Whether we are willing to admit it or not, the reality is that the Democratic Party’s reputation has never been worse. A YouGov poll conducted this past March found that 34% of all voters had a favorable view of the Democratic Party. This figure is significantly lower than the party’s 41% favorability in March 2017, indicating that we have lots of work to do as we seek to regain the support of voters across the country in the midterms. Additionally, 52% of Democratic-aligned adults said the leadership of the party is taking it in the wrong direction, compared with 48% who said the party’s leaders were taking them in the right direction (Manchester, 2025). 

For years, the American people have been learning about Democrats from Republicans. In Q1 2025, the number one most watched news network in America was Fox News. Based on total viewership, 14 of the 15 most watched cable news shows aired on Fox News (Mwachiro, 2025).That is a problem, and we can’t expect to win elections until we are able to meaningfully and empathetically show voters everything we have to offer. 

Democrats have failed to successfully leverage their effective policies on the campaign trail. President Biden’s lone term was filled with legislative victories, many of which required him to work across the aisle and secure Republican votes to overcome the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate, including long-overdue infrastructure funding and gun reform. But perhaps his signature achievement is lifting the U.S. economy out of the recession that President Trump left him to handle. His American Rescue Plan distributed trillions of dollars of economic relief, including $1,400 checks to individuals earning less than $75,000/year (Sprunt, 2021). That’s direct economic relief that every Republican in Congress voted against (Peoples, 2021).  Additionally, much like during Barack Obama’s presidency, the Democrats failed to highlight the Republican obstruction that took place. 

On The Economy:

As the great James Carville once said, “it’s the economy, stupid”. That motto defined the 2024 presidential campaign. An NBC News exit poll found that 31% of voters viewed the economy as the most important issue of the 2024 campaign. Among Trump voters, the economy was the top issue by far, with an estimated 50% of Trump voters ranking the economy as their top priority. Furthermore, 45% of all voters said they were financially worse off than they were four years ago, compared with only 25% of voters saying they were better off than four years ago (Perry & Egan, 2024).

Voters were rightfully angry with the surging cost of living that took place from 2021 to 2024. In particular, it was a topic of concern among Trump voters, who spent the entire four years of the Biden Administration expressing their frustrations with rising fares at the pump. But they blindly blamed the Democrats even though this surge was largely caused by Republicans. As Mark Cuban eloquently pointed out, the first kernel of inflation was set in April of 2020, when Trump chose ‘his oil company cronies’ over keeping gas prices low (Kutz, 2024), referring to the deal Trump brokered between OPEC+ parties to cut production by 9.7 million dollars a day (Krauss, 2020). The deal was struck during a period of declining demand for oil as travel was grounded to a halt by the coronavirus pandemic (which Donald Trump so grossly mishandled). But when demand rebounded as the pandemic waned, OPEC+ slow-walked the revamping of production to stabilize prices, leading to a 50%+ surge in oil prices in 2021 (Lawler et al, 2021). When oil companies rode the wave of surging crude prices to record profits at the expense of American drivers (Cronin, 2022) Democrats sought to rein them in with the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would have empowered the FTC to investigate and deter price gouging and provide the President with the authority to declare an energy emergency that would forbid companies from raising prices to “unconscionably excessive levels”. Every single Republican voted against this bill in the House, and the bill died at the hands of the Senate filibuster that Mitch McConnell has utilized to sabotage every Democratic president of the 21st century. 

With weak messaging and constantly playing defense against disinformation attacks, Democrats failed to hold onto the House in 2022 because of these concerns over their handling of the economy. Inflation could have been far lower if Republicans were willing to work with Democrats on behalf of the American people. Instead, they took the opportunity to tank the Democrats’ agenda so they could blame them for not addressing the cost-of-living crisis.

The economy was one of the key issues that lifted President Trump to victory last November. His supporters took him at his word when he said he would work to lower prices on day one (Hammond et al, 2024), but his approval on this issue has fallen rapidly as voters impatiently wait for the progress that their president promised them. President Trump’s net approval on inflation is -22% according to YouGov, lower than every other issue, including abortion, where he has a -14% net approval (Montgomery, 2025).

Simplifying Our Messaging:

President Trump garnered widespread support for his campaign from voters who were frustrated with the way things were being done in Washington by hammering a few key messages and punchlines. From “Peace through strength” to “America First” to “Drain the swamp”, Trump made complex concepts seem so simple to the average voter. Democrats need to follow this playbook if we want to win again. The days of lengthy op-eds and citing pages of research must be put behind us. Trump appealed to the masses through simple catch phrases that resonated with the American people, like “America First”. We need to use simple slogans to clearly present our agenda of economic opportunity and civil/human rights. A few examples could be:

• “Consumers over corporations”

• “Tax relief for workers, not billionaires”

• “Better jobs, safer streets”

• “Individuals over interest groups”

• “More housing, less parking”

• “Build, baby, build”

Own Our Status as the *real* Party of Law and Order:

People are always searching for stability. While Donald Trump likes to paint himself as a tough-on-crime President, his record on crime is reminiscent of the lawless, corrupt politician he is. On Day One of his presidency, one of Donald Trump’s very first acts was granting sweeping pardons of every participant at the January 6th insurrection that he incited, including violent criminals who assaulted police officers. Now, Donald Trump is once again trying to pretend to be a president of ‘law and order’, which is quite ironic considering that he himself is a criminal, having been convicted on 34 counts of felony-level fraud (Reiss, 2024). Trump and Republicans are pretending that the unrest that they themselves stoked by sending masked ICE agents into workplaces is somehow the fault of California’s elected officials, who had no say in the matter. 

While Republicans love to paint Democrats as being soft on illegal immigration, the reality is that Democrats are actually more effective at handling this problem, and we should own that. President Obama deported more illegal immigrants than any other previous president, garnering him the nickname 'deporter-in chief’ (Epstein, 2014). Moreover, in early 2024, Democrats and Republicans unveiled a bipartisan bill to provide funding for border security operations. What did Donald Trump do? He took to Truth Social to criticize the bill as a ‘political gift’ to Democrats (Dorn, 2024), resulting in the bill’s failure to pass the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Kamala Harris rightly blasted Trump at the debate for his role in tanking the bill, but voters still blamed Democrats for failing to address the border situation instead of blaming the Republicans for sabotaging the Democrats’ attempt to handle it.

Donald Trump doesn’t want to solve problems; he creates problems so he can pretend they were created by his opponents. He did it with gas prices during COVID, and he is doing it now with immigration enforcement. If you take the 139,000 deportations carried out during his first 100 days and extrapolate it to the full 1461 days of his term, it adds up to 2,030,700. For reference, President Obama deported 2.9 million people in his first term, and 1.9 million in his second term (Wolf, 2024). And he did this while abiding by the law and giving each defendant the due process they’re entitled to. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has been rounding up anyone and everyone to meet Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 arrests per day (Olivares, 2024).

While Donald Trump and Stephen Miller love to assert that Democrats are defending violent criminals and gang members who are here illegally, we must remind voters that this isn’t about removing criminals; what we are opposing is the administration’s subversion of legal protocol to deport individuals without due process. Us Democrats are NOT against removing violent criminals and people with gang ties from this country. In fact, we strongly support this so long as you prove their guilt in a court of law. This is a legitimate concern that voters have with the Democrats’ immigration agenda, and we as a party have failed to alleviate these fears. A YouGov poll found that 83% of Democrats support deporting illegal immigrants who committed violent crimes (Montgomery, 2024).

On immigration, we must clarify what our party is against. We are against Deporting hardworking immigrants who are just trying to provide for their families, and most Americans find this reasonable. Only 24% of all adult citizens support deporting people who have lived in the U.S. for many years without committing any crimes, and even 56% of Republicans oppose deporting such individuals.  Furthermore, 78% of Americans oppose deporting people who came to the U.S. as citizens, including 59% of Republicans (Montgomery, 2024). 

In Reno V. Flores, Justice Antonin Scalia asserted “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings” (Frazee, 2018). Even though conservative media pundits may claim otherwise, the fact of the matter is that the Constitution applies to all individuals standing on U.S. soil, including noncitizens and those who may be here unlawfully, because we cannot be certain someone is here unlawfully until it is proven in court. Democrats have been so caught up in criticizing the cruelty of the Trump Administration’s deportation efforts that they are ignoring another element of his policies that will draw more ire from the average American: the legality of these initiatives. In a sweeping 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration must facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. For some reason, I have not heard a single Democrat mention Reno V. Flores, which likely renders the vast majority of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies blatantly illegal. “It’s cruel” is a fundamentally weak argument; “It’s illegal” is a much stronger one, and it’s a message we can tie into our broader case against the Republican Party’s erosions of Democratic norms. The reality that we must get the American people to understand is this: Donald Trump is not enforcing our nation’s laws, he is breaking them. But hey – elect a felon, expect him to commit crimes. 

Our country is at an inflection point. We have never been more divided, as Republicans push to cut Medicaid, food assistance, and federal programs to give tax breaks to billionaires, Democrats must unite in opposition to these disastrous policies. Defeating the “Big Beautiful Bill” – or as Democrats should call it, “The Great Betrayal” – requires the Democrats to stand with the working men and women who have so much to lose right now at the hands of MAGA Republicans and their billionaire donors. The true divide in our party right now isn’t between moderates and progressives, it’s between fighters and folders. With that being said, let’s go elect some fighters in 2026.

Works Cited

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Manchester, Julia. “Democrats’ Approval Remains at Low Point: Poll.” The Hill, The Hill, 31 Mar. 2025, thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/5224072-democrats-low-approval-rating/.

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Sprunt, Barbara. “Here’s What’s in the American Rescue Plan.” NPR Illinois, 3 Mar. 2021, www.nprillinois.org/politics/2021-03-09/heres-whats-in-the-american-rescue-plan-as-it-heads-toward-final-passage.

Peoples, Steve. “‘Republicans Promote Pandemic Relief They Voted Against.’” AP News, AP News, 6 May 2021, apnews.com/article/personal-taxes-health-coronavirus-pandemic-business-government-and-politics-d0b1f48aa32baf6b47880faf15d5dea3.

Perry, Stephanie, and Patrick J. Egan. “NBC News Exit Poll: Voters Express Deep Concern about America’s Democracy and Economy.” NBC News, NBCUniversal News Group, 5 Nov. 2024, www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/nbc-news-exit-poll-voters-express-concern-democracy-economy-rcna178602.

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Dorn, Sara. “Trump Denounces Border Bill as ‘Gift to Democrats.’” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 5 Feb. 2024, www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/02/05/trump-denounces-border-bill-as-gift-to-democrats-as-gop-rage-imperils-senate-deal/.

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Olivares, Jose. “Trump Administration Sets Quota to Arrest 3,000 People a Day in Anti-Immigration Agenda.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 29 May 2025, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/trump-ice-arrest-quota.

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