Democrats Need a New Playbook to Win Back Voters in 2026
Part one of a two-part series examining the Democratic Party’s path forward.
“The Democrats are widely expected by many political observers to have a strong chance of winning control of the House of Representatives this year and also have a decent chance of taking control of the Senate.”
Who says so? Practically every TV pundit. But when Hillary Clinton was running for president in 2016, remember when the pundits said, “She’s expanding the map.” And more recently, remember how pundits were assured that Gov. Andrew Cuomo would be elected mayor of New York.
Nevertheless, the same pundits that were wrong about Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo still give their opinions as if they knew what they were talking about.
Being a TV political pundit often means predictions are quickly forgotten when they turn out to be incorrect. It’s similar to baseball managers and football coaches. You don’t have to have a winning record to be hired by another team after being fired for unsatisfactory performance by teams. Or to relate pundits to our business: Management is never wrong, even when they are wrong.
While I’ve been confident in many of my past political assessments, and have worked on political campaigns ranging from local assemblymen contests to presidential ones, below is my advice to the Democratic Party regarding the 2026 mid-term election.
Warning to candidates who ignore my advice: I was one of the few pundits, early on, who said that Hillary Clinton was conducting a losing campaign in 2016 and on this website offered my opinions on how she should restructure her campaign. My advice was ignored, and the election ultimately resulted in Donald Trump’s victory.
At no charge, below is my advice:
Too many Democratic politicians still adhere to the losing strategy of former first lady Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.” That was and still is a sure road map to defeat. Democrats must play by the rules that exist, not rules that they want.
What is needed is for the Democratic leadership to design a policy that can appeal to liberal, mainstream, conservatives and nonaligned voters. In other words, one that appeals to all but the most far right and far left voters. The strategy must include talking points on how President Trump’s policies are hurting low and middle class income voters. But much more important than attacking the president is that the Democrats must convince voters that they have the answer to the problems that are affecting all Americans. This means that they have to be specific about their legislative goals.
The Democratic Party needs leadership whose statements appeal to the majority of Americans. Too often when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, she often defended positions associated with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
In order for the Democratic Party to broaden its appeal nationally, instead of functioning primarily as a special interest party, they must win back voters from rural communities, who have trended Republican for the last quarter of a century. In order to do this Democrats must abandon choosing leaders from the two coasts and promote politicians from rural areas into leadership positions. And they have to stop nominating presidential candidates from the East and West Coast. There are a lot people in between the coasts that they have to win back in order to again become a serious threat to the Republicans. If they can’t win back rural voters, the Democrats will become a “once in a while” winning party, as they are now.
Young voters don’t connect with politicians who are old enough to be their grandfathers and grandmothers. Democrats must promote younger politicians. (Older doesn’t mean you’re wiser. It often means you’re set in your ways and are against change.)
Democrats may benefit from placing greater emphasis on economic and affordability issues that resonate broadly with voters. After being elected, they can act like statespersons.
Because people are still finding higher prices at the supermarkets, as well as other products, and are likely to do so for the remainder of the year, Democratic candidates should study the campaigns of Govs. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and stress “affordability” issues.
Democrats must stop thinking that attacking President Trump is the route to victory. Those attacks are a failure. They bounce off President Trump the same way many criticisms from opponents have in the past. MAGA people who support him will never change their positions. What Democrats have to do is create a strategy that emphasizes policy differences with the Republican administration and stop playing the blame Trump game. It doesn’t work.
Democratic members of Congress must stop railing and voting against everything that Mr. Trump proposes just because it’s a Trump want. Doing that makes them the mirror image of the MAGA crowd that opposes everything Democrats want just because they are Democratic ideas.
Democrats must designate a few spokespersons from various parts of the country to carry messages of how Democratic legislation will help working Americans and emphasize their view that certain Republican economic policies disproportionately benefit wealthier Americans.
The “wise men” leadership theory no longer works. It hasn’t for years. What the Democrats need are political leaders and surrogates who exude an aura of energy and modernism. In other words, the party elders should relinquish their positions to younger members of Congress beginning right now. Doing that does not mean that the party has to change all of its legislative goals. It means that they must be presented differently than they have been. The wisdom of the greybeards should not be entirely dismissed. They can educate young members of the leadership.
Focusing too narrowly on segmented voter blocs, rather than broadly shared concerns, has in the author’s view weakened the party’s broader electoral appeal. All Americans have problems that should be addressed. And candidates should emphasize them and offer solutions.
In order to catch the attention of voters that have distanced themselves from the party, Democrats should not choose national candidates from the list of the “usual suspects,” as Captain Renault (played by Claude Rains) said in the 1942 film Casablanca. There are many talented and appealing young members of the House and governors of states who should be on the 2028 presidential ticket, as well as prominent business leaders and retired military officers, who often appear on national political TV shows as analysts. Candidates should be chosen primarily based on leadership ability, experience and broad electoral appeal.
Candidates for the Senate and national ticket should avoid positions that alienate moderate and independent voters, as well as disaffected Republicans from voting Democratic.
When selecting candidates for the Senate and national ticket, Democrats must remember that what happens in local elections has no bearing on what happens in statewide and national ones. Candidates should campaign as if Republicans have won every special election.
A few of my positions read as if they were written by Donald Trump. But to make it clear I am not a supporter of The Donald. But only an individual with a closed mind would automatically say everything he does is wrong. While they are very rare, exceptionally rare, I agree with some of his initiatives, even though generally I support left of center policies, some very far left. But I learned in the days when I worked on accounts at a boutique political shop that the only way a political party can enact legislation is by winning. That means not having a knee-jerk negative reaction to everything the opposition proposes and the broader public may support. Losing respectably is still losing and only helps the opposition.
Writer’s Note: My first job in public relations was with a political shop, where I worked on local, statewide and presidential campaigns. Based on my experience there and working on quasi political accounts at Burson-Marsteller, during election cycles I become a pundit, writing a few essays about the campaigns for this website. This essay is the first of several that I intend to write between now and the 2028 presidential election. My next one will be about what I believe is the main reason why the Democrats will remain a minority party unless they fix the situation that has bedeviled them.
Editor’s Note: The above reflects solely the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or management of CommPRO.
