Last month, moderate Democratic think tank Third Way came to Las Vegas to make its pitch. Democrats, according to the think tank, need to focus more on economic issues and less on unpopular cultural issues.

Which unpopular cultural issues are they talking about? Oh, you know the ones. Heaven forbid that someone somewhere stands up for one — just one — of the 3.3 percent of American children who identify as transgender and have the temerity to participate in organized sports. No, only Republicans get to campaign on those issues, sorry. Humble, uneducated, working-class voters are simply incapable of understanding why parents of transgender children might be uncomfortable with the government sniffing around their children's genitals before they participate in the same activities that the remaining 96.7 percent of American children get to participate in.

Could you imagine going to a union hall, a job site or a working family's kitchen table and explaining why the government shouldn't be looking between the legs of children before sporting events? How snobbish and elite to even suggest the possibility!

In case it isn't obvious, I'm being facetious. Blue-collar voters aren't stupid and they're certainly not incapable of learning. They rarely have patience for the status-signaling linguistic games that bubble out of academia or the intellectually incestuous terrariums that make up the political nonprofit industrial complex (which Third Way is a part of, by the way), but that doesn't mean they can only be reached on issues that directly affect their pocketbooks.

Even so, I otherwise rest quite comfortably within Third Way's universe of mainstream moderate voters. I value pragmatism over dogmatism — my recent columns about data centers will certainly ensure I won't be welcome at any Democratic Socialists of America or Sierra Club events anytime soon. I'd currently rather see Democratic candidates focus on winning general elections against Republicans instead of dying on esoteric ideological hills — that's my job, damn it, and I don't need the competition. I've voted for Republicans in the past and may yet do so again in some hypothetical post-Trump universe.

I'm also quite sympathetic to the idea that incremental changes delivered over measurable periods of time deliver better results than sweeping revolutionary changes. I value stability, predictability, process and procedure. I love to cite the Beltway libertarian Cato Institute and the firmly institutionalist Niskanen Center in my columns — one of my open tabs, in fact, is Niskanen Center's piece on the product operating model for digital service delivery. Three other open tabs on my phone include the Tallinn Digital Summit 2025 vision paper on The Agentic State, as well as the United Kingdom Civil Services's Policy Lab and Public Policy Design blogs.

I'm not a bomb-throwing radical by any stretch. I'm not interested in abolishing the state or capitalism.

When it comes to the message that Third Way is pitching at Democrats in Nevada, it calls to me like The Enigma of Amigara Fault. I want to believe. It was made for me.

There's just one problem, though. One unshakeable question that leaves me feeling like Captain Kirk right before he raises a finger, excuses himself, steps forward and asks, "What does God need with a starship?"

When was the last time anyone remembered what a Democratic Party politician said about anything?

I'm not being facetious. People remember what Republicans say all of the time, in no small part because what they say is memorably unhinged. 

For example, Texas attorney general and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton — who was indicted for defrauding investors; investigated by the FBI for accepting bribes and using his office to get his mistress a job; went on a property-buying spree after the investigation started; fired the attorneys who reported him and, in so doing, made Texas' taxpayers liable for a $6.6 million payout to the whistleblowers; was the third official in Texas' history to be impeached (the state Senate acquitted him); was divorced by his wife "on biblical grounds" after years of publicly reported infidelity; claimed three different homes as his primary residence in mortgage filings; failed to include six rental homes he owns in campaign finance filings; sued an abortion provider in Delaware for mailing pills to Texans; and sued a children's hospital in Washington for performing gender-affirming care on Texans — recently claimed that his Democratic opponent, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, is a vegan (he's not) with low testosterone (none of our business).

Dissatisfied with the tenuous link between reality and Paxton's comments, White House adviser Stephen Miller chimed in to add that Talarico is the Democrats' "first transgender Senate candidate." (Talarico is not transgender.)

Is Talarico a moderate? I have no idea. I know he has an attractive vegan girlfriend who's seven years younger than him (perhaps this answers the question about Talarico's testosterone levels). I vaguely remember hearing he was interviewed by Stephen Colbert — an interview that never aired on CBS — before Colbert's show was canceled and he had to take his act to public access television.

Do moderate, liberal, progressive, socialist and other Democrats have messages they want to share with voters? I'm sure they do. 

Unfortunately, they have to compete for attention against Elon Musk's PACs telling Muslim voters in Michigan that Kamala Harris supports Israel while it also runs ads in Pennsylvania telling Jewish voters that she supports Palestine. Or they have to draw attention away from a fake liberal version of Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 that claims Harris supported giving immigrants without permanent legal status free government healthcare and free tuition at state universities (she did not).

Or they have to compete for attention against Aliens.gov, an official federal government website that claims that "for 60 years, the U.S. government has kept a closely guarded secret." 

What's the secret? Why, "aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods." They've been shopping "in the same stores," attending "the same classes as our children" and living "seemingly normal human existences." All of this continued "until one man finally had the courage to tell the truth."

No, President Donald Trump's newest taxpayer-funded website isn't talking about extraterrestrials. It's talking about immigrants lacking permanent legal status — or, if you prefer, illegal immigrants. Either way, they're people. Each one is a human being, not an "it" who should be "abducted."

Trump also recently chose to "work out a settlement with [himself]" and the IRS because his original demand for $10 billion against his own government raised some eyebrows from the presiding judge who — like Captain Kirk asking, "What does God need with a starship?" — asked how the president could be an adversary against an agency within the same branch of government he asserts supreme executive authority over. In the settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice, another executive branch agency, announced the creation of a $1.776 billion slush fund — sorry, an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" — that will be governed by five board members who can be removed by the president "without cause" according to the settlement agreement between Trump and the lawyers he employs as president of the United States.

So what exactly does it mean to be a moderate today? Should Trump merely have an $888 million slush fund governed by three handpicked board members instead of five? Should people living here without legal permission be recognized as human beings yet still routinely abducted from their families and neighborhoods by our government? Should Democrats claim Talarico is a gender-fluid pescatarian with unspecified amounts of testosterone in his bloodstream, facts in any particular direction be damned? Should Democrats refuse to sue abortion pill providers while they aggressively prosecute children's hospitals that perform gender-affirming care? Should Democrats only fail to include three rental homes on their campaign finance filings instead of six?

Won't Republicans just claim Democrats are all a pack of joyless asexual pangender breathairian Fourth International-Posadists who are fighting for fully automated luxury space communism but only for comfortably affluent childless wine moms who work in human resources? 

How does one moderate their message against that accusation, exactly?

I want to believe voters aren't just voting against the liberals or conservatives they see on the news or on social media depending on how annoyed they are with either group at any given moment in time.

I want to believe that the reason voters don't support Democrats is because they're taking a sober look at the policy prescriptions offered by various Democratic candidates, carefully evaluating them on color-coded spreadsheets, and making informed conclusions about whom to vote for. 

I want to believe voters read primary sources and credible news sources instead of the various pink slime outlets that clog the internet. 

I want to believe voters actually care about what their elected officials say and vote for and aren't just voting according to how annoyed they are with Gen Z Boss and a Mini or how turned on they are by interracial cuck porn.

Really, I do.

But until someone can show me some proof that voters give even one rabbit pellet-sized grain of feces about anything any Democratic politician actually says or does, there's no first, second or third way I can support a theory of change that claims otherwise.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.