Rudderless. Woke. Disorganized. Out of touch. Leaderless.

This is how non-college educated voters described the Democratic Party in recent focus groups hosted by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a Democratic think tank that researches center-left policy issues and bills itself as “radically pragmatic.” 

The results from the focus groups were shared at PPI’s New Directions for Democrats Summit, which took place in Las Vegas on Sept. 12 and 13. The group will be hosting summits across swing states that are likely to be political battlegrounds in the 2026 and 2028 elections. 

The New Directions series launched in April in Denver, in part because the think tank wants to embrace the “Colorado Way” of turning purple states blue by stubbornly focusing on economic concerns. 

The group hopes to convince local Democratic officials to stress pocketbook policies and blue-collar connections in order to shed the negative association many voters have of Democrats as out-of-touch elites who only care about cultural issues.

The summit brought together some of the state’s top Democrats, including Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV), Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford and various members of the Nevada Assembly, including Assembly Majority Leader Sandra Jauregui (D-Las Vegas).

Other dignitaries there included former Kansas City Mayor Sly James, Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton and David Evans, a member of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party.

Evans outlined the recent rebranding of his party, which won a landslide victory in last year’s parliamentary elections, to provide an international perspective on what Democrats in the U.S. need to do to win back the working class. 

Former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan (D) stressed that Democrats need to prove they have “new ideas for a new America.” The rightward lurch nationwide in the 2024 elections proves that voters do not want promises of rapid progress, Ryan said, they just want to survive.

In an overview of the focus groups PPI conducted with working-class, non-college educated Americans who voted for Republican President Donald Trump, researcher Tom Brookes noted that voters frequently said they felt like they had nothing to lose.

A video clip that summit attendees watched from one of the focus groups featured a voter saying: “I don’t care if he destroys the place. At least he’ll change something,” speaking of Trump.

Brookes, the focus group leader, outlined the three reasons he believes voters’ sense of hopelessness led them to vote for Trump:

• They're anxious and pessimistic about the future because they’re working harder than ever but getting less in return.
• They’re deeply distrustful of “corrupt” political elites and don’t think the government can deliver.
• They are happy to see things shaken up and believe that Trump can deliver the change they seek.

Multiple summit speakers pointed out that Nevada is an especially fitting case study to discuss how economic and political anxieties are contributing to Democrats losing working-class votes. According to NBC News exit polls, among Nevada voters with no college degree, 57 percent voted for Trump. 

PPI President Will Marshall lauded Las Vegas as “truly one of America’s great working-class cities” in his introductory remarks, highlighting service jobs in hospitality and entertainment that make up 23 percent of Las Vegas’ workers, according to the state’s Office of Work Force Innovation. 

But the working class in Nevada is also struggling. At 5.6 percent, the state has the highest unemployment rate in the country, according to April data from APM Research Lab. The national average is 4.2 percent. 

Lee — the rare congressional Democrat who in 2024 won a district Trump carried — said that Democrats must find a new, bold strategy to refashion themselves as the party of change. It’s an approach that Lee says Trump, whom she called “the most effective communicator in political history” — has cornered. 

PPI’s solution is to urge Democrats to meet voters where they are, which they argue is in the middle. 

“The Democratic Party needs to become a more comfortable home for non-liberal voters,” declared Luke Martin, a pollster with Impact Research who gave a presentation on Democrats’ collapse among non-college educated voters. 

The summit dedicated a series of panels to discussing how Democrats could accomplish this goal on different policy fronts, including tariffs, energy, artificial intelligence and education reform. Several participants honed in on Trump’s economic policies as a liability for the president and the GOP. Three-fifths of American voters disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, according to an August poll by the Pew Research Center. 

Lee said that in Nevada the tariffs and Trump’s moves to limit international tourism have done serious harm. The Nevada Independent reported in August that there were 13 percent fewer international travelers and 15 percent more hotel vacancies in June as compared to June 2024. 

But Democratic insiders seemed worried that the party will struggle to impart a new economic vision to Americans. 

“Trump at least lays out the economic problems for people,” said Lee. “We tend to lecture people and tell them why they are wrong on policy. We immediately act like we’re on the defense.”  

Jauregui said she learned this lesson firsthand during her campaign last fall. She told the summit that she ran on issues such as boosting reproductive freedom, protecting the climate and limiting gun violence. But as she knocked on constituents’ doors, ready to talk about these issues, she was instead asked about what she was doing to reduce costs and create jobs.

“It's not that they didn't care about climate change or reproductive freedom. It's just not what they cared about first,” Jauregui said. “It felt like a luxury to care about those things when they didn't know if they could afford rent, make a doctor's appointment or put food on the table.” These conversations, she said, were like a “light bulb” moment. 

The average Nevada household has spent $38,490 more on an average basket of goods and services, like groceries and bills, due to inflation since January 2021, with the state ranking 15th for monthly inflation costs, according to December data from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

Jauregui’s comments echoed a larger theme from PPI’s staff: Democrats need to stop talking about cultural issues and start talking about the cost of living. 

“It’s about meeting Nevadans where they are, getting lunch with them and really listening to them,” said Jauregui.