Other lawmakers said they hoped a shift to the center debuted at Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address last week, along with strong support for the p
Other lawmakers said they hoped a shift to the center debuted at Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address last week, along with strong support for the president’s handling of the war in Ukraine, would be enough to convince voters that Democrats were focused on kitchen-table issues.
“We care about everyday Americans, and they don’t,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said when asked to sum up his party’s pitch to voters.
The retreat — the group’s first in-person gathering in three years — was a chance for Democrats, who have seen 31 of their colleagues opt to retire, to talk up their achievements and compare notes on how to move forward.
“We have passed two major pieces of legislation that, in any other Congress, would have been historic in and of themselves,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, referring to the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
He acknowledged that the landscape may look bleak, but said the political environment this summer would matter more.
“The polls don’t look particularly good now, but that’s happened in the past,” Mr. Hoyer said.
Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Thursday that keeping the Democratic majority depended on speaking to voters in a way that wasn’t too preachy or condescending.
“We spent a bunch of time talking about attributes in addition to issues,” Mr. Maloney said of a closed-door presentation he delivered on Thursday. “Whether voters think we care about them, whether they think we share their values, whether we have the right priorities.”
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