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www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Dr. Sudhir M. Parikh Founder, Chairman & Publisher Ilayas Quraishi Chief Operating Officer Ela Dutt Editor Archana Adalja Contributing Editor T. Vishnudatta Jayaraman Advisor Arun Shah Ahmedabad Bureau Chief Peter Ferreira, Deval Parikh, Freelance Photographers Bhailal M. Patel Executive Vice President Chandrakant Koticha-Rajkot, India Executive Director Business Development Jim Gallentine Business Development Manager - U.S. Shahnaz Sheikh Senior Manager Advertising & Marketing Sonia Lalwani Advertising Manager Shailu Desai Advertising New York Muslima Shethwala Syed Sheeraz Mahmood Advertising Chicago Digant Sompura Consultant for Business Development Ahmedabad, India Hervender Singh Circulation Manager Main Office Editorial & Corporate Headquarters 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Tel. (212) 675-7515 Fax. 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Postmaster: Send address change to News India Times, 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Annual Subscription: United States: $28 Disclaimer: Parikh Worldwide Media assumes no liability for claims/ assumptions made in advertisements and advertorials. Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the authors and Parikh Worldwide Media does not officially endorse, and is not responsible or liable for them. PHOTO:TheWashington Post At Least Some Democrats Are Trying To Figure OutWhatWentWrong F inally, there are signs of intelligent life in the Democratic Party. Not so much among Democratic congressmen, who have maneuvered themselves into a government shutdown fight that they do not appear to have a way to win. But the party’s intellectuals and operatives are at last having a candid debate about what has gone wrong and what to do about it. The most comprehensive and clear-eyed entrant in that de- bate comes from the center-left groupWelcome, which has just produced a report called “Deciding toWin.” Its trio of authors, all veterans of Democratic politics, lead with the bad news for their party: The public increasingly perceives Democrats as too liberal. That isn’t a matter of flawed messaging. The party, the authors show, really has moved left on multiple issues during the period 2012-2025. Even harder for many Democrats to accept, no doubt, will be the report’s evidence that the public thinks Republicans moved toward the center during that same period (although President Donald Trump has altered that perception since resuming office). The public also increasingly thinks the Democrats do not share their priorities - that they are “out of touch.” The authors write, “In comparison with the Democratic Party of 2012, today’s Democratic Party is more focused on issues like climate change, democracy, abortion, and identity and cultural concerns and less focused on the economy and the middle class.” They offer telling examples of changes in the party’s platform language in that period. There are now fewer references to “tax cuts,” the “middle class” and “fathers” (who disappeared entirely in 2024), more to “hate” and “climate.” These changes have aligned Democrats better with voters who have college degrees, but increased their distance from the more numerous voters who don’t. The trio counsels Democrats to talk more about their popular positions on issues that matter to the public - especially eco- nomic issues - and less about everything else: “Going forward, it will be critical for our party to reduce the gap between what voters want Democrats to focus on and what voters think we do focus on.” That this painfully obvious advice needs to be said suggests the depth of the Democrats’ plight. But theWelcome report does not confront all of the obstacles to a Democratic resurgence. Somewhat daringly, the authors suggest that Democrats have overemphasized their support for abortion. But the report doesn’t go the next, necessary step: If Democrats truly want to improve their chances of winning a Senate majority, they should be ready to run candidates in some states who are pro-life, or are at least willing to restrict abortions late in pregnancy. (In some of those same states, Democrats will also need to support candidates who don’t back a ban on assault weapons.) And the report almost entirely ignores a related dimension of the Democrats’ cultural challenge: their declining appeal to Christians, who remain a majority of voters. The words “Chris- tian” and “religion” do not appear in “Deciding toWin.” The authors suggest that the party needs to moderate on immigration, but don’t spell out what that means. In practice, it would probably require Democrats to stop treating “deportation” as a dirty word - which surely won’t happen if even the party’s truth-tellers won’t recommend it. Which raises an even deeper issue for the project of fixing the Democratic Party. When people passionately support a cause, telling them it’s a political loser might not be enough to get them to downplay it. A lot of work would be required to persuade progressives that climate change is not an existential crisis, even if Bill Gates is having second thoughts. But if they continue to believe that, can they be convinced to talk about health care instead? The report harks back to Bill Clinton’s rescue of the Demo- cratic Party after it lost three presidential elections in a row in the 1980s. But Clinton, in some ways, had an easier job. When he broke with other Democratic politicians of the era, he often had most Democratic voters on his side. They favored the death penalty, like him, even if a vocal segment of the party disagreed. Democratic reformers today face a very different party. “Deciding toWin” repeatedly notes that most voters favor capitalism and oppose socialism. But most Democrats view the former negatively and latter positively. It could be, then, that the trouble with Democrats is …Democratic vot- ers. And that’s a hard one to fix. Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enter- prise Institute. -Special to TheWashington Post By Ramesh Ponnuru Opinion News India Times (November 1, 2025 - November 7, 2025) November 7, 2025 3 Case For Controlling India’s Digital Future: Looking BeyondWhatsapp &Meta One tweet fromWashington could silence a billion Indian voices. New Delhi needs to look beyondWhatsApp and Meta If you think Donald Trump’s tariff poli- cies won’t reach your phone, think again. The man who just imposed new levies on everything from electric cars to software could, with a single stroke of a pen, decide thatWhatsApp messages from India count as “digital imports”. If that happened, India’s business communications could grind to a halt overnight. Meta, which ownsWhatsApp, would comply immediately. Whether driven by regulation or diplomacy, the company would followWashington’s lead. Every Indian entrepreneur, trader, doctor, and government worker who relies on the app to coordinate would wake up locked out of their most essential tool. Deliveries would stall, vendors would disconnect, and customer service would freeze. The chaos would be instant and complete. That is how dangerously dependent India has become on a single American corporation for its daily flow of informa- tion. WhatsApp has quietly become the backbone of Indian commerce. Millions of small businesses run on it. Hospitals, schools, and government offices use it for coordination. A disruption would ripple through every sector of the economy. People talk about China’s control of rare earths as a global risk. But Meta’s control of India’s digital lifeline poses a deeper strategic threat. China’s monopoly can slow a supply chain; Meta’s can mute a nation’s voice. When a foreign company holds the keys to your country’s commu- nication, sovereignty becomes a slogan. The US understands this better than anyone. It has banned Huawei and ZTE from its telecom networks, arguing that whoever controls communications con- trols power. India, meanwhile, has handed its entire messaging backbone to a private American company with a long record of surveillance, manipulation, and data mis- ByVivekWadhwa - Continued On Page 4