Democratic campaign vet warns that the left's 'schoolmarm' tone is alienating middle America

• Democratic campaign vet Lis Smith thinks the US could benefit from backing young politicians.
• She told Vanity Fair younger pols could appeal "to people across the political spectrum."

A Democratic campaign veteran said there is sometimes a "schoolmarm or school monitor vibe" from the left "policing" people from middle America.

Lis Smith, a Democratic political strategist who worked on campaigns for former President Barack Obama and then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, appeared on an episode of Vanity Fair's "Inside the Hive" podcast on Wednesday ahead of her upcoming memoir, "Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story."

The political strategist is currently working with Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. The 35-year-old Democratic state lawmaker recently went viral for blasting her GOP colleague for accusing her of "grooming and sexualizing" children over McMorrow's opposition to Florida's LGBTQ+ education legislation, dubbed by activists as the "Don't Say Gay" law.

In the podcast episode, Smith spoke with host Joe Hagan about getting new, younger people in political offices, especially those who break from the "stereotype of younger politicians of under 40 politicians that they're either a member of the Squad, they're super far left, they're DSA; or they're like Madison Cawthorne super far-right."

The campaign strategist said it would be "a lot healthier for our body politics" to uphold young politicians who can appeal "not just to Democrats, but to people across the political spectrum."

"It would be more appealing to more people if politics was a little less yell-y, screamy and a little less drawn to the extremes," Smith said, "because most people aren't in that extreme 10% of the right or that extreme 10% of the left — they're somewhere right in between."

On top of embracing less extreme politics, Smith noted there is also merit to adjusting the tone and style that lawmakers portray.

"On the Republican side, it's clear that anger is in Vogue these days, and whoever the Republican base hates the most is the king of that day or queen of that day," the campaign vet said. "And on the left, there sometimes is ... sort of a schoolmarm, school monitor vibe, where we're policing people's language or seen as looking down on people from the middle of the country or from different backgrounds."

"There is a middle ground between those two," she continued. "And I do think that there is a generation of younger politicians that has had enough of the endless, circular warfare in Washington that they are trying to sort of go for a more common sense tone."