Former South Carolina congressman Joe Cunningham talks — and writes — like someone who has nothing to lose. Or, he is one brave man, willing to tell the unvarnished truth to his fellow Democrats.
At 44, Cunningham isn’t nearly finished with what he started out to do when he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 after running on a promise to vote against Nancy Pelosi as House speaker. He quickly transformed into a national political star after becoming the first Democrat to win the state’s 1st Congressional District in four decades. His career was cut short just two years later when Republican Nancy Mace ousted him in a close election. A run for South Carolina governor in 2022 against the seemingly invincible Gov. Henry McMaster (R) also proved quixotic.
Some might say that a Democrat such as Cunningham isn’t electable in MAGA-red South Carolina, where President Donald Trump is still the endorser in chief. Cunningham admits that campaigning was often tough. In Trump strongholds such as Goose Creek (near Charleston) or even Hilton Head, people don’t want to hear a word from Democrats, he told me in an hour-long conversation Wednesday. At least Cunningham was hearing people out as he tackled a tour of the state’s 46 counties before the governor’s race. He heard what voters cared about — not the Democratic Party’s green energy tax breaks, but grocery prices, affordable housing, education and health care. The mayor of one small town told Cunningham that residents just wanted a grocery store.
These days, Cunningham is less frustrated by his defeats than by the sorry state of the Democratic Party — the hypocrisy, disingenuousness and disconnect from what Americans generally care about. He detailed his observations in a recently self-published book, “Life of the Party,” an easy-to-read autopsy of his beloved party’s departure from reality. He takes no prisoners in these pages, as he nails and names Democrats for “chasing causes and issues that affect a very small percentage of Americans.”
“The Party’s gaze has drifted beyond the basic needs … and has settled on a culture war that includes gender identity, racial quotas, DEI, and bathrooms,” he wrote. “It has cost them swaths of voters who may never come back.”
He points out that a tiny percentage of people are transgender and asks what percentage of those want to play sports. Victory for a minuscule slice of the population may fill the virtue cup, but it’s not a win for the country. Diversity, he wrote, should be the nation’s barometer, not its guiding star.
Cunningham’s book offers insights, as well as statistics and stories from his Kentucky upbringing, about his heroes and simpler times when humility, honesty and accountability were social norms. The world has changed so rapidly in the past two decades that most Americans struggle not only to make ends meet but also to make sense of things. Most baffling (and frightening) are advances in artificial intelligence and the predatory practices of Big Tech. A father of two with a baby due any day, Cunningham said the Democratic Party should shift focus from tangential issues to, among other things, the challenges all parents face in protecting their children.
Those most confused are sometimes elderly elected officials — the people Cunningham calls the “geriatric oligarchy.” He argues that the country needs younger representation from generations that understand the complexities of technology. In his book, he recounts an anecdote from 2018 when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified at a U.S. Senate committee hearing about data abuse and social media privacy. Then 84-year-old Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) asked, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?” Zuckerberg responded, “Senator, we run ads.”
In 2006, during a debate about net neutrality, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), then 82, shared his expertise, explaining that “the internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”
Cunningham proposes age limits for elected officials and the judiciary. “It’s hard to take the keys away from your parents,” he told me, but age matters.
He argues that his party more than Republicans needs new ideas. “You have to make things simple, and Trump does make things simple,” he told me. “No tax on tips was one. … We can’t better dissect our health care system and come up with some new ideas?”
If placing gender issues so high on the agenda was Democrats’ first unforced error, the second — and most consequential — was the biggest lie, that President Joe Biden was fit for a second term. Americans saw with their own eyes that he wasn’t, even before the catastrophic debate with Trump in June 2024. In 2022, Cunningham was brave enough to say Biden shouldn’t run for reelection because of his age.
Cunningham said he hopes his book will contribute to a more honest self-appraisal by his former colleagues and a return to big ideas. One might also hope it will lead him to run again for public service. A third party might be just the ticket.
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