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At a wonky gathering in Washington, centrist Democrats argued that they were the majority-makers the party needed to take control of Congress in 2026 and beyond.
June 4, 2025, 8:02 p.m. ET
The centrist wing of the Democratic Party gathered on Wednesday in a hotel basement in downtown Washington with a grand plan.
The party should start winning, and stop losing.
Surveying the wreckage of the 2024 election, the proud moderates here pleaded that their faction should seize control of the party’s messaging, stiff-arm liberal interest groups and experience the spoils of real-life victory, all while ignoring angry online activists.
The Democrats in the room aimed to put a new sheen on — and perhaps some more spine in — what has long been tagged as the mushy middle, arguing that they are the majority-makers the party needs in 2026 and beyond to take control of Congress.
It was a wonky gathering where the center-left Substack pundit Matthew Yglesias was greeted like a rock star and Lakshya Jain, a data-crunching analyst, detailed a ratings system to show which Democratic lawmakers had the highest candidate-quality WAR — Wins Above Replacement — a term borrowed from baseball analytics.
“This room may be full of nerds,” said Andrew Mamo, a Democratic strategist who attended the conference, WelcomeFest. “But the focus is how to not look like losers — and how to not be losers.”
This event was not the place to debate the finer points of policy. There was glancingly little discussion beyond what would sell with voters. If some called it the “CPAC of the center” — after the big right-wing confab — there was far less red meat, and more crudités (a platter of chopped peppers, carrots and cauliflower was served in the back).
