To win the 2026 midterms, the Democratic party needs to focus on its message to its constituents, but also to disaffected MAGA voters.
The Democratic party cannot lose itself in intricate details about its platform as it did the last election, which saw Trump win with his consistent messaging of vilifying immigrants and lying about Biden’s record in office. Among the details that led to an unfocussed campaign last year was the issue of Palestinian rights. The Democrats need to simply say that they are in favor of human rights everywhere without attempting to assuage Middle-Eastern Americans who may hold extreme views sympathetic to the Hamas suicide death cult. Israel has violated the laws of war through its use of food as a tool of strategic advantage, to give one example. Likud and Netanyahu are irredeemable and there should be no moral ambiguity: both sides have suffered significant losses, but Israel has reacted in a disproportionate manner in exacting vengeance on Hamas.
Focusing on the important issues requires staying away from the culture wars, this would also include staying away from the staged spectacles that Trump has created as he rampages through the Constitution. Arguing about Alligator Alcatraz would only result in a victory for Trump since he has Fox News to carry his narrative beyond MAGA. Similarly, the execrable treatment of Federal employees is designed to divide an American public who’s been told since the Reagan years that government was the source of all their problems. The framing of the message must be based on simple-to-understand concepts on what it means to be American. Americans do not see themselves as cruel. Americans like to think of themselves as a generous people. Some believe Trump’s lie that America is taken advantage of on the world stage because of Democratic mismanagement.
One principle that the DNC could use is the concept of truth. Trump is a prodigious liar and MAGA has invented myriad excuses for the fictionalization of reality, where Trump is always right. Therefore, trying to shift the Fox-News-intoxicated population from fiction to reality would be impractical. But truth has an opposite, which has resonance among the MAGA and beyond. The opposite of truth, of course, is a lie. But more important, a lie that is told, is strictly forbidden in Mosaic law by the Eighth Commandment against bearing false witness.
The best way of talking about the Big Beautiful Bill is not to dwell on the fact that the tax cuts are a direct financial infusion of everyone’s share of taxes into the pockets of billionaires. Instead, listing how Republicans, such as Pennsylvania Representative Rob Bresnahan, have been bearing false witness by claiming that Medicaid cuts were in fact an increasing of funds into the Medicaid program.
This simple reframing of showing how Republicans are constantly bearing false witness and borrowing of terminology from the Eighth Commandment would provide little room for refutation. In a world where we are witnessing Orwell’s prophecy of language from the novel “1984”, it is impossible not to be impressed by the degree to which speech has been repurposed for the most vile lies about immigrants eating cats and dogs, for example.
Americans are not gullible. They understand that Trump has no moral compass or plan to improve their lives. Only the MAGA faithful believe that there is a divine plan that will deliver them from a future in which in “their” country Whites will no longer be in the majority. This wish makes them excuse Trump’s unprovoked foray into Iran, for example. If the DNC is able to improve its messaging so that the American public can understand that there are major differences between the Republican and Democratic parties and that the Democratic party is the only one trying to preserve the constitutional order, then will we have a chance of ending Donald Trump’s destruction of the future of America.