The ‘Chris Hayes problem’: Maloney spells out Dems’ problems connecting with voters

Democrats have a problem connecting with working-class voters. Call it the “Chris Hayes problem.”

“I mean, listen, I don’t know — anything that comes out of Chris Hayes’s mouth,” was New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney’s answer to a New York Times editorial board question on the topic.

Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had responded to an earlier question from the Times on why Democrats’ messaging wasn’t resonating with voters with the observation that Democrats don’t speak to voters “like human beings.”

“We could talk like human beings, we could build a relationship with voters. We could be more comfortable on the factory floor — or at least as comfortable on the factory floor as we are in the faculty lounge,” said Maloney, who is facing a progressive challenger, State Sen. Alessandra Biagi, in a primary next week, in a district that Donald Trump won in 2020.

That political reality is probably what informs his point of view. It’s something that I’ve noted as a Democrat who has lived my entire life in a 70 percent-plus Republican area.

Democrats from safe areas politically seem to have no idea what motivates people who don’t see the world the way they do, if they even have interactions with anybody who would fit that description.

“I think that most of the voters that we ask about this think that we’re out of touch, they think we’re elitist, we think we are better than they are. And they don’t like it,” Maloney said.

“If I’m talking to a sheet metal worker in Pine Bush, he doesn’t talk about communities of color, he doesn’t use the word ‘rubric.’ He doesn’t talk about — the first-generation folks working in Newburgh don’t use the word ‘Latinx.’ Most people don’t understand who are cisgender, why they need to put pronouns on their email signature,” Maloney said.

“I mean, the fact is, is that if you listen to the way people speak on our cable news channels — I love Chris Hayes — but the point is, if you listen to the way we talk and communicate, it is not the way my voters talk, it’s not the way my neighbors talk, it’s not the way my family talks,” Maloney said.