Former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) criticized the structure of his party during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”
“We need a rebrand. I think you and I have been talking about this since 2016,” Ryan said in the clip highlighted by Mediate. “Like, our brand is toxic in so many places and it is like, you are a Democrat? That’s the stuff we get like in Ohio.”
The lawmaker said Democrats need a complete “reboot” echoing other party leaders after a somewhat unexpected landslide loss in November where Republicans claimed the House, the Senate and the White House.
“We need a complete reboot. We need a complete reboot with the DNC. We need a complete rebranding. We got to get back established into our values,” Ryan said.
“What does it mean to be a Democrat? People want to trust us. They don’t want to go to Donald Trump.”
However, Ryan said “middle of the road” voters didn’t hear enough from the party about reindustrialization and bolstering America’s competitiveness.
He added the party’s narrative to drive up taxes on the rich while waging war with the cryptocurrency leaders drove supporters away from their base.
“We have to lead with growth. The other thing that I think is really big, we can’t be for solely redistribution. We are going to tax the bad guys who are rich, which we want people to aspire to make money in America,” Ryan mentioned.
“We will tax them because they’re really bad people and we’re going to give you money,” he said. “No, it is about growing the pie. It is about getting back to — it is the Bill Clinton campaign. It is the modern Democratic campaign.”
Democrats are looking to make a comeback during midterm elections but are first working to understand their losses. Vice President Harris’s campaign team blamed the presidential election loss on her lack of distance from President Biden’s administration and poor media coverage while some Senators say border security was the determining factor for many voters.
However, Ryan said the party lost ground due to traditional ties that limited their approach to solving voters’ top issues.
“The whole world knows that the American government is broken. Immigration is broken. Healthcare is broken. Education is broken. Every system that we have is broken,” Ryan fumed. “We had no reinventing government plan.”
