Andy Beshear introduces himself to South Carolina as the normal Democrat

Beshear, who will lead the Democratic Governors Association into next year’s midterm elections, was introduced at most stops as the “most popular Democratic governor in America.”

He had not been able to stop his party’s decline down the ballot. Democrats lost their 70-year grip on the state attorney general’s office when he left it to run for governor; he also benefited from the state’s off-year elections, which meant he never shared a ballot with Trump.

But South Carolina’s Democrats were in worse shape than Kentucky’s. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom toured the state with a robust defense of his state and its progressive pluralism. Beshear traveled a different route, quoting from the Bible (“the Parable of the Good Samaritan says everyone is our neighbor”) and saying he knew how to win when outnumbered.

“What we’re seeing out of Washington DC is incompetence, and it is cruelty,” Beshear said in Greenville. “It’s putting all of those things that people care about at risk. The tariff policy is going to hurt jobs. The big, ugly bill is going to devastate rural health care in your state and in mine.”

In each city, as Beshear delivered short stump speeches in a button-down blue shirt and khakis, he was joined by ghosts of the Democratic Party’s past. Former Gov. Richard Riley sat in at the Greenville house party; former Rep. Joe Cunningham attended the event in Charleston.

“The Democratic Party brand’s become toxic across the country,” Cunningham told Semafor. “Democrats have done a terrible job, not only speaking above people, but also talking down to folks who don’t know or don’t care to understand what those terms mean. I don’t know what they mean!”

In Columbia, former Gov. Jim Hodges was particularly enthusiastic about Beshear’s advice on speaking to voters in “normal” language.

“I’ve been saying that for a long time, and I’m glad to hear him say it,” said Hodges. “We talk down to people and we use words that people don’t use in their everyday lives.

“We need a grocery store, but we Dems have to call it a ‘food desert.’ What’s that term for moms we use — ‘birthing persons?’ It’s hard to connect with voters when you use language in a way that creates barriers,” Hodges added.

Beshear’s riff on “normal” language focused on three areas that aren’t controversial with Democrats: How to talk about prisoners, how to talk about drug addiction (“addiction,” not “substance use”), and how to talk about hunger (not “food insecurity”).

He agreed that Hodges’s example of “birthing people” — a gender-neutral term, reflecting that transgender men can also get pregnant — was needlessly alienating.

“For an individual that’s in that situation, I want to show them as much kindness as I can,” he said. “But for 99.9% of the American population, they can’t understand what it is that you’re saying.”

Beshear still criticized how the Trump administration had gone after the rights and health care access of transgender people. The administration’s shutdown of a trans suicide help line was “ridiculous,” he said, and its orders restricting gender-affirming care for minors went too far.

“I’m against surgeries on minors, okay?” he said. “But when you look at the other gender-affirming care, there’s a lot of research out there that suggests that parents ought to have the opportunity to consider: What is the best health care for their kids?”