Dems Need to Run on Affordability. Trump Has Different Plans.

Congressional Democrats have their problem for 2026.
Picture: Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs

One of many huge political tales of 2025 was the Democrats’ seek for a message that would carry their occasion again from its calamitous 2024 losses. They started with numerous confusion and divisions. Some progressives needed, as they’ve for a few years, a “populist” financial message that bashed “oligarchs,” heartless firms, and international elites. Some centrists needed to start the comeback by jettisoning “woke” cultural stances and paying rather more consideration to moderate-minded median voters. Everybody acknowledged that Joe Biden after which Kamala Harris had failed to totally comprehend the harm that persistent inflation was doing to voter perceptions of their competence and compassion. And there was a possible widespread floor between centrist advocates of an “abundance” agenda that might assist Democrats get huge issues carried out that benefited common people in tangible methods, and progressive billionaire-bashers who additionally targeted on serving to folks make ends meet, albeit by totally different measures.

It’s onerous to determine the exact second when these various strands got here collectively right into a message and agenda on “affordability.” However an enormous breakthrough occurred on November 5, 2025, when centrist gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia and one notable progressive mayoral candidate in New York all received smashing victories by specializing in the rising residing prices that belied Trump’s 2024 guarantees that he would carry again pre-pandemic costs on nearly every part. It wasn’t working simply in blue states and cities, both. In Georgia on that very same day Democrats beat two incumbent Republican state public-service commissioners by holding them accountable for rising energy payments. And the subsequent month a lefty Democratic candidate in a particular congressional election in deep-red Tennessee over-performed expectations with an “affordability” message, regardless of all types of issues along with her document and problem positions.

With polls exhibiting Trump’s job-approval numbers on dealing with inflation and managing the financial system diving and his tariff initiatives getting a lot of the blame, it regarded like Democrats had discovered their lightning in a bottle in a means that unified the occasion’s factions and in addition confirmed they’d realized from the Biden-Harris-Walz debacle. Maybe one of the best indication they had been on to one thing particular was the pressing issues Republicans had been beginning to specific about persistently excessive residing prices. Even Trump gave the impression to be attempting to get with this system, although he stored stepping on his personal message by complaining that the financial system was doing nice, that restive voters had been offensively ungrateful, and that the whole affordability problem was a “hoax.” It was starting to appear to be Democrats had been getting their mojo again, notably after they triggered a authorities shutdown that proved they had been prepared to “struggle Trump” on favorable floor (on this case, the “affordability” downside with health-care prices usually and Obamacare premium subsidies expiring particularly).

Whereas Trump was experiencing the draw back of being the occasion in energy in a interval when voters had been sad with authorities’s efficiency, he additionally retained the flexibility to manage public discourse by audacious actions that shocked the opposition and actually modified the topic of partisan debate. The truth is, he’s carried out that twice up to now week, first along with his army strike on Venezuela after which along with his strong protection of an ICE agent who killed an unarmed civilian in Minneapolis, apparently for no good motive.

Neither improvement got here out of nowhere, in fact. The Venezuela motion adopted an extended buildup of army forces within the waters close to that nation together with deadly assaults on alleged “drug boats” and wild threats in opposition to Nicolás Maduro for supposed “narco-terrorism.” And it additionally mirrored a brand new national-defense technique involving near-imperial U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. The killing in Minnesota was the inevitable product of Trump’s mass-deportation initiative with its reliance on terrorizing immigrant communities into “self-deportation” with thuggish ways from armed and masked federal brokers. It additionally stemmed from Trump’s determination to focus on Minnesota immigrants to use a child-care scandal linked to Somalis that occurred on the watch of Democratic state and native officers.

However predictable as they may have been, each incidents unsettled Democratic hopes of spending 2026 speaking about “affordability,” and spurred fears that Trump would drag them “off-message” onto doubtlessly treacherous and even divisive floor. As Politico reported, some Democrats sought to rapidly “pivot” from criticism of Trump’s journey to their now-favorite preoccupation:

Throughout the nation, candidates and lawmakers are slamming Trump’s determination to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and are utilizing the second to hammer their home affordability message.

“Ohioans are going through increased prices throughout the board and are determined for management that can assist ship aid,” former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who’s operating to reclaim his seat, mentioned on X. “We ought to be extra targeted on bettering the lives of Ohioans – not Caracas.”

The body from Democrats reveals how potent the occasion views affordability as a problem within the midterms, one which Trump and his workforce have grown more and more preoccupied by after across-the-board losses in 2025.

Trump’s seizure of a number of information cycles to lord it over the hemisphere and endorse deadly law-enforcement insurance policies additionally made it onerous for Democrats to observe consultants’ recommendation to disregard his provocations as a lot as potential, famous The Hill:

Political strategists say Democrats operating in aggressive races on this 12 months’s midterm elections for the Home and Senate ought to keep away from making President Trump the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Whereas Trump’s approval rankings are low and People have been annoyed by his job efficiency within the first 12 months of his second time period, the strategists say the important thing to profitable is to residence in on financial points — notably affordability. …

It’s not as if Trump received’t be talked about, folks acquainted with the technique of the Home Democrats’ marketing campaign arm say. It’s that the president will probably be secondary to the first focus of how Democrats could make the financial system higher. 

Many rank-and-file Democrats reject this Trump-o-phobic method. Some suppose Venezuela and ICE are huge points that should be confronted even when they’re “off-message” or consider Trump’s bigger menace to democracy and conventional American values goes deeper than the pockets, and would exist even when life was “reasonably priced” for many People. It’s a pressure between chilly calculations and red-hot emotional reactions to this president’s common outrages that can probably proceed within the opposition occasion as long as he’s in workplace.