,” Andrabi said. “Voters want to see a Democratic Party that unites the working class against the handful of billionaires and corporations robbing them blind.”

Andrabi also noted that Justice Democrats focus on safe Democratic House primaries, not competitive seats.

Liam Kerr, a co-founder of Welcome PAC, which launched in 2022, said now that the “leftist fever dreams died down,” they're growing a movement with “a sense of, 'We need to think differently, we need to do things differently.'"

"It's attracting a lot of people who are kind of a full generation behind the last wave of centrist Democratic entrepreneurs,” Kerr added.

Data analyst Lakshya Jain kicked off the opening presentation by arguing that Janelle Stelson, a Democrat who challenged Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), was a better performing candidate than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2024.

“This seems like a really controversial idea on Twitter, but I suggest that the Democratic Party take lessons on how to win elections and how to win voters from people who have won more votes than most other Democrats,” Jain said to applause. “If we run candidates that D.C. finds appealing, we’re probably going to lose. There’s an inverse correlation between what you guys all find appealing and what the median voter finds appealing.”

And like any other Democratic event in 2025, WelcomeFest was interrupted by protesters, who shouted at Torres during his interview. They were played off by the producers of the event, who blasted Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.”