Barney Frank, in Hospice, Has Advice for the Democrats [View all]

Barney Frank, the retired Democratic congressman who represented Massachusetts’ Fourth District from 1981 to 2013 and is now in hospice care, is not wasting a minute of the time he has left.

Mr. Frank, 86, has been hosting a parade of friends and former colleagues at the modest hillside home he shares with his husband, Jim Ready, in Ogunquit, Maine, where lobster buoys dangle from the trees beside the driveway. He is also offering his fellow Democrats some parting thoughts on what he thinks they need to do to win again, a subject he reflects upon at length in a new book due out in September.

A veteran progressive known for his gay rights advocacy, as well as his leading role in tightening financial regulations after the global banking crisis of 2008, Mr. Frank said overreach by the left, with stances that alienate moderates, had set back Democrats. He worries progressives want too much too fast on trans rights, Medicare and other issues, and that they are swooning for the wrong candidates, like Graham Platner in Maine.

His overall outlook for the party is hopeful. But if his voice is slightly softer now — he is suffering from congestive heart failure — his delivery is no less blunt.