Former RNC Chair Reince Priebus and former DNC Chair Donna Brazile debate the role “seeming normal” plays in the electoral collapse of the Democratic Party on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday roundtable:

REINCE PRIEBUS: The most important thing in winning elections, number one, is to know where your voters are. And then the strongest indicator for that is voter registration. They’re getting trampled in all 30 states (there are only 30 where you can track voter registration). But the bigger problem is, the elephant in the room here, is that the Democrats are on the wrong side of normal. The people — they’re out of step with the norms of society. It’s so bad that the Democrats this week put out a memo, and they listed 45 things that Democrats shouldn’t say. It’s all therapy speak, and explaining away crime — JON KARL: A memo from whom? PRIEBUS: Third Way, and it’s all because — it’s not a matter of they can’t put people on the doors and register people. That’s all that is. It’s that they’re putting people on the doors. They’re trying to win vote registrations. There are state parties, county parties, district parties, and they can’t sell it because it’s not normal. People don’t want it. KARL: Okay, but, Rachael, what I found interesting about this is that the Republican gains in registration are virtually everywhere. I mean, it’s red states, it’s blue states. RACHEL BADE: Across demographics. KARL: And this happened again while Biden was president, this happened over largely the last four years. BADE: I mean, look, I think Reince is right. I mean, a lot of voters think Democrats are out of touch. They think it’s a party of the sort of elites, that they are sort of focused on political correctness, you know? And there’s a fracturing too in the American public where a lot of voters are uncomfortable with the party and its sort of move left economically as well. Sort of the populist swing of the Democratic Party, but then a lot of Democrats want to see a movement further left in terms of economics. So, I mean, the party has a real problem right now. They move further left. They might sort of energize their base, which, you know, shows up to vote, they donate, et cetera, but then they alienate a bunch of centrist voters, and that’s a lot of Americans who frankly feel like they’re moving the wrong direction. KARL: I mean, the unifying message now is Trump. RAMESH PONNURU: Yeah, but this is a long-running problem, actually. I think for many years, the Democrats counted on the sort of vestigial loyalty of a lot of working-class people in particular who thought of the Democrats as their home. And over the years being taken for granted, that relationship frayed. And now, the Democrats are finding they’re not there. You can win elections even if you have a registration disadvantage. Republicans have done it in many states, but you have to win then a lopsided number of the independents. It’s a tall order. DONNA BRAZILE: I’m — here’s the one thing and I reject this notion that the Democratic Party or Democrats — Democratic leaders on the other side of normal. We are on the side of working families. We’re on the side of raising wages and protecting people’s health care, their Medicaid, their Medicare. That’s who we are. Now, do we have a problem getting that message out to the people who need us most? Absolutely. But that is not about being so-called normal or not normal. I don’t like this notion that somehow another when we have differences of opinion of policies that we have to somehow demonize and dehumanize. So, Democrats — look, there’s a reason why Democrats have won special elections all across– PRIEBUS: Standing up for illegal immigrants, boys in girls’ sports, no cash bail. Come on. They’re trying to sell that getting mugged in D.C. is part of the charm. They’re arguing over crime stats. BRAZILE: The cultural wars are what you know. You want to divide the American people. PRIEBUS: Democrats are arguing over crime stats. Well, crime has gone down since August 12. BRAZILE: No, we’re not, you’re arguing over labor stats.

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