Dem
47
GOP
53
On Friday, Democratic pollster Molly Murphy told the DNC that running the 2017 playbook against Donald Trump in 2025 will not work. She told them that voters do not care that most of Trump's cabinet nominees are incompetent, creeps, or incompetent creeps. She said that voters are willing to give him a pass if he can make eggs cheaper. Of course, in a recent interview, he admitted that he can't do this, so maybe he won't get a pass when they discover this.
Murphy noted that key parts of the Democratic base, including young, Latino, and Black voters, moved away from the Democrats. White working-class voters have been doing this for decades now. For many of these people, the "system" is not working for them. While they may not want to dismantle institutions like the civil service, the courts, and the media, they don't really object, either.
Murphy warned the Democrats not to focus on attacking Trump for violating norms, rules, and laws. The voters the party lost don't care. The elites and college-educated suburban moms care, but there are not enough of them to win elections. She said that the Democrats' new message should focus on Trump's plans to cut taxes for rich people and big corporations and rail against these. She also said if he implements tariffs, Democrats should find specific items that have gone up a lot in price and harp on the massive inflation Trump caused.
Numerous writers, for example, Catherine Rampell, have condemned the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but also said it shows a way forward for the Democrats. People get agitated when they have a clear enemy. Democrats can rail against multimillionaire CEOs, painting them as enemies of the people, and massive corporations answerable only to their own stockholders. The blue team can run on punishing American oligarchs and giant multinational companies. For example, they can advocate levying much higher income taxes on rich people, a vastly higher estate tax so Elon Musk's kids don't become billionaires just because they had a rich father. They can push for an antitrust law that makes it illegal to have more than a 10% share of any market, in order to break up companies like United Healthcare and create more competition. Breaking up the big banks, by passing an updated Glass-Steagall law and related laws for the insurance industry and other much-hated industries, could be a real winner. Saying that American oligarchs like Elon Musk are even worse than Russian oligarchs (because the latter are not involved in politics much) could be a real winner.
It would be turning Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on his head. He argued that the government should do more to help people—for example, by raising the minimum wage. The new pitch would be about punishing the enemies of the people by taxing them or breaking them up, which would also help people (by raising revenue and allowing competition to lower prices) but the emphasis would be on punishing the villains. It works for the Republicans. They have plenty of villains in their stories and their voters love it. Democrats could do the same thing, only with different villains. (V)