Democrats Need to Run on Their Version of Repeal and Replace

In a series of opinion pieces published in the New York Times last week, Democratic strategists offered suggestions on how the party can reclaim the advantage with working and middle class swing voters in the 2026 Midterms and beyond.

Clinton 1992 Campaign Guru James Carville wrote on July 21 that Democrats should focus on the gift Trump and his MAGA-Supply Side- Know Nothing-Project 2025 supporters in Congress gave them with passage of their Reverse Robin Hood Angel of Death Economic Plan that robs from vital working and middle class assistance programs like Medicaid, SNAP, Pell Grants, and Clean Energy growth programs while giving massive tax cuts to the wealthy who do not need it.

The campaign ad writes itself. “They robbed from you and starved your child to give to the rich.”

Saying it was wise to postpone Democratic Party soul searching until the Presidential Primaries of 2028, Carville wrote:

“Our midterm march starts with a simple phrase every candidate can blast on every screen and stage: We demand a repeal. A repeal of Mr. Trump’s spending law is the one word that should define the midterms. It is clear, forceful and full-throated. It must be slathered across every poster, every ad, every social media post from now until November 2026. That single word is our core message. Every Democrat can run on it, with outrage directed not at the president or a person but at this disastrous bill. And the reasons are countless, each one a venom-tipped political dagger.”

“We demand a repeal to protect Medicaid. Mr. Trump’s law will slash roughly $1.1 trillion from health care programs, stripping coverage from an estimated 11.8 million people over the next decade. This will lead to a shuttering of rural hospitals and facilities, leaving people in red and purple states without vital health care. A vast majority of the public supports Medicaid. This is a unifying issue. We demand a repeal.”

“We demand a repeal to save the deficit. Not only will the new policy explode the national debt — the Congressional Budget Office estimates it could add $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years — but it will also take money away from the poorest 20 percent of Americans. According to analysis from Yale University’s Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, households in the top 20 percent (those earning over $120,000 a year) stand to gain roughly $5,700 annually. By contrast, the poorest 20 percent (making under $13,350 annually) would see their incomes shrink by about $700 a year. Could it be more obvious? We demand a repeal.”

“We demand a repeal to end the endless wars, because the bill boosts military spending to $1 trillion for the very first time. We demand a repeal for students who are losing loan protections or who may no longer be eligible for Pell Grants. We demand a repeal for working families, children and seniors who could go hungry because the bill is estimated to demolish SNAP by over $180 billion.”

While Carville is right about campaigning about repealing Trump and MAGA’s economic monstrosity, he has only given half the prescription for success.

Democrats need to have a replacement policy game plan.

In their article called “The Seeds of Democratic Revival Have Already Been Sown,” Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner wrote that Democrats have to propose ideas for voters to vote for rather than just voting against something.

In their piece, they write:

“…These Democrats agree that attacking Mr. Trump is not sufficient; the party must make a new offer to Americans. They also agree on a main theme of that new offer: making the American dream affordable for the middle class and especially the working class. But Democrats across the ideological spectrum, not just on the party’s right flank, also recognize that their economic message will fall on deaf ears if they cannot re-enter the cultural mainstream and stop talking down to ordinary people…”

“…Still, we found considerable agreement on the economic direction the Democratic Party needs to take: stress affordability, show respect for the dignity of work and reorient around working Americans’ economic aspirations. Affordability was virtually a mantra. “On policy,” Mr. Emanuel told us, “the American dream needs to be the Democratic Party’s North Star. The American dream has become unaffordable and inaccessible. For Democrats, that should be unacceptable.” Xavier Becerra, who served in the House of Representatives before serving as secretary of health and human services under President Joe Biden, echoed that theme: “You shouldn’t have to worry if you can afford to take your child to the hospital. And you’ll be able to replace the aging washer and dryer when their time has come. Just give a working family the tools to stay ahead of the bill collector, and they’ll figure out the rest…”

Both Rauch and Wehner also contend that Democrats need to adjust their cultural messaging to pull these same swing voters back in to listen to their forward and uplifting economic message. In their piece, they write:

“…Rahm Emanuel, a former Democratic representative in Congress and mayor of Chicago who served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, was blunt: “If you’re outside the mainstream on culture, the public will never trust you enough to listen to your ideas on economic ‘kitchen table’ issues…”

“…Still, our admittedly unscientific survey suggests that Democrats are readier to adjust their policy prescriptions than their cultural messaging. We believe they need to be pro-police while also anti-police abuse. They need to be pro-parent and pro-child by, for example, embracing charter schools and sensible parental notification rules, supporting bans on smartphones in school, raising the age of “internet adulthood” from 13 to 16 and supporting childhood vaccines. Democrats need to acknowledge that biological sex isn’t chosen or changeable while insisting on compassionate treatment of trans people. And they need to take a strong stand against illegal immigration while continuing to push for rational and generous legal immigration reform.”

“Democrats should also be welcoming to people of faith and willing to accommodate their reasonable needs, even if that sometimes means compromising on things like L.G.B.T. rights (a topic on which we’ve written in the past). They need to be on the side of teaching America’s civic inheritance, encouraging a reverence for American ideals and advocating assimilation — respecting but not elevating group identities. If leading Democrats can own up to mistakes their party made in the past on these and other issues, all the better. But the party still seems a long way from being comfortable with many of those propositions…”

A few concluding points to these perspectives.

• Democrats do need to do both. They need to campaign on repealing the big government civil rights invading programs of White Nationalist MAGA and their reverse Robin Hood-Supply Side-Return to the Gilded Age Economic Ideology. They also need to offer a vision that stresses opportunity for everyone to achieve the American Dream if they want it.
• To accomplish this should not be hard considering that since World War Two, economic prosperity has always been superior when Democrats held the keys to power. People need to grasp that the Biden/Harris Administration actually did more to advance the American Dream for blue and green collar workers than anything Trump ever proposed. At least they were able to get Infrastructure, CHIPS manufacturing, and a Prescription Drug Benefit done. Even Jimmy Carter created more jobs on average than Ronald Reagan. People need to remember this.
• Democrats, despite Trump-MAGA misinformation in the last campaign and afterward, already have many of the ideas that will help working and middle class citizens like extending the Prescription Drug Benefit to other medicines, increasing the federal minimum wage, affordable child care, Universal Pre-K, free community college, apprenticeships in industries for the future, increased tax credits for having children, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Elder Care, and getting a new home. Kamala Harris offered many of these ideas in 2024. They were right then and they are right for the American People now.
• Democrats, under Bill Clinton and Al Gore, advanced the Reinventing Government agenda and reduced the budget deficit. Today’s Democrats can do that again.
• Democrats do need to convey that they are pro law enforcement, border security, and immigration reform. Again, history is a guide. Barack Obama deported more people than Donald Trump and he did not have to build concentration camps funded by taxpayer giveaways to MAGA corporate donors to do it. Republicans are the ones that have obstructed immigration reform of the last 20 years. Crime rates fell during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden Administrations. Finally, Democrats did not nominate a felon, adjudicated sex offender, twice impeached, KKK loving, and domestic terrorist enabler for President.
• The one area I disagree with the writers is the perceived need to compromise on LGBTQ rights. While I agree that there should be safeguards in the permissive structure for LGBTQ children until they reach 18, there is no room in 2025 to compromise on LGBTQ civil rights. Those days are gone and should be consigned to history.

Democrats need to improve their messaging game and convince the People that, despite Republican misinformation and Big Lies, that they, not Trump and his MAGA apostates, are on their side.

Hopefully, they will field the right messengers on the campaign trail to accomplish this.

Hopefully.