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South Carolina State Senator Ed Sutton delivered a simple but powerful message to the leadership of his own political party recently: “Just be normal. Stop preaching.”
Sutton posted this advice in response to recent reporting on a $20 million Democrat research effort titled “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan,” which aims to “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.”
“Most folks—especially young men—don’t want to be lectured,” Sutton told FITSNews. “They want to be left alone and treated with respect. All voters support leaders they relate to—not ones who talk down to them.”
“The average voter is just trying to pay their bills and raise a family,” Sutton continued. “They’re not looking for a TED Talk on pronouns. Unfortunately, that’s what some of our leaders have pivoted to.”
The fact that a sitting state senator felt the need to publicly remind his party of such rudimentary political principles illustrates how out-of-touch the Democratic party has become with pieces of it’s constituency it cannot afford to lose.
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I’m going to save the Democratic Party $20 million:
— Senator Ed Sutton (@EdCSutton) May 26, 2025
Stop elevating voices who use phrases like “mediocre men” and dismiss people based on race or gender.
Just be normal.
Stop preaching. Most folks—especially young men—don’t want to be lectured. They want to be left alone and… pic.twitter.com/vWbyw05uwB
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Earlier this year, former South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP) chairman and state senator Dick Harpootlian sat down with FITSNews for a wide ranging interview in which he also addressed a root cause of Democratic party’s woes – the exclusionary siloing of interest groups.
“In 1998 or 2000, Terry McAuliffe ran for Chairman of the DNC,” Harpootlian said. “I supported him, and we went to a conference.”
Harpootlian proceeded to recall his confusion over which interest group to sit with at this event.
“The first day, we divided into the caucuses: the Hispanic American Caucus, the Asian American Caucus, the gay caucus – this is back before we had LBGT – there was a lesbian caucus,” Harpootlian said. “Terry walks up to me and said, ‘What’s going on?’ I said, ‘Well, they’ve all divided up by caucus. I was waiting for the white guy caucus, but there wasn’t one.’ He said, ‘What are you gonna do?’ I said, ‘Well, I think I’m gonna caucus with the lesbian caucus. At least we’ve got something in common.'”
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These coalitions and the activists who support their political operations are often referred to as “the groups” in Democratic party circles, and have grown to wield immense power within the party in recent years.
Progressive groups showed their influence in the 2020 Democratic primary – with candidates battling to take the most far-left positions possible. Recall Kamala Harris‘s disastrous endorsement of taxpayer funded sex change surgeries for prison inmates that Donald Trump effectively weaponized against her four years later.
New York Times Columnist Ezra Klein elucidated how these groups wielded outsized power in Democrat policymaking.
Klein recounted a Democrat legislative staffer explaining to him that “if you couldn’t get” environmental justice groups on board with a bill up for consideration “they couldn’t move forward with this at all.”
Klein recalled asking the staffer “what is the power of these groups — like, what is their leverage on you,” noting there “never” was an answer.
“It was just a coalition decision that had been made in the culture of the way the Democratic Party now made policy,” Klein wrote.
Harris’ defeat by wide margins in the 2024 presidential election made it possible to question this method of doing business within the Democratic party, with Klein’s new book Abundance arguing party leaders should focus on outcomes over satisfying ever-increasing regulatory-red tape requirements put in place to give “the groups” the ability to weigh in on government initiatives.
Similar arguments are being made that the Democrat party, if it is to succeed electorally in future cycles, must restore its broad appeal to working class voters and other individuals conspicuously absent from the progressive coterie, as well as members of traditionally Democrat groups who’ve recently shifted right.
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While many Democrats have acknowledged the pressing need to get men back on board, there is disagreement as to how to do so. The $20 million study referenced by Sutton was an attempt to figure out how to do this, one which centered on communication itself – using the right words and figureheads to appeal to the focus-group-tested desires of young men.
Sutton’s prescription goes deeper than just communication, though. By suggesting that the party “stop preaching,” he is tacitly endorsing a move to put “the groups” in the backseat so that Democrat politicians can return to achieving broadly popular policy goals.
“I’m an FDR Democrat – big ideas, big construction projects – we build things that make people’s lives better,” Sutton told us, adding that “the young man working in construction doesn’t want to be told he’s privileged by somebody who’s never been on a job site before.”
“We’ve got to tell him how we’re going to help him afford a home that he can raise a family with,” Sutton said.
Sutton’s advice to “just be normal,” is a bitter pill to swallow for a party comprised of activists who often advocate for maximalist positions in their areas of expertise that are unappealing to many voters.
This was recently exhibited by Michael O’Brien – a Mt. Pleasant, S.C. native and prominent advocate for the gender transition of children who took to social media to lament “this whole conversation about making men more comfortable in politics.”
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This whole conversation about making men more comfortable in politics is pissing me off. I understand no one wants to join a movement that feels judgy or condescending, but are men such snowflakes that asking for a little critical thinking and self-awareness will kill us???
— Michael O’Brien (@DrOBrienMD) May 28, 2025
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While O’Brien begins a sentence saying he understands “no one wants to join a movement that feels judgy or condescending,” he concludes it by judgmentally and condescendingly asking whether men “are such snowflakes that asking for a little critical thinking and self-awareness will kill us???”
O’Brien serves as an example of a member of “the groups” who drag down their own party’s political future by denigrating those who disagree with his far-left opinions.
“That dude doesn’t want to win. He wants to whine,” South Carolina political strategist Wesley Donehue opined.
While O’Brien and many other advocates for progressive causes are too close to the issues they champion to recognize that many of their positions are some of the party’s least popular policies, serious political operators realized long ago that Democrat ideologues must publicly give ground to ensure the party’s long-term viability. Recall Harris’ last minute-adoption of half of Trump’s policy agenda in an attempt to reverse the already-done damage of her wildly progressive past.
Similarly, California governor Gavin Newsom‘s break with the pro-trans party-line stung activists like O’Brien, who criticized Newsom’s contention that it is “deeply unfair” to pit women and girls against biological male athletes in a post 2024 presidential election interview.
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RELATED | CONTROVERSY OVER ‘GENDER AFFIRMING CARE’ FOR MINORS
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Sutton and O’Brien’s differing visions of how to approach male voters demonstrates the rift between those who make the party’s often extreme policies, and those who have to sell them to voters and execute them in the legislature.
If there’s one thing history teaches students of U.S. politics, it is that moments of weakness within political parties are also moments of opportunity for those willing to criticize the establishment.
Former president Bill Clinton‘s intentional repudiation of rapper Sister Souljah on the campaign trail in 1992 after she advocated for the wanton murder of white people is a textbook example of a politician successfully distancing themself from the excesses of their own party to win office.
“Clinton won his election in 1992 by drinking beer and playing the saxophone, just relatable issues. He wasn’t out there lecturing people or talking down, he was just being a normal dude,” Sutton told FITSNews.
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Trump’s destruction of the ineffectual GOP old guard in the 2016 Republican primaries similarly paved his way to the White House.
“The groups,” accustomed to decades of rule over a party willing to delegate control to activists, show little signs of being willing cede their control, but that doesn’t mean whomever may emerge to take the Democrat mantle won’t follow Clinton’s playbook of forcefully sidelining radicals all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
While the Democratic party can continue dumping tens of millions of dollars into cultivating “the Democrat Joe Rogan” (Rogan was a Democrat prior to their descent into progressive insanity), the party’s best path out of the political wilderness is to follow Sutton’s advice and : “Just be normal.”
Only time will tell whether the party will be wise enough to listen.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
(Via: Travis Bell)
Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.
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