Inside “Searchlight”: How Centrist Democrats Plan to Abandon the Base and Call It Strategy

While consultants toast strategy at luxury retreats, working-class voters are walking away. This is how centrism is breaking the Democratic coalition.

Opinion by: Friendo Media Editorial Staff

Adam Jentleson’s new think tank, “Searchlight,” isn’t strategy. It’s a scam. A glossy rebrand of the same failed centrism that torched the 2024 election. It’s the consultant class running the same losing play, then calling it bold.

The pitch is recycled nonsense. Break away from “interest groups.” Reject “identity politics.” Dump the “rigid mores” of college-educated elites. In plain English, that means: ignore the people who do the organizing, fundraising, canvassing, and voting, and run straight into the arms of a mythical centrist who hasn’t voted Democrat since 2008.

Let’s be clear. That’s not a strategy. That’s a political suicide note. And we already watched the DNC sign it on behalf of Kamala Harris.

Harris’s campaign wasn’t just influenced by the Searchlight playbook. It was the Searchlight playbook in action, and it blew up on impact.

The consultants who shaped her run centered it around courting the ghost of moderate Republicans like Liz Cheney, while sidelining the very coalitions that delivered Biden the White House. Instead of standing up for the working-class, multiracial voters who power the party, they tailored every message for the approval of white suburban pundits and retired Bush voters.

Palestinian voices were deliberately shut out of the Democratic convention — not by accident, but by design. Pro-ceasefire delegates were banned from speaking. Activists were ignored. The base was told to sit down and clap while a genocide played out on our phones. That was not neutral positioning. That was their strategy, and it failed.

Meanwhile, Harris’s campaign flooded Spanish-language media with tough-on-crime messaging. They ran ads about immigration enforcement and fentanyl busts instead of speaking to dignity, opportunity, or reform. The subtext was clear: distance yourself from the people, talk like a cop, and hope it doesn’t backfire. It did.

And perhaps most insulting of all, Harris — the first Black and South Asian woman to ever lead a major party ticket — barely said the words “Black” or “woman” at all. Her DNC speech was sanitized to the point of erasure. The campaign apparatus she inherited from President Biden actively chose to suppress her identity to appeal to voters who were never coming back, while ignoring the people who were counting on her to show up as her full self.

This wasn’t strategy. It was shame-based politics. It was a refusal to trust the base — to trust that Black, brown, queer, working-class, and young voters would respond to pride, power, and unapologetic truth. It was centrism coated in cowardice. And it failed.

And what happened as a result of the tepid Luke-warm center positioning? Trump gained ground with every single group Biden won in 2020. Black, Latino, Asian, and young voters all drifted away. In battleground states like Michigan, Trump won the youth vote. Harris’s margins among Hispanics collapsed. And disillusioned students, first-time voters, and working-class Democrats stayed home.

This is what happens when you try to win by abandoning the people who actually show up.

The Base Is Not the Problem. The Base Is the Answer.

Let’s say this plainly. The Democratic base is not a liability. The base is America. It’s multiracial, working-class, majority-female, and young. It’s the people who’ve dragged this country toward justice through every era of history. They’re not demanding “purity tests.” They’re demanding healthcare, housing, a livable future, and a government that doesn’t shrug at genocide.

Searchlight says we need to move “beyond identity politics.” What they really mean is: keep cashing donor checks while silencing the people most harmed by injustice. That’s not post-ideological. That’s morally bankrupt.

This isn’t some philosophical debate. It’s life and death for millions of people right now. And every time Democrats run from their base, Republicans win.

Searchlight isn’t a bold new path. It’s a high-dollar panic room for a party elite terrified of the people it claims to represent. It’s a retreat to the safety of vague slogans, donor-friendly buzzwords, and anti-woke smokescreens. It’s a blueprint for losing.

And it’s exactly what we don’t need.

What we need are leaders who say the quiet part loud. Who understand that popular ideas like Medicare for All, climate action, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and taxing the rich are not fringe. They’re the mainstream of the future. And the only way to get there is by organizing, not apologizing.

So no, Democrats don’t need another centrist message shop in a boutique resort. They need to grow a spine, fund the movements that built the party, and fight like hell for a multiracial democracy.

If Democrats want to win for generations — not just scrape by, but really win — they need to stop chasing ghosts and start funding the people who can actually deliver their message. That means money out of the pockets of corporate consultants and into the hands of influencers, organizers, storytellers, creators, and candidates rooted in working-class life. It means treating young Black, brown, queer, immigrant, poor, and rural voters like shareholders in the future — not afterthoughts. Less than 5% of congress comes from the working class, and we wonder why they’re lost in leading a broad coalition of voters.

The Democratic Party has spent decades flattering billionaires. It’s time they start respecting workers with the same urgency. Fund them. Back them. Build a media apparatus that rivals the right-wing machine. Give local storytellers the resources and access to tell the truth. Lift up new leaders, new voters, new communities that are waiting for someone to speak to them — the ones the white political class has ignored because they don’t show up on a high roller donor list.

The future is diverse. The future is working-class. And the corrupt, consultancy-addicted, donor-worshipping faction of the party is too terrified to admit that. They don’t want to leave elite detachment behind. They want to own the trademark and license the access.

But we know better. We’ve seen the power of multiracial coalitions, of joy as resistance, of truth-telling media that reaches beyond the beltway bubble. That’s the only path forward. Not the center. Not “post-ideology.” Not “tough on crime” pandering. Just power — shared, funded, and wielded for the people who built this country and are ready to save it. We just need the right people in power to make the change happen.

The question isn’t whether Democrats will change. It’s whether we’ll make them.

The era of centrism is over. The future belongs to the base.