“I think the Democrats brand is really bad, and I think this one election was based on culture, and the Democrats’s failure to connect on a cultural basis with a wide swath of Americans is hugely problematic,” Warner, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Politico‘s White House bureau chief Dasha Burns in an interview during the Munich Security Conference.

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Democrats were unable to flip control of either the House of Representatives or keep the Senate, and Vice President Kamala Harris lost both the popular vote and the electoral college vote in November’s election, leading the party to do some serious soul searching on how to reconnect with voters. Democrats appear to be divided on whether their policies, or their messaging, is to blame.

Warner criticized the Democrat party for its “over-the-top wokeism” as being a major turn-off for many voters. He also shared how the party struggles to shake off bad branding, whereas Trump can say “virtually anything,” and it doesn’t tarnish the party’s image or branding. 

“I don’t think the kind of notion that some in my party say of, well, we just got to turn out more people,” Warner said.  “You know, I think they did turn out more people, and folks that we thought were going to go for Democrats aren’t.”

Warner shared that Democrats failed to make a cultural connection, whereas Trump took advantage of the popularity of podcasts as a means to meet the American people with where they are. 

“We now live in a world where the number of people who watch a Politico or read a newspaper or do the normal means of communication or the traditional means of communication is less than 50%,” Warner said. “Trump was brilliant. Trump was so ahead of his time on sorting that out with a huge, reinforcing network of supporters, followers, that’s extraordinary, and the Democrats have spent a lot to learn from that.”