Barack Obama acknowledged Democrats can be “a buzzkill” with their abstract campaign messaging and could better connect with voters by emphasizing what constituents feel in their day to day lives.

During an interview on Pod Save America, released Friday, Obama acknowledged that he “used to get into trouble” when he appeared too professorial, including by standing behind a lectern and talking about policy in theoretical ways that didn’t directly connect with voters.

“That’s not how people think about these issues,” Obama said, less than a month before his party tries to hang on to control of both congressional chambers during the 8 November midterms. “They think about them in terms of, you know, the life I’m leading day to day. How does politics … how is it even relevant to the things that I care most deeply about?

“My family, my kids, work that gives me satisfaction, having fun, not being a buzzkill, right?”

He added: “And sometimes Democrats are, right? You know, sometimes, people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells. And they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us at any given moment can say things the wrong way, make mistakes.”

Obama went on to talk about his 86-year-old mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, whom he said was trying to learn “the right phraseology” to talk about issues. The former first lady Michelle Obama had said that was like “trying to learn Spanish” for her mother.

“It doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try to learn Spanish, but it means that sometimes she’s not gonna get the words right,” the former president said. “And that’s OK, right?

“And that attitude, I think, of just being a little more real and a little more grounded is something that I think goes a long way in counteracting what is the systematic propaganda that I think is being pumped out by Fox News and all these other outlets all the time.”

Facing a slew of culture-war attack lines from Republicans, Democrats have sometimes become embroiled in their own debates over proper terminology, including the use of the term “Latinx” and “defund the police”. Democratic research from February found that voters could find the party “preachy”, “judgmental”, and “focused on the culture wars”, Politico reported.

“Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it,” Democratic pundit James Carville, the former strategist for Bill Clinton, told Vox last year. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk.

“This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it’s not.”

Obama’s comments came as Democrats are bracing to likely lose their majority in the US House while hoping that they can retain the Senate.

A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that 49% of likely voters said they would cast their ballot for a Republican candidate, compared to 45% for Democrats in congressional races. One of the most alarming findings for Democrats in the poll was the swing to Republicans among women who identified as independents. Last month, independent women backed Democrats by 14%, but the October poll found they now backed Republicans by 18%.

Overall, women were split 47% to 47% on whether they would support Democrats or Republican congressional candidates. Democrats had an 11-point advantage last month in the poll.

“I’m shifting more towards Republican because I feel like they’re more geared towards business,” Robin Ackerman, a 37-year-old Democrat in New Castle, Delaware, told the New York Times.