Mythbusting Before the Midterms, Part II: Messaging Memo

Words matter–what we say, what voters hear, and who says it.

Welcome to part two of our three-part series on the campaign myths Democrats need to ditch before November. Missed part one? Catch up here.

The wind at our backs is reaching gale force levels.

Last week, Virginians approved a redistricting referendum that could flip as many as four congressional seats for Democrats. A new FOX News poll, meanwhile, found that, when asked who would do a better job handling the economy, voters prefer Democrats to Republicans 52-48–the first time poll respondents have preferred Democrats on the economy in more than a decade. Trump led Harris by 13 points on the economy in late October 2024–just 18 months later, he’s underwater on this issue by 36 points. All the while, the President is trying to push through his political woes via triumphal arches, branded passports, and feuds with the Pope—color me skeptical that it will win over Independents and swing voters.

And though calls to lower the political temperature in the wake of the third attempted assassination of President Trump this past Saturday are correct–political violence has no place in our democracy, full stop–lowering the temperature does not mean Democrats should stop drawing sharp contrasts with an administration whose policies are failing the American people.

So, Democrats have all the momentum, while Republicans are in shambles.

That’s precisely why I’m nervous. Those of us with ample campaign scars know the danger that undergirds good vibes: we can start believing our own press releases, fundraising emails get triumphant, our messaging becomes shortsighted, and campaigns make assumptions that the data don’t support.

A few weeks ago, I laid out five outdated, losing lines of thinking I often see pervade our party’s campaign strategies–myths that Democrats desperately need to ditch before November and going forward into 2028. But even campaigns that spend smart, start early, and run great ads can still lose if their message doesn’t resonate with voters. So today, let’s talk about four more myths that plague Democratic messaging strategy–and the tactics our candidates, strategists, and stakeholders should avoid, if we don’t want to look like DeSean Jackson dropping the ball on the one-yard line come Election Day.

1. Myth: The Base of the Democratic Party Has Gone Crazy Left

In the social media era, it’s never been easier to fall into an old political trap: the loudest bloc of voters is the biggest bloc of voters. Indeed, the terminally online among us would have you believe that a Democratic candidate must wholeheartedly embrace a laundry list of ideological priorities in order to both survive a primary and turn out the base come Election Day. The simple fact is, that’s not true, no matter how many DC insiders say it.

The truth is that the Democratic party is an ideologically diverse coalition–more pragmatic and hungrier to win than Twitter discourse suggests. Nearly half of our party is made up of moderates; only about 16% consider themselves very liberal. A recent Third Way poll of likely Democratic presidential primary voters found that 11% call themselves “progressive”–and 6% identify as socialist–while the largest group, at 43%, identifies as liberal, followed by moderates at 34%.

Yet too many DC Democrats still want to subject our party to an “either/or” choice. They think the key to victory anywhere is a core identity everywhere: voters should look at our party and uniformly see either unabashed leftists or proud centrists, partisan warriors or pragmatic realists, progressives or moderates. But this is a fallacy. Leave the cultish purity tests to the Republicans–Democrats should seek to be the Big Tent Party.

We’re the party where Abigail Spanberger, a moderate former CIA officer, can win the Virginia governorship by 15 points, and where Mikie Sherrill, a moderate veteran from the suburbs, can buck the prevailing trends and win New Jersey by a 14-point landslide. Both candidates flipped 7% of Trump voters to their side. We’re also the party where a millennial Muslim, Zohran Mamdani, can win the New York City mayoralty with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, in part by winning back the votes of working-class Latino, South Asian, and Muslim voters who went for Donald Trump just one year prior.

Voters don’t want candidates who fight for ideological purity. They want candidates who meet them on their level and offer tangible solutions to their everyday problems. They want candidates who fight for them. That’s a winning platform for every type of Democrat, everywhere.

2. Myth: Voters Are Highly Attuned to National Politics

This one is seductive, especially in this moment of historic political chaos, when it feels like everyone in America is watching the news with the same white-knuckled intensity we are.

They aren’t.

Consider: Gallup found that fewer than one in three Americans report paying close attention to politics. Only 37% of Americans can name their own U.S. House representative, and nearly half don’t know whether their representative is a Democrat or a Republican. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken weeks before the 2018 midterms found that one in three voters couldn’t name their own party’s congressional candidate in their district.

This isn’t a flaw in the American electorate to be corrected–it’s a feature of American political life to be understood. Most voters are not political obsessives; they’re working people trying to pay their bills, raise their kids, balance multiple jobs, and get through the day. They might know Trump is causing chaos in a general sense, but they certainly don’t follow every twist of his tariff saga or the Democratic rebuff of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

What this means, practically, is that Democratic candidates need to localize their message relentlessly. Strategists who worked with Sherrill and Spanberger put it plainly: both candidates “ran as local as they could and tried to stay out of the national headlines.” That’s not a concession–it’s a strategy. What is this tariff doing to your grocery bill? What did this Republican in this district do to your health care? Democrats must be able to answer those questions in plain terms.

Campaigns that assume voters are following along at home will be disappointed. Campaigns that go get those voters–on their terms, in their language–will win.

3. Myth: We Can Ignore The Economy and Win On Cultural Issues Alone

What was true in 1992 was true in 2024 and will be true again in 2026: my friend James Carville is still right. It’s the economy, stupid.

In 2024, more than half of all voters said the economy was an “extremely important” influence on their presidential vote–and they blamed President Biden and Vice President Harris for a slow job market, high inflation, rising interest rates, and skyrocketing grocery prices. It didn’t matter how Harris tried to package the economy–it felt bad to voters, and it may have cost her the election: Of the 2024 voters who said they were worse off financially than they were in 2020, eight in 10 backed Trump. Today, heading into the midterms, inflation and the cost of living are still the top issues for Americans, named by 48% of voters, far above every other concern.

Voters will reward candidates who are laser-focused on the cost of living, not the scandal du jour. In 2025, Sherrill proposed expanding the child tax credit; Spanberger talked about how she would lower the cost of prescription drugs; and Mamdani vowed a 0% rent increase for New York City’s rent-stabilized apartments. These weren’t vague gestures toward affordability–they were concrete, tangible pledges that voters could picture making their lives better. And in the gubernatorial elections, voters who said the economy was their top issue wound up backing Sherrill and Spanberger by nearly 30 points–a 90-point swing from 2024.

Cultural issues matter, of course, as does the Republican Party’s war on them. Of course, we should call out Trump’s actions to erode our democracy, and his endless attempts to turn our government into an openly corrupt pay-to-play operation that personally enriches him and his allies. But voters of every stripe are prioritizing their grocery bills when they go to cast their ballots–and so it should take priority in a campaign’s message.

4. Myth: The Party Needs One Voice to Lead Us in 2026

“Bring back Obama.” “We need Bill Clinton to be our messenger.” “Have Michelle on the campaign trail every day.”

I hear it all the time. And I get it–everything is easier when our party has a single national messenger, one compelling leader who cuts through the noise, defines the party in the eyes of the public, and drives our message in every market in America. Come 2028, Democrats will absolutely need to again coalesce around a single nominee with a captivating vision.

But before we get to 2028, we have 435 House races, 33 Senate races, 36 gubernatorial contests, and thousands of state legislative seats to win–and they’re all playing out in wildly different political environments, with wildly different electorates. We need to show off that big tent I talked about earlier: what and who can win a race in Montana will not be the same as what and who can win a race in the Philadelphia suburbs. Trying to lean on a single national voice to serve all those races simultaneously would either be impossibly bland or strategically disastrous.

Our bench is deeper and more dynamic than it’s been in years. I’ve been traveling the country meeting candidates, and one that stuck out to me was Rob Sand–Iowa’s state auditor and now a candidate for governor–who is putting a state Trump carried by 13 points in play by running as an Iowan, an auditor, and a prosecutor first, not as a national Democrat. And he’s far from alone.

That bench is exactly what wins elections at this scale. The 2018 Democratic wave, which netted 40 House seats, was not orchestrated by one charismatic national messenger. It was won by a diverse field of candidates running localized, authentic campaigns: veterans, nurses, mothers, and first-time candidates who looked and sounded like the districts they were running in. The party’s 2025 wins followed the same pattern. Spanberger and Sherrill had little in common stylistically or ideologically with Mamdani–and yet all three won big.

And while we have strong leaders at the top charting strategy, our party doesn’t need one voice. It needs hundreds of strong, unique voices, moderates and progressives alike, talking about what resonates in their communities, amplified by a smart national infrastructure. This is what a coalition looks like, and it’s how we’ll win in November.

The Blueprint

Each myth I’ve laid out across both posts is persistent precisely because it offers a (false) comfort. Turnout-only thinking lets campaigns avoid the hard work of persuasion. Waiting until the fall feels financially prudent. Assuming the base has gone hard-left gives moderates a strawman. Hoping for one national savior lets everyone else off the hook.

The truth is less comforting, but it’s also more exciting. Democrats are going to win in 2026 the same way we won in 2018 and in 2025: by running disciplined, local, economically-focused campaigns; by running authentic, normal candidates who meet voters where they are; and by knocking on every door.

So let’s get to work. Not in October. Not after Labor Day. Right now.

History doesn’t reward the party that had the best vibes in April–it rewards the party that did the grinding, unglamorous, precinct-by-precinct work when nobody was paying attention. It rewards the campaigns that run like they’re behind, even when the polls say otherwise. Democrats have everything we need to win: a diverse bench of candidates, a winning economic message, and a Republican boogeyman who seems determined to help us.

The only thing standing between us and a blue wave is ourselves.