The Midterms Delivered A Warning To The Democrats, Too

Democrats are euphoric after states across the country voted to paint Congress blue. But the message from the election should be sobering for them: People are angry about the cost of living, and they want their representatives to actually do something about it.

Deep divisions within the party will make it harder to deliver.

Donald Trump is still president, but the opposition party has now been handed important levers of power, and Democrats need to navigate internal differences to show they can respond to voter anxieties. Excuses will only go so far in 2028 if the electorate is still mad.

And there isn’t time to let the presidential primary season play out to determine the future direction of the party. Democrats need to settle on their play here, quickly. That is especially true now that they have unexpectedly captured both the House and Senate, raising people’s expectations.

Which will voters reward more: if Democrats send single-party legislation to the president’s desk, only to see it vetoed? Or if they appeal to Trump’s populist instincts to try to pass bipartisan laws with effects that people can feel in the near term?

Pushing for broadly popular but partisan legislation — like anything that aims to bring down health care costs — could tee up 2028 candidates to make the case that the White House is not doing its part to address affordability concerns if Trump doesn’t go along.

Yet real policymaking that might draw the president’s support could make an easier sell, even though Trump is unpopular and bipartisanship is often scorned in today’s hyperpolarized politics.

But can Democrats even agree enough on substance to advance legislation across both chambers?

The clock started ticking on these questions Wednesday. Whatever party officials choose, they need to make sure voters notice, or they risk facing an anti-incumbent wave themselves in two years.

Voters “don’t like either party,” former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe told my colleagues Tuesday night. “They just want people who are elected to get in and do the damn job and get stuff done.”

Much of the party’s economic messaging in this election was built on opposition to Trump policies, with Democratic candidates campaigning against the president’s tariffs and massive spending cuts to Medicaid — a practical reality that might make it simpler for the party to spoil for a fight. Another government shutdown showdown over something like this seems likely.

But sprawling ideological preferences on the left could make even those items a grind. Look no further than Trump’s tariffs, where lawmakers are united in their criticism but divided on what should be done about them. Import taxes are deeply unpopular at the moment, and Democrats could lose out on banking an easy political win if they get too lost in the weeds.

There are many constituencies to sort through, after all. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who heads the most powerful labor lobby in the country and will be a heavyweight in the debate, wouldn’t commit to supporting a rollback of most of Trump’s tariffs.

“It gets very detailed very fast, and we have unions who are steeped in this, that live and breathe this every single day and have seen the impacts on their workforce,” she told me.

The central question is ultimately twofold: What will actually help, and what will merely slake voters’ anger?

One option that corporate CEOs — and some moderate Democrats — fear is any calculus that the best play is to aggressively go after big companies.

Lindsay Owens, executive director of progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative, is a prominent voice arguing that fighting the effects of corporate greed should be a central pillar of Democrats’ economic agenda. She said the party should use congressional control to jawbone CEOs as a means to bring down prices in certain sectors.

Owens, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), acknowledged that some people see that kind of congressional behavior as mere grandstanding but added: “I don’t.”

Instead, she said it’s a way of wielding power that comes off less like partisan point-scoring and more like attempting to fight on behalf of constituents. She praised Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the former (and future?) chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for his focus on high prices in 2022, when he specifically targeted executives.

That idea still causes queasiness in some corners of the Democratic caucus and also has its limits — corporations have obligations to their shareholders that scolding can’t entirely overcome, and their costs have risen too.

But elections aren’t won on perfectly designed policies. They’re won on what you can sell.

That much, at least, seems to have gotten through.

In preparation for the debate ahead, the party’s wonks, humbled by the repudiation Democrats experienced after high inflation under former President Joe Biden, are honing their sales pitches.

Lael Brainard, who served as Biden’s top economic adviser in the second half of his term, now leads a “policy pop up” known as the Kitchen Table Project that says it’s pushing practical ideas to offer near-term price relief and appeal to voters.

“Let’s start with what people actually tell us they want,” she said. “And then let’s try to bring the policy analysis to bear because it doesn’t help if you say you want to address affordability and the proposal has a massive new fiscal spending price tag on it. That’s not feasible in today’s budgetary and inflationary environment.”

But she, too, suggested Democrats shouldn’t overthink it.

“The kinds of solutions that we heard about in our listening sessions and then we polled in the surveys are not like, ‘Fix the overall price level.’ Nobody’s asking for deflation,” she told me. “They’re asking for very targeted relief.”

Trump has suggested since election night that he’s willing to reach deals with Democrats, though it’s unclear how much that sentiment will ultimately hold.

What is clear is that voters are angry. And to the extent that Democrats have been given a mandate, it’s this: Put up or shut up.