The passing of Dolly Parton, one of our era’s most beloved people by just about everyone, has been a good reminder of how powerful simple human kindness is. She supported the Black Lives Matter movement, wrote a song that talked about accepting gays and lesbians in her family, praised drag queens, and appeared in a feminist movie about sexist bosses oppressing the women who worked for him, and was as beloved by conservative Republicans as she was by everyone else. Dolly had shown too much kindness and love to too many people for anyone to attack her.

Dolly’s human decency reminded me of a story from my family. My brother David was a Methodist minister in the Nebraska Conference for 40 years prior to his retirement. There was a big fight in the Methodist Church over the marriage equality issue nationally for many years, but it had flared up especially hot in Nebraska in the late 1990s because a minister in Omaha officiated a lesbian marriage service, which was still against church rules. My brother was unlucky enough to be the head of the Nebraska Conference’s Judiciary Committee, so he had to be right in the middle of the fight..

David at the time was the minister at the North Platte Methodist church. North Platte has both the strong conservatism of a western Nebraska town combined with an intense blue collar culture coming from being a railroad town, so gay marriage in the 1990s wasn’t what you would call a popular issue with the congregants at his church. But David gave a sermon one Sunday, which I was lucky enough to be there for, telling people why he was in favor of marriage equality. I have always been proud of him for the courage it took to give that sermon.

Being the curious political person I am, I asked a lot of the churchgoers that Sunday what they thought of the sermon. A small number said they agreed with David on the issue, but mostly what I heard was some version of “I’m not sure I agreed with your brother, but I didn’t mind what he said. He is such a good man…” Then they would tell me about David being there for their family when someone died or got sick or went through some terrible thing in their life. Because he had been there for them, they were willing to listen to what he said and still wanted him to be their minister.

That decency reminds me as well of my consulting partner Heather Booth. Heather is a legendary organizer, coalition builder, and progressive movement leader, but one of her greatest assets is her decency. People want to follow Heather’s lead not only because she is smart and skilled, but because they love her. She pulls people together more skillfully than anyone I know because she recognizes everyone’s humanity. And she is the first to call you on your birthday, the first to call when she hears you are sick or have had a loved one die, the first to offer help when you are struggling.

When I was about five years old, I had figured out that there was no Santa Claus who flew around with reindeer in a sleigh. There was a girl in my class that I was mad at, so I told her that Santa didn’t exist. When my mom heard this story, that was the angriest she ever got at me. She told me that cruelty was the greatest sin there was, and that kindness was the most important virtue. And that was how my mom lived every day of her life.

Those of us who care about politics and policy debates would do well to think about people like Dolly Parton, Heather Booth, my brother, and my mom. What they teach is that the power is not all about winning the debate, being clever on social media, or raising the most money. We all need to remember to build community, to help people who are lonely and not doing so well. Being kind is at least as important as being clever, in politics and in life.

We have a long way to go and many hurdles to overcome before Election Day, and then likely after as Republicans try to scramble to invalidate election returns. Trump’s team of authoritarian fascists is looking under every slimy rock for ways to cheat on an election that looks bad for them. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel, and a hundred other right-wing billionaires are going to spend billions of dollars to try to win this election, so that nobody in DC ever does any oversight on their attempts to control the world.

Aside from Republican shenanigans, there are the Democratic Party’s on-going, every election weaknesses: we spend too much on TV and not enough on organizing and organic social media; we have not built the kind of media and social media infrastructure the other side has; party leaders have failed to unify us around an economic platform that could excite people outside the Beltway (especially the working-class voters we need).

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So yes, there are certainly a lot of obstacles to victory. But even with all those very real hurdles, something is going on out there this year. I spend a lot of time reviewing polling in the Senate races, and yes, we are in good position in the state everyone is watching. Democratic candidates are either ahead or in the margin of error (depending on the poll) in Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Texas, and Alaska. If we win them all, we control the Senate with an extra seat to spare.

But even beyond those most highly targeted races that everyone is looking at, there are a bunch of very red states that the polls tell us we have a shot in. There are at least two recent public polls showing Democratic Senate candidates within the margin of error, tied, or even ahead in Iowa, Kansas, and Arkansas. In Mississippi, there is a poll showing Scott Colom, the Democratic Senate candidate, down only six, so just outside the margin of error. He is an impressive candidate raising a lot of money and building a strong field organization on the ground. And in Nebraska and South Dakota, there are working-class Independents who are running even in the polls — against Republican incumbents, with no Democrat on the ballot to divide the vote.

The candidates in all these races are really appealing and impressive, mixing compelling biographies and a strong populist message with campaigns doing great work in social media and on the ground. They are talking about real things that happened to them, like Hallie Shoffner from Arkansas speaking passionately about having to give up her 5th generation family farm because the farm economy is so bad. Or Dan Osborn in Nebraska recounting getting fired after he led his union’s successful strike. Or Adam Hamilton in Kansas describing what it was like to build a small Methodist church from the ground up and turn it into the biggest Methodist church in America, and about how being a minister has taught him how to solve problems and bring people together.

What It All Means

Think about the stats mentioned in this article for a minute. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won Maine in the last two elections, the only one of these states won both times. Biden and Ossoff won six years ago in Georgia, and Harris came relatively close there. Biden and a Democratic Senate candidate won Michigan, and Harris almost won it. Though Biden and Harris lost North Carolina, both were competitive in the state.

So four states with big Senate races were at least competitive for Dems in the last two presidential elections. But every other state listed here — Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas — were all massive blowouts for the Republicans in the presidential races in 2020 and 2024. Let’s take out Ohio and Alaska, where we have strong candidates who have won statewide elections within the last decade, and who competed very well in the statewide elections they lost in 2024. The other seven states — let me repeat that, seven states — have not been states where Democrats have had even a ghost of a chance in the last several elections. And the polling right now is showing them to be winnable races for the Democrats.

I would never tell you we are going to win all or even a majority of these seven races. Democratic Party and progressive movement infrastructure is very weak in these states, and the Democratic brand is in terrible shape. The Republicans and their corporate/billionaire allies will be out-spending us by a ton. We have let races like these slip away many times in the last decade plus.

But folks, when this many red states, when the Plains states going down to the deep Republican South, are this close in the polling two months out from the election, something is bubbling out there.

Democrats need to not let this opportunity slip away. We need to speak to the rural and blue collar voters in these states, talking to them about the kitchen table issues that matter the most to them. We need to move the resources needed to compete — and in most of these rural states, it wouldn’t take that much money to run a strong campaign. We need to talk about an agenda that makes sense to them, so that we aren’t just the anti-Trump party.

In 2006, the sixth year of an unpopular Republican presidency bogged down in a badly managed Mideast war, with an economy starting to show some serious cracks, Democrats shocked the hell out of everyone by not only picking up 31 House seats, but by winning six out of the seven most closely contested Senate pick-up opportunities. We can match or exceed that victory this year, because things are bubbling out there.

Is it a “holy shit, we are going to win a sweeping victory” year? It’s up to us.

Some candidates have gotten around this problem by quite literally walking away from the party label. Dan Osborn in Nebraska, Brian Bengs in South Dakota, and Bill Hill in Alaska are running in red states as Independents. (There are some other Indy candidates around the country as well, but these three seem like they have the best chances to win.) In a year where Kamala Harris lost Nebraska by over 20 points, Osborn only lost by six, and he is currently tied in this year’s Senate race. Bengs and Hill are tied in the polling in their races as well. If any of those guys win their races, you will probably see a lot more Independent candidates running in red states in 2028.

But in the American electoral system of two dominant parties, there are big challenges to running as an Independent. Most center or left-of-center candidates, even in red states, chose to run as Democrats. So how should Democratic candidates in tough states and districts talk about the Democratic Party?

I am not one of those Democrats who think candidates should just fly their Democratic flag with pride and not worry about the brand. A candidate’s job is to win their district/state, not defend the brand of the Democratic Party, and voters right now have a ton of cynicism about our party. If you are from a red or lean-red place, you need to show that you are independent enough to criticize Democrats.

But what I would advocate is that Democratic campaigns make those criticisms in a way that doesn’t attack the whole party, worsening our brand and depressing Democratic turnout.

One example is the first from the WP article: Roy Cooper saying that “he bucked his party to oppose defunding the police.” I have long been on record saying that I thought “defund the police” was one of the most politically tone deaf slogans of all time, so yeah, Gov. Cooper, criticize that policy all you want. But to say you “bucked your party” in opposing it is just wrong: I doubt that there were even 5% of Democratic candidates or elected officials nationwide that ever said they supported anything resembling defunding the police. It was a slogan thrown out there by a few lefty activists, not by very many Democratic office holders or candidates. Suggesting that most or all of the rest of the party was for defunding the police hurts the entire party from top to bottom.

How about saying something like: “Some national Democrats said they wanted to defund the police. I said no, and led the North Carolina Democratic Party in rejecting that idea.” That way, he helps not only himself but other Democrats who are running in the state.

Mary Peltola has the smarter approach: “I’ll take on anyone, including Democrats… who doesn’t understand what Alaska needs.” It acknowledges that there are Democrats nationally who don’t get how Alaska works, but the ad doesn’t denigrate the entire party.

The approach Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turek takes doesn’t criticize the party, but just talks about how bipartisan he is. This is not harmful to any other Democrats, but I have my doubts on how many votes it will get Josh. Everyone says they like bipartisanship in general, but it is an insider process word that doesn’t mean much to regular people. Voters want to know whether you fought to get prices down, created jobs in the area, kept their hospital from closing, not whether you were bipartisan on some generic pieces of legislation they don’t know anything about.

Here’s another suggestion: I have no problem taking issue with some of the more extreme slogans of what some people are calling Woke 1.0 social issues. However, economic issues are the most persuasive with working-class voters. I would call out Democrats who supported bad trade deals like NAFTA (which working-class voters in focus groups still bring up as a terrible idea), or who bailed out Wall Street in the financial crisis. Mentioning issues like that will matter more to voters who are hungry to know what Democrats will and won’t support on economic issues.

Having the debate over what the Democratic Party should be at the right time

We have seen a vigorous debate in Democratic primaries this year over where the party should go related to corporate power, Medicare for All, what to do about AI and data centers, policies toward Israel, and many other important issues. We are going to have that debate, robustly, after this election is over, as a score of potential presidential candidates position themselves and make their case as to why their agenda and message are the right ones for Democrats to embrace. I look forward to that debate, and certainly plan to be a part of it.

But right now, with early voting starting up just a few days from now in North Carolina and other states to quickly follow, it is time to focus like a laser beam on turning out Democratic voters, persuading the persuadables, and racking up as many Democratic wins as we possibly can. If we net four Senate seats, we can stop any more right-wing judicial nominations or cabinet officials from being confirmed. If we net four House or Senate seats, we can stop any more terrible budget bills from being rammed down our throats.

Our democracy is on the line, and this election is our opportunity to turn the tide against Trump’s awful version of fascism. Now is not the time to attack each other and throw out goofy rhetoric. And I’m talking to everyone here. Any progressives out there still talking trash to Democrats who have already lost their primary races for taking too much Big Tech and AIPAC money, you can focus on that after Election Day, don’t keep hammering away right now.

As for the Third Way and pro-Israel folks who are loudly whining about Democratic Socialists and Hasan Piker, just stop until after Election Day. Seriously: Democrats who are obsessing about the shitty things some goofy influencer who supports El-Sayed once said are just helping the Republicans right now.

I don’t like some of the shit Piker says either, and not just about Israel. But I guarantee you that Mike Rogers is supported by plenty of sexist, racist, antisemitic assholes, and I don’t hear anybody talking about that. To wit, there is a Christian Nationalist billionaire funding Rogers’ super PAC who reportedly told the former Jewish Texas House Speaker that “only Christians should hold leadership positions” in that body. Now that is some blatant antisemitism that deserves to be denounced.

Left-of-center folks are not going to get everything they want if Democrats win control of Congress, not even close for the next two years. But Democrats winning majorities and chairmanships mean so many more things are possible, and so many more things can be stopped. We need the Senate to block new right-wing judges and cabinet officials from being confirmed, and we need both houses to win the budget fights we need to have. Now is the time to unify.

After the election, hopefully we can celebrate our big wins and take a breath, and then we go to the mats on the 2028 debate. For those of us who like a good fight, that will be fun. But between now and Election Day, our fight is with the Republicans, not each other.

The difference between those results - and the 2024 election - was the populist, working-class voters left behind.

After FDR’s four consecutive landslide victories from 1932 to 1944 (and corresponding dominance in congressional and state legislative elections), no Democratic presidential candidate had gotten over 50% of the vote twice until Obama. He also left office with a high approval rating and has stayed popular ever since. And yet, the party he led was utterly crushed in his two midterm elections while in office, and the election following his two terms — we went from having a 37-vote edge in the House and a 60-40 Democratic Senate to Republicans having both houses of Congress along with having gained over 1,000 seats in state legislative chambers around the country.

Barack Obama ran as an economic populist and got working-class votes as a result.

The difference was that the candidate Obama built a powerful three-legged electoral coalition. Everyone knows that Obama got a record turnout and percentage of Black voters, along with high percentages of Latinos and Asian-Americans; and that young progressive urbanites flocked to his campaign banner as well. But Obama also got 45% of the rural vote (tying Clinton’s 1996 performance as the highest percentage by a Democrat in the modern era), and he won the midsized Factory Towns of the industrial heartland — Pennsylvania and the Midwest. It was winning those kinds of voters that not only allowed him to carry the traditional swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in these elections, but also Ohio and Iowa twice, and Indiana in 2008, He almost carried Missouri in 2008 as well.

Sit for a moment with the thought of how different American politics would be if all of those states were still competitive for Democratic presidential candidates.

Obama did not govern as an economic populist, but he ran as one in both of his campaigns. In 2008 and 2012, he ran against the ultimate avatars of the political establishment, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, as the change candidate. As Wall Street was melting down, he promised to be tough on the big banks, borrowing policy ideas and rhetoric from Elizabeth Warren.

And in the 2012 campaign, President Obama gave a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where Teddy Roosevelt had given his famous New Nationalism speech calling for the economic reforms that would become the basis for the New Deal when his cousin Franklin took office a generation later:

I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them.

Obama was pitch perfect as he ran against Mitt Romney’s history as the head of Bain Capital, a hedge fund that bought up companies, stripped them of their assets, laid off their workers, and sold their spare parts like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. When Romney’s infamous 47% tape came out, Obama’s campaign jumped on that in a populist fashion.

That economic populism convinced enough working-class rural and factory town voters that Obama was on their side to carry him to majority vote victories twice. Having a Wall Streeter like Romney as a foil also really helped in 2012. But the Obama administration’s decision to bail out Wall Street and let the bankers keep their bonuses, while forcing unions to renegotiate contracts to save the companies they worked for, was a ticking time bomb. The perception was that Obama bailed out Wall bankers, but not regular working folks.

In one exit poll I saw after the 2010 election, about 25% of voters thought the bad economy was Obama’s fault, another 25% thought it was Bush’s fault, and 44% thought it was Wall Street’s fault — and Democrats lost that segment of the electorate 2-1. The rise of Trump and far right populism in those years can be traced directly back to our lack of focus on working-class voters.

Beyond the policy dynamics, Democrats generally thought it was very cool that Obama had done so well with people of color and young voters, and were less interested in all those working-class voters he had once won. But without them, Democrats are a minority party.

Adding the populist working-class voters leg back to our coalition, and re-energizing young progressives as well

A reporter the other day asked me about what people are starting to call the Bernie-dogs (a combination of Bernie and Blue Dogs), candidates from working-class backgrounds who sound like Bernie Sanders when it comes to economic populism, but also project a more moderate image that makes working-class swing voters more comfortable voting for them. Candidates like Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania, Brian Poindexter in Ohio, Dan Osborn in Nebraska, Sam Forstag in Montana, Bill Hill in Alaska. These guys talk like normal people talk, focus on the everyday kitchen table issues voters actually give a shit about, but also have a compelling critique of how corporate abuse and concentration of power is hurting regular people’s lives.

These candidates remind me of a poll I did a while back, where we asked voters how they felt about different kinds of labels for Democrats: moderate Democrat, centrist, progressive, liberal. You know what label got the highest approval rating? Working-class Democrat.

In this era of arrogant billionaires and corporations that have built huge monopolies and interconnected oligopolies, Democrats need to show that they will fight these powers that be on behalf of everyone else.

Everyone else, by the way, is a very big number. Forbes counts 989 American billionaires; other estimates put it at around 1100. Even if you add in all the family members hoping to inherit, and all the high level execs working for them and getting great salaries and stock options; add in all the nutcases who think of Ayn Rand as their guru; add in all the Christian nationalists who want the government and their fundamentalist church to be merged, and that it is time to repeal women’s suffrage... Add up all those people, and everyone else is most of the population. We ought to be able to win a majority of voters if we show that we will fight for them and solve their problems in a common-sense way.

I hear the pushback already: what about all those businesspeople who are too moderate to want a fighting-for-the-people approach to politics? There are some of those, but I am finding more and more wealthy Democrats who are deeply concerned about how the Big Tech companies are trying to take over all aspects of American life and business. I have had three different conversations in the last few weeks with wealthy Democrats, including one of the wealthiest and most successful of the Democratic businessmen I know, who talked in ominous terms about Big Tech monopolies trying to take over everything.

The anti-monopolist tide is rising everywhere.

The formula that allows us to energize the populist Left and working-class swing voters at the same time

DC pundits who talk endlessly about the divide between the Left and the center in the Democratic Party don’t understand that the center to them is not the same as the center for voters. The DC center focuses on what makes lobbyists and donors happy, but the voters in the center of the American electorate are working-class populists who don’t like corporate lobbyists or either party’s establishment.

The reason working-class Democrats and Independents have such great appeal is that they talk in the common-sense language of regular folks about the kitchen table issues most voters care about, but also understand that corporations and billionaires gaming the system and abusing their power really pisses people off. Standing up to those who abuse their power energizes and excites young progressives and Democratic base voters, but it arguably is even more appealing to working-class drop-off and swing voters.

The signs are everywhere. Republicans are panicking at the anger over AI data centers and begging the Big Tech companies to come up with a message that saves their candidates. A poll in one race I was briefed on the other day showed that the best message in that race was one of pure anger at the utilities and their outrageous price hikes. Voters are expressing outrage at Big Oil’s windfall profits since the beginning of the Iran War. The cost of groceries is making people irate at the big food companies. People are expressing huge amounts of support for wealth taxes and closing corporate tax loopholes.

Democrats need to think more ‘bigly,’ to steal from the opposition: stop making the goal 50 plus one, while ignoring huge swaths of the country. Winning by incredibly narrow margins by eking out votes from college graduates and minorities in urban and exurban areas is not sustainable for the party in the long-term. We can start winning again in places like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas, the Rocky Mountain West, and the Plains States if we broaden our appeal to the same working families who used to vote for us at least some of the time a generation ago, before we forgot who those voters were. Those voters don’t like what they perceive the Democratic Party has become, but if the Democrats in those races express the same anger at the powers that be that voters have, our party will have a great November.

But as a lifelong card-carrying member of the progressive wing of our party, while I am happy about these victories, I am not spending a lot of time celebrating until Democrats win enough general election victories to take back the House, the Senate, or both. And we have a long way to go.

Jesse Jackson often said in the 1980s and ‘90s that the Democratic Party needed two wings to fly. He was a progressive happy to throw elbows and have vigorous debates with the establishment wing of the party, but he also understood the importance of coming together.

How Progressives Win Competitive General Elections

I am deeply tired and irritated by all the doom-and-gloom centrists writing off the chances for El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, and other progressive primary victors to win in competitive seats. It hurts the party and hurts our chances in those races, and it is also just bullshit. These are 50/50 districts, states, and elections, whomever the Democratic and Republican candidates are. Every candidate and campaign has challenges. The centrist candidates would have had just as many challenges as the progressive victors, just different ones.

But for progressives to win they have to run smart campaigns. They can’t just turn out the lefty urban base in higher numbers, be clever on social media, and sail to victory — the numbers do not add up. We need a No Arrogance Rule for all of our candidates and campaigns. Our campaigns need to reassure skeptical voters about whose side they are on, listen to those voters about what matters the most to them, and offer substantive ideas about how to improve their lives. Candidates also need to inoculate themselves against the nasty Republican attacks they know are coming, so that voters understand what their values are and that they are not out-of-touch, crazy extremists.

In the primary voting, and in the early general election polling I have seen, El-Sayed is not as strong as he needs to be with Black voters, with rural voters, and with the people I have been working with for years, what I call Factory Town voters — working-class folks from small and medium-sized towns whose lives have been upended by deindustrialization, the opioid crisis, and several years of inflation.

All of the categories of voters I mentioned above are populist voters who are focused on getting a better break from this economy. El-Sayed can win them, but these are cynical people, burned by a hundred politicians making promises that never improved their lives. He is going to have to show he gets it, and that he cares about them.

The other thing progressives have to do to win is to genuinely reach out to the people in the other wing of the party. We can be clever on social media without being so arrogant or making so much of fun of people who should be our allies. Some Democratic primary voters voted for Stevens because potent attack ads instilled fear that El-Sayed was genuinely rough on women. Some worried that a progressive or a Muslim couldn’t win the general election. These Democrats are not bad people, and we need their votes to win this race. Michigan supporters of El-Sayed should reach out to Stevens supporters with open hands and hearts, and welcome them to the table.

Bridge Building Between the Progressive and Establishment Wings of the Party

Throughout the age of Trump, we have heard a lot from party leaders about how we have to all unite, at all costs, to keep Trump and his followers from destroying our democracy. They were right. Now is when the rubber meets the road for the Democratic leadership. Party leaders need to embrace the progressives who win primaries, and show that they are going to do everything possible to help them win those races.

I have heard rumors that the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC are going to hold off on offering full financial support in the Maine and Michigan Senate races, in spite of how urgently we need those seats to have a chance at winning the majority. If that rumor comes to pass, it would be a nightmare for party unity going into 2028.

I was the main liaison to the progressive community in the Clinton campaigns and White House, was the Progressive Liaison for the Obama-Biden Transition Team, and informally helped play that kind of role in the party for many years. My business partner Heather Booth played that role for the Biden campaign in 2020 and Harris campaign in 2024. I can tell you from personal experience that there has always been a lot of tension between the progressive and establishment wings of the party, but the tensions don’t have to devolve into open warfare.

After Democrats didn’t turn out in the disastrous 1994 midterms because they were upset about NAFTA and the collapse of health care reform, Clinton saved his presidency and assured his re-election by joining forces with progressives to fight Newt Gingrich’s massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, education, and environmental programs. After Obama angered both Democrats and swing voters by bailing out Wall Street, we got swamped in the 2010 midterms, but he saved his presidency by running a progressive populist campaign attacking Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.

And after Biden won the 2020 primary, he joined forces with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, embracing major parts of their platforms, and ran the most progressive populist presidential campaign a Democrat has run since the days of the New Deal, when we won five presidential elections in a row. Biden followed that up by appointing many progressives to economic policy making roles and worked closely with progressives to accomplish more major legislative victories in two years than any president since LBJ in 1965-66.

History is clear: if the Democratic Party leadership pays due respect, and unites with progressives on important parts of their agenda, they win elections and get good policies passed. If on the other hand, party leadership unites with big money interests to wage ugly fights with progressives, whoever wins the primary we will be left sitting with a serious mess to clean up.

Vote Blue No Matter Who

The slogan “vote blue no matter who” became popularized in the 2020 presidential to help unify the party — in an unwieldy 27-person primary field — to defeat Trump and MAGA Republicans. The idea is that while you will never agree with any candidate on everything, in this moment of ultimate peril for our democracy, with the fascist wolf at the door, that any Democrat would be better than a Republican, that Democratic control of government is a million times better than Republican control.

Besides the obvious point that we should not leave authoritarians to take over our government, it’s much easier to win policy fights when you’re in the majority. (Duh.)

While I certainly ascribe to this point, it is also important to note that the slogan has been more often weaponized against more left wing progressive candidates than more centrist ones, as a way to say, “Hey, Lefties, you can’t get everything on your wish list.”

So yeah, we can’t we be purists. However, now progressive candidates on the leftier end of the spectrum are in ascendance with the Democratic primary electorate, and many centrists are threatening to sit out. This is not tenable. You cannot chide lefties to “vote blue no matter who,” and then storm out of the room with all your toys when your preferred candidate loses.

Have fights all you want before the primary is decided, but once the primary is over, you must be gracious and be a team player. (It is great to see Haley Stevens and Gretchen Whitmer doing just that in Michigan.) Otherwise, you are helping Republicans.

General elections are binary choices. Democrats need to have a debate about their future as a party, and I will be firmly on the side of those who want to take on corporate power, get money out of politics, and get health care for all. But with the primary season quickly coming to a close, the time to do it is in the 2028 presidential race, which will be great fun.

Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the party committees they control should go all in to help Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, Will Lawrence (the progressive House candidate who won the primary to compete in Michigan 7), and other progressives winning primaries in tough general election races. Progressives should welcome the help and do everything in their power to win those races and prove progressive candidates can win swing districts and states.

The forces of fascism will destroy democracy if we don’t all work together. Let’s join forces now that the primary season is coming to a close, and give Democrats a sweeping victory in the 2026 elections... vote blue no matter who!

Part of being a progressive is wanting to know about the truth of our history, being willing to acknowledge the flaws and sadness of the past and not just wrapping it all in a gauzy bubble. We know about the horrors of slavery and the destruction of 90% of the Indigenous population; we know that women and the poor did not have the vote when our country was founded or for many years after; we know working people were oppressed and nature was despoiled.

So we are deeply aware that the American Revolution was far from a perfect thing. I would argue, though, that the Declaration of Independence was one of the most important events in human history, because the rebellion it announced, and the language in it, opened the door to the possibility of a country, as Lincoln said, “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Written by Jefferson, edited by Franklin and Adams, inspired in great part by Tom Paine, the Declaration stated right at the beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Declaring that people have the right to govern themselves, and that we are all created equal were profoundly revolutionary ideas. They were powerful and compelling enough to become the cornerstone for what Americans have strived for ever since — for every good thing that has ever happened in American history. These foundational ideas were the through line of American progress for 250 years.

The conservative movement has fought against those ideas in the Declaration from the beginning, from the American Royalists who opposed the revolutionary cause to the pro-slavery forces and Jim Crow forces in the South. A leading force in the conservative movement in the mid 1900s, Irving Kristol said, “To perceive the true purposes of the American Revolution, it is wise to ignore some of the more grandiloquent declarations of the moment.” In the mid 1800s, conservative slavery advocate John Randolph described Jefferson as the pied piper of equality and democracy, decrying the Declaration as leading to the “leveling” ideas of abolitionists in that era.

This anti-Declaration philosophy continues in the MAGA movement of our day. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri stated:

We were told that the entire meaning of America boiled down to a few lines in a poem on the Statue of Liberty, and five words about equality in the Declaration of Independence. Any other aspect of American identity was deemed to be illegitimate and immoral, poisoned by the evils of our ancestors.

He went on to say, in a notion repeated by JD Vance, that America is not merely a “shared set of values” or a “proposition,” but rather a homeland belonging primarily to its European settlers and their descendants.

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Every progressive leader and movement in American history has claimed those ideas of government by the people and of equality among people as their own. From the abolitionists and modern civil rights leaders to the women fighting for the vote and equal rights; from the early labor union organizers to the populists organizing family farmers; from the Progressive Era reformers to the creators of the National Park system and the New Deal, the Declaration’s language and ideas have been the cornerstone of them all.

It is no accident that Lincoln at Gettysburg built the most influential speech in American history on the scaffolding of the Declaration, affirming its foundational propositions of equality and self-government:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

One hundred years later, Martin Luther King stood at the Lincoln Memorial, and picked up the torch:

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The two most important speeches in American history both referenced our most important document. All three are part of the gospel of the American ideal.

So, yes, we acknowledge that our ancestors were hypocritical men who did many wrong things. But we should take the incredible gifts they gave us, embrace our heritage, and celebrate our great nation like all get out on the 250th anniversary of its founding.

Upon getting selected to the Basketball Hall of Fame yesterday, Candace Parker said, “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.” We have taken our ancestors’ charge in the preamble to the Constitution, where they wanted us to create a more perfect union. In our striving to build on the foundation of the Declaration, we have indeed become our ancestors’ wildest dreams.

For our sake, and for theirs, may we find a way to overcome the fascist forces which seek to overturn the Declaration and Constitution, so that America can forge a new and deeper commitment to freedom, liberty, and the proposition that all of us are created equal.

The supporters of Mayor Mamdani (and apparently there are a lot of them) are justifiably ecstatic about the three decisive congressional primary victories in NYC. The Democrats who don’t like Mamdani are weeping and moaning and gnashing their teeth, freaking out that Republicans will sweep the elections because some Democrats are socialists.

Everyone needs to take a deep breath. Politics is a long, tough slog with no permanent victories or defeats, and many twists and turns. And everyone needs to remember that the fight against fascism is deadly serious, probably the most important thing we collectively will ever do, and we need to build a big coalition to win it.

I want to make several points about what is going on inside the Democratic Party right now.

The Mamdani Moment

Whatever you think of Mayor Mamdani, he is having a moment. In a country that is inherently irritable, anti-establishment, and anti-incumbent against whoever is in power, usually the first thing that happens after a politician wins power is that they start diving in the polls. The last two mayors in NYC, Adams and de Blasio, both struggled mightily from the moment they took office. Obama, the most popular politician of this century, won decisively twice, but lost the next elections by huge margins after his big victories.

Not Mamdani. His popularity and political muscle were fully on display in the NYC primaries, with his endorsed candidates beating incumbents and winning big.

I think rather than panicking and going on cable TV to melt down about it all, the question all the anti-Mamdani Democrats should be asking themselves is: why is this guy so popular?

It’s actually not hard to figure out. He promised lower costs for New Yorkers, and instead of waiting around, he is already delivering. On child care, on rents, on grocery stores in neighborhoods that don’t have them, he is already making things happen. Mamdani’s policies are clear, easy to understand, and focused on helping working folks. It’s not hard to see why he is popular and why the candidates he is supporting are winning. Steve Rosenthal wrote a great column about this here yesterday.

My advice, based on 45 years of political experience, is highly sophisticated and nuanced: copying what is working is a better strategy than panicking on cable TV. Maybe if you incorporated some of the progressive populist Mamdani agenda into your platforms and messaging, you too could combine working-class swing voters with working-class base Democratic voters, and then win more elections.

Please, Everyone: Calm the Fuck Down

To my progressive friends dancing on the graves of their establishment Democrat opponents, while your victories are important and worth celebrating, we still have such a very long way to go. Donald Trump is still president, and threatening to smash our democracy and hand over the economy to the billionaire tech overlords. The Republicans still run Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and most state governments, and have hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate America to try and crush us. Democrats backed by crypto, AI firms, Wall Street, AIPAC, and Big Pharma still have won lots of Democratic primaries over the last several weeks. Progressive economic populism is clearly winning a lot of the time, but those of us who advocate for those positions have many miles to go before we can rest.

It would also be good to acknowledge that outside of the biggest cities on the two coasts, voters may have more mixed feelings about the word socialist, about slogans like “abolish the police,” and about the immigration issue. And we are going to have to win the votes of at least some of those skeptical folks.

To our friends in the establishment wing of the Democratic Party freaking out over people who call themselves socialists winning elections, or the random goofy comments by Chevalier (and yeah, as progressive as I am, I do think she has said some pretty dumb stuff), please take some very deep breaths and stop reinforcing the ideas that (a) Democrats are crazy leftists bent on the country’s destruction, and that (b) when centrists lose primaries, they want to destroy the unity of the Democratic Party.

For those who think Democrats can’t win in swing districts because some socialists won their primaries, I want to remind you all that after AOC got massive media coverage for winning her primary in 2018, Democrats picked up 40 seats in the House that fall; that after Mamdani became the media star of the moment for winning the Democratic primary in June of last year, Democrats went on to dominate the fall elections all over the country and in special elections throughout the last year; and that when Joe Biden very visibly moved to the left to embrace much of Bernie Sanders’ and Elizabeth Warren’s economic platform — arguably running the most progressive populist Democratic presidential campaign since LBJ — that Democrats won a trifecta that November.

Democratic candidates in red and purple states and districts are perfectly capable of distancing themselves from the rhetoric and positioning of Democrats they don’t agree with, and if they need to do that to win, Godspeed. But the one thing all of our Democratic candidates should definitely do is not to forget my first point: whatever label you put on it, Mamdani’s economic populism is working. That is the through line all Democrats should be embracing.

One final point in terms of calming the fuck down: that goes for us all. If we want to prevail over Trump’s fascist authoritarianism, Democrats need to be able to work together as we head into the general election this fall. Mamdani referred to AIPAC, who supported some of the candidates he opposed in those primaries, as monsters. My old buddy James Carville said he didn’t want to be in the same party as Chevalier because of some of her dumb tweets. And Jaime Harrison ranted about Democratic candidates who criticized the Democratic Party.

C’mon guys, simmer down. For democracy to survive, we all need to work together to beat Trump. Chevalier had some outrageous tweets about the American flag, private property, and abolishing, I guess, all kinds of things, but she also apologized and took the tweets down. I think AIPAC has become an awful organization, full of right-wing donors and Bibi-philes, but they and the candidates they support are not monsters. And Democrats criticize each other all the damn time, as you just proved Mr. Harrison. Please, in the words of Desperately Seeking Susan, everyone should “take a valium like a normal person.”

Democrats have our differences, but we are not mortal enemies. Our mortal enemies are the fascists who have come to destroy our democracy.

Plenty of Time to Have the Battle Democrats Need to Have

Don’t get me wrong: the Democrats are going to have a big battle over whether our agenda for our future should sound more like NYC’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg or more like the current one Zohran Mamdani, or maybe like the many great union and working class-candidates who have sprouted up in this election cycle, running in all kinds of competitive states and districts around the country. The big money will naturally be on Big Money’s side, but a lot more voters will be hanging out with those of us on the populist side.

We won’t be able to avoid this fight if we wanted to, and shouldn’t want to: the Democratic Party needs to decide which side we are on. In the primaries yet to come this year, in our labor and community organizing, in the columns we write, and in the Zoom calls we conference in, we can make our case this year. I know I certainly will.

But once this general election is over is the real time to engage in this battle. There will be a fight over the soul of the party in the 2028 presidential nomination fight, and I hope my progressive populist side can settle on a good candidate and win that fight then — I’m pretty sure that is the only way we will win the 2028 general election. I’m also quite certain there will be plenty of good progressive populists to choose from, and plenty of candidates supported by the Big Money team if you want to go with them.

In the meantime, though, Democrats need to stay focused on winning the November election rather than beating the hell out of each other.

And just one final note to my friends in the Democratic Party establishment: looking at the populist politics that are working and welcoming us progressive populists to the table makes more sense as a purely pragmatic political strategy than trying to banish us from the party.

Bad news for Trump, who is hailing the New York primary results as proof that Democrats are embracing communism — a label he routinely applies to policies that ask the wealthy and powerful to pay more or expand the role of government. Bad news as well for much of the mainstream media, which is eager to portray these outcomes as merely another left-versus-right battle within the Democratic Party. And especially bad news for the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party: large majorities of American voters support many of the policies commonly associated with democratic socialism.

Candidates such as Zohran Mamdani, along with Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander, prevailed because they embraced a populist economic agenda that speaks directly to the concerns of working people. Their victories reflect growing support for policies that address the economic challenges Americans face every day.

Public polling over the past year helps explain why these candidates are finding success. Seventy-six percent of voters identify the cost of living as their biggest economic concern. Sixty-six percent support guaranteeing health care for all. Seventy-eight percent believe housing is a fundamental human right, and 74% support government investment in building and subsidizing homes for low-income families. Sixty-nine percent say the cost of prescription drugs is a major concern.

The same pattern appears on workplace issues. Sixty-eight percent of Americans approve of labor unions, 66% believe it should be easier for workers to join a union, and 77% support policies that strengthen workers’ bargaining power.

The public is equally clear about the role of money in politics. Seventy-three percent of American voters want to reduce the influence of billionaires on the political process. Seventy-two percent support strict limits on campaign spending by individuals and organizations, and eight in 10 believe political donors, lobbyists, and special interests wield too much influence in government. Sixty-five percent support raising taxes on corporations and billionaires to ensure they pay their fair share.

Far from being politically fringe, the positions championed by these candidates align with the views of broad majorities of the American public—not only Democrats, but Independents and, on many of these issues, significant numbers of Republicans as well.

This is not simply a battle between the political left and right. It is increasingly a battle over class and economic power. For years, Trump and the MAGA movement have appealed to working-class voters by channeling frustration with political and economic elites. But many of those voters are beginning to ask a more fundamental question: Am I better off? For millions struggling with the high cost of housing, health care, groceries, childcare, and prescription drugs, the answer is increasingly no.

The Democratic candidates generating the most enthusiasm today—many of them proudly identifying as democratic socialists—are speaking directly to those economic concerns. They are offering an agenda focused on lowering costs, strengthening workers’ rights, expanding affordable housing, and reducing the influence of corporate power. Democrats as a whole would be wise to recognize the appeal of that message.

The party’s corporate wing remains closely aligned with Wall Street, corporate PACs, pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance industry, Big Tech, and AIPAC. Yet many voters increasingly view those relationships as evidence that too many elected officials are more responsive to powerful interests than to ordinary Americans.

Candidates who reject corporate PAC money are drawing a sharp contrast. Rather than relying on corporate political action committees, DSA-backed candidates have generally pledged to finance their campaigns through small-dollar donations and grassroots organizing. At a time when overwhelming majorities of Americans believe wealthy donors and special interests have too much influence over government, refusing corporate PAC money reinforces the message that these candidates are accountable to working people rather than corporate donors.

These candidates have also begun addressing another issue that many elected officials have largely ignored: the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and the data center infrastructure needed to support it. DSA candidates have called for slowing the unchecked growth of data centers, arguing that communities should not bear the environmental and economic costs solely to maximize corporate profits. Organized labor has likewise pushed for stronger safeguards, with the AFL-CIO advocating policies to ensure AI enhances workers’ lives rather than displacing them.

These concerns resonate with the public. A majority of Americans believe the risks posed by emerging technologies may outweigh the benefits. Large majorities of working-class voters worry that AI will eliminate jobs, and many believe it could directly affect their own employment or that of someone in their family. Significant numbers also oppose the construction of large data centers near their communities. If Democrats hope to avoid AI becoming the next NAFTA in the minds of working Americans, they will need to demonstrate that technological progress can be managed in a way that protects workers, communities, and the public interest—not just corporate profits.

The lesson from New York is larger than any single election. Voters are not demanding ideological purity—they are demanding politicians who will fight for them instead of the billionaires, corporations, and special interests that have dominated American politics for far too long. Whether these ideas are labeled progressive, populist, or democratic socialist matters far less than whether they improve people’s lives.

Candidates who focus relentlessly on lowering costs, raising wages, expanding health care and affordable housing, protecting workers, and getting big money out of politics are speaking to the concerns of a broad majority of Americans. If Democrats want to build a durable governing majority and defeat Trumpism, they should stop running away from that agenda and start embracing it.

• Rep. Haley Stevens, the Schumer-backed candidate who has received major support from the crypto industry, AIPAC, Wall Street, and Pharma

• Abdul El-Sayed, the candidate backed by the Bernie Sanders wing of the party (including Bernie himself)

• Mallory McMorrow, who galvanized progressives across the country with her anti-hate speech in the Michigan legislature in 2022.
  

The polls have gone up and down, lately Stevens and El-Sayed have led the field, but a pro-McMorrow super-PAC just got a big new surge of money, so I expect this race will be competitive right down to the end.

The candidate who I think is least likely to win what will be a very competitive general election is Stevens. She is your classic establishment Democrat, with a mushy message, careful not to be too populist, so that she doesn’t offend all her big business donors. But the biggest problem with Stevens is that she doesn’t want to think big in terms of solving the real problems people have right now.

Stevens called me a while back to ask me for money. I like money calls, because it allows you to have conversations with candidates and really hear their best pitch. She volunteered the observation that Democrats should not be looking to do big things right now. She said we need to be modest in our policy goals: “not try to pass big programs like Social Security.”

I think Congresswoman Stevens is deeply wrong on that topic. It is those Democrats who lack ambition to make working-class voters’ lives better in a big way that give the Democratic Party its weak brand problem. Voters want seriously lower drug prices and health costs; they want corporate monopolies broken up; they want the cost of housing, utilities, gas, groceries, and child care to go way down. And you know what: not only would voters be glad to see politicians pass big ambitious legislation like Social Security again, they would like see Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits expanded.

I like the other two candidates a lot: they are both strong progressives running on a pro-working families, anti-big money agenda. But in the end, I have come to believe McMorrow has the best chance to win. She is the only one of the three who has over-performed in a historically Republican district. Michigan has a great affinity for women candidates, they have elected a lot of them over the years, and the swing voters in the state tend to be women — both middle and upper middle income suburbanites and working-class White women in small and medium Factory Towns throughout the state. I suspect both of those demographic groupings would be more drawn to McMorrow than to El-Sayed.

This is such an important race in our party’s battle to win over the Senate. We have to hold our swing state Senate seats. We need to have our best candidate on the ballot this November. Please give what you can.

These five states have been solidly red in recent years, but like everywhere else in this country, voters are souring fast on Trump and the GOP. Working-class families are fed up with politicians of both parties who carry water for the billionaires and global corporate conglomerates that are crushing the middle class, and they aren’t blind to the fact that Republicans hold all the federal levers of power during an unprecedented era of corruption and grift.

In Iowa, both Democrats in the Senate primary and the likely Dem gubernatorial nominee are all leading the likely Republican nominees in the polls. There are three House races seriously in play as well.

In Nebraska, Democrats look likely to pick up the Omaha House seat and even in the congressional district I grew up in, Nebraska 1, the polling looks promising for us. (Just to put that into context, a Democrat has not won that district since the LBJ landslide election of 1964.) Meanwhile, independent candidate Dan Osborn has a five point lead in the polling in spite of the yacht loads of billionaire money incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts is spending against him. I talked to Dan and one of his top advisers while in Nebraska, and they have serious momentum coming down the stretch.

In Kansas, a popular and renowned Methodist minister, Adam Hamilton, who leads the biggest Methodist church in the country, is running for the Senate as a Democrat, and is widely considered to be a strong candidate. People think we also have a strong chance in the governor’s race, where we’ve won four times in the last six elections.

Oklahoma is the most Republican of all these Republican states, but even Oklahoma has some interesting political things brewing. Ironworker Local 28 President Trey Martin has a real shot at winning congressional district 5, the Oklahoma City district that we picked up in 2018, and only lost by 4 points in 2020. It is R+9, but in a strong Democratic election with a candidate who fits the working-class district as well as Martin, this one’s winnable.

I’m sure it will shock you to learn that Oklahoma is also a state rife with government corruption and rightwing Christian nationalism – a dangerous double threat to our multicultural democracy that more and more people are waking up to. Check out this recent story by my colleague Lauren Windsor, who exposed some sleazy deal making by state Treasurer Todd Russ with the so-called Christian finance industry. She has more bombshells to drop in the coming weeks on how corrupt Christian nationalists are shaping politics in red states that will truly be eye opening.

But my story today isn’t just about the short-term politics of 2026, it is about the long sweep of working-class history in this country. My wife and I took a side trip between our two family weddings to see three remarkable museums in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The first was the Greenwood Rising museum, which is dedicated to remembering both the terror of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the determination of the city’s Black residents to keep building a strong community there. The Tulsa Race Massacre is widely regarded as the single worst incident of racial violence in American history: over two days, White supremacists killed more than 300 Black people and destroyed 35 city blocks. The power of this museum, the way it told its story, was incredibly moving.

The second museum we went to was the Bob Dylan museum. Dylan wanted his collection of personal papers to be housed in a museum next door to the Woody Guthrie museum in Tulsa, and having the two of them together there was really fun. For any Dylan fan (which I definitely am), walking around that museum, listening to his songs, watching his classic and often hilarious interviews , seeing the early versions of song lyrics written down on scraps of paper made for an experience that was just super cool.

But it was the Woody Guthrie museum that moved me the most. He wrote and performed thousands of songs about the working folks that society had forgotten and thrown away -- about White, Black, and Native peoples who lived in the Oklahoma he grew up in. His lyrics told stories about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and what those calamities did to people. Guthrie sang about the farm workers who were “known by no name except deportee,” about labor unions and the Civil Rights Movement, and about the poor tenant farmers forced to leave to try to rebuild their lives out West.

Guthrie put a sticker on his guitar during World War II, when he served in the Merchant Marines, that said “This machine kills fascists.” He knew that art and culture, songs and books and movies mattered as much in defeating fascist ideas as guns and bombs. And he kept that sticker on after the war, and when people asked him why, he said it was because fascism happened whenever big corporations ran the government and used racism and hate to keep people divided.

The Guthrie museum reminded me that places like Oklahoma used to have great populist, working-class leaders who told the story of working families and fought like hell for them, not just to win elections but to build a movement. The Democratic Party and progressive movement need to reclaim that movement and vision. We need to fight the good fight for all working people.

The gutting of the Voting Rights Act is a terrible thing in terms of racial justice in America, and of course it will hurt Democrats as Republicans move to take advantage of it. John Roberts’ early legal career was devoted to challenging the VRA, and the right-wing justices have been eager to role it back for a long time. It is tragic our country is taking this awful step backwards.

But one big thing the decision doesn’t change: Democrats can win the election in 2026 and the years to come by winning back the working class voters we have let slip away from us. It will force our party to build new coalitions in districts that lean Republican but suddenly have new voters from a more diverse array of racial backgrounds.

Republican leaning districts that used to be 10% Black and 5% Latino may become 20% Black and 10% Latino. The majority in these kinds of districts will still be White, but more diverse districts open up new opportunities for multi-racial working class coalitions, where the majority of voters in the district are angry at corporate abuse of power, want the wealthy to be taxed much more than they are, want serious increases in pay, and are pissed that their healthcare, housing costs, gas, and grocery prices keep rising.

The only way to win in Southern districts like this is also the only way to win in working class congressional districts throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and West: focus on winning over working and middle class folks of all races with a message focused on populist economic issues. We need an economic plan for America’s working families: stopping price gouging, capping health care costs, raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour, making it easier to organize labor unions, and breaking up corporate monopolies.

If we have an agenda like that, along with a communications and organizing strategy that reaches people where they live with voices they trust, we give ourselves a real chance to realign American politics not just for this year but for the long term.

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How am I defining the working class?

Let’s be clear: the economy is not going to get any better for working folks over the next few years. Our economy is being propped up right now and is running on the AI bubble, crypto corruption, insider trading, and shaky private capital markets, all completely unregulated by the Trump administration. Very little of all this speculative financial bullshit helps working or middle class folks.

First thing to clarify: what is the difference between working and middle class? This used to be an important distinction in many voters’ minds – it was important to many people to be seen as middle vs working class. That distinction has gotten much more blurred as wages and benefits have eroded, the cost of living has risen far faster than incomes, local economies and businesses have been hit hard, and the biggest corporations have become dominant in people’s daily lives.

In focus groups, people will often say things like, “I used to think of our family as middle class but I don’t anymore. The middle class is going away,” or “I’ve always thought of us as middle class but I don’t know how I am going to afford new clothes for my kids as they go back to school.” People are identifying more with working class candidates and language. One example: when voters in a recent poll were given a list of several different ways of describing Democrats – including moderate, centrist, liberal, progressive, pro-business – the one that was the most popular by a lot was “working class Democrat.”

So how am I defining “working class”? It’s in some ways a complicated question. Many pollsters use a shorthand definition which has the advantage of simplicity, where they define voters without a college degree – which are ⅔ of the public – as the working class. However, I certainly put teachers and nurses, who have modest salaries and have to work long hard hours, as being in the working class as well. And my colleague Lauren Windsor, a generation younger than me, talks about how her generation was promised that if they graduated from college, they would be able to find good middle class jobs with a lot of security. However, for a great many of them, this hasn’t turned out to be the case at all, as people with degrees are Uber drivers or still working in low paying jobs.

It is almost easier to define working class by who is not in that category: top executives at the wealthiest corporations in the country; the financial industry traders and speculators; the partners at the biggest law, PR, accounting, and consulting firms in America, whose main clients are those corporate executives; the trust fund babies who are heirs to big fortunes.

And of course, there are plenty of people who work in professional or middle management jobs that don’t think of themselves as working class, although as AI eliminates many of those jobs, even those folks may start to identify as working class.

But most of the rest of us, the ones without huge stock portfolios and trust funds, the ones who are not masters of industry or helping the executives do what they do with their professional skills, fit somewhere in that working class description. These are the families whose working hours are usually not theirs to determine, whose income is often stretched and shaky, who feel real pain when the price of gas, utilities, groceries, or housing suddenly goes up.

They work all kinds of different jobs but share a common anxiety about their economic situation, and a sense that they have little power over their own lives. They know that an unexpected crisis – an accident, an illness in the family, a sudden unexpected spike in the cost of essential goods – could mean big trouble.

They might be gig workers or nursing home workers; people who deliver for Amazon or traditional truckers; janitors or home health aides; factory workers or farm workers; waitresses or secretaries; owners of small neighborhood businesses working 90 hours a week to keep the doors open or construction workers going from job to job. But they all work their asses off and still have don’t feel like they have the freedom to build the life for their family they dream of.

The way Democrats can win the kind of downscale voters and districts the Republicans are now winning is to root our language, our values, and the issues we are running on firmly in working class sensibilities and economics. If we succeed in doing those things, we can change American politics and stop worrying about the latest awful tactic the Republicans are going to throw at us. A coalition of economically populist working class voters, many of them from rural and factory town America, united with urban progressives and other voters appalled by MAGA”s far right authoritarian agenda, would cause a fundamental realignment in voting patterns.

Communicating with voters where they are at to build a long term majority

The media landscape has become a hellscape. If we want to build a relationship with working families,we have to start with building community, building trust, and old-fashioned neighbor to neighbor organizing. This is not done with TV ads the last couple of months before Election Day; it is done with building communities at the local level on social media, organizing house parties and community events, getting neighbors to reach out to other neighbors, and knocking on doors. We are going to have to reach out to more people than we usually reach out to, register more voters than we usually register, and talk with people in language they understand and relate to.

Democrats can become the party of working people again, just like they were when I was growing up in the post-New Geal era. We do it by organizing and communicating around an economic agenda which fights for working people and recognizes what they care about. Not only can we build that kind of Democratic Party agenda and strategy, we have to do that in order to survive as a political party. There is no other path for us to get back to winning an electoral majority.

The party with the incumbent president has lost every presidential and mid-term election in the last 20 years except one, when Obama escaped defeat by pounding Romney for what he did at Bain Capital, and what he said on the 47% tape. Voters continue to be in a “throw the bums out” mood. This means the odds are good Democrats will win in 2026 and maybe even 2028. But if all we do is not be Trump and go back to “normal”, we will get crushed in the census reapportionment election of 2030 and the 2032.

We need to have a workers party agenda that we are organizing for right now, that we build out in 2028 and in the first two years of a Democratic trifecta should we be lucky enough to have one. After the grift and naked corruption of the Trump years, we need to have a working majority for long enough to rebuild America’s economy and democracy.

I am more than a little bemused by the punditry’s reaction to Governor Mills deciding to drop out of the Senate race. An incumbent Governor backed Chuck Schumer couldn’t compete with an outsider populist? Shocking! Stunning! Mind blowing!

Unless you looked at pretty much every other thing happening in politics right now. There are some clues that DC pundits might want to take note of.

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Take a look at the current state of Senate primaries where Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has played a role. I list the following facts not to beat up on Schumer, but to make a point: voters are not in a mood to be told what to do by the Democratic leadership in Washington, DC.

In Michigan, the primary candidate backed by Schumer, Haley Stevens, is trailing not one but two populist anti-establishment candidates. In Texas, the candidate backed by Schumer, Colin Allred, who lost badly to Ted Cruz in 2024, was recruited to run again, and ended up pulling out because two outsider candidates were beating him badly. In the end the least known candidate at the start of the race, James Talerico, won. In Iowa, the candidate recruited by Schumer, Josh Turek, has been trailing the populist running against him, Zach Wahls, by a huge margin. Vote Vets, a group aligned with Senate democrats, just raised $5,000,000 to try and save Turek’s candidacy, but I suspect it won’t work. And in Minnesota, Schumer’s preferred candidate Angie Craig has been trailing Lt Governor Peggy Flanagan.

Take a look at the recent history of how elections have gone in this country.

With the exception of the 2012 re-election of Obama, who beat Mitt Romney by running a populist campaign exploiting Mitt’s background as the CEO of a private equity firm, every election in the last 20 years has resulted in the party in power losing either the presidency or control of either the House, the Senate, or both. In 2006, President Bush’s party lost both the House and Senate. In 2008, the Democratic establishment frontrunner (Hillary Clinton) lost the primary, and then the young upstart that beat her won the general election. In 2010, Obama’s party lost 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate. Bain Capital saved us in 2012, but then Democrats got hammered in 2014. Clinton got shocked by Trump in 2016. Dems proceeded to win 40 seats in the House in 2018, and then beat Trump and his party in 2020, winning a trifecta. In 2022, Dems stemmed the expected red tide, but still lost the House, and in 2024 that red tide came to shore.

Finally, take a look at current polling trends. Trump is way, way, way underwater, as one would expect a president this disastrous to be. Not surprisingly given that fact, Democrats are leading in the generic Congressional ballot. But Democrats as a party are not much more popular than Trump.

Why is that? Two reasons. One is that Democratic voters (and the Independents who usually vote Democratic) themselves are not enthusiastic about what they perceive the party is these days. Democratic leaders in DC are not popular with Democratic voters. The other is that working class swing voters don’t like either political party’s establishment.

This is not a left-right thing: big numbers of voters really don’t like either party. That is true with working class swing voters, with voters who voted for Democrats in 2020 but didn’t vote in 2024, with fervent Democrats who don’t get why we aren’t fighting back harder against Trump. What all three of those crucial blocs of voters share is they don’t like either Trump or the Democratic Party leadership.

What they do like is candidates and elected officials who will fight the powers that be—greedy corporations, powerful billionaires, party leaders—in order to deliver for them on the issues they care the most about. They want politicians who will fight like hell for higher wages, lower costs, and taking on greedy corporations who are constantly screwing people. If Democrats give them fighters like that, people will vote for them every time they are on the ballot.

One final thought: candidates who do not feel like they were born and bred to be politicians, candidates who don’t sound like everything coming out of their mouths was poll tested, are a lot more likely to be forgiven for their flaws than the establishment candidates served up by, well, the party establishment. Going back to Maine, what Platner said and did in his youth was dumb and offensive, but voters know they did a lot of dumb and offensive stuff when they were young, too—especially coming out of a trauma like war. That is why the millions of dollars of attack ads from the Mills campaign had no impact at all. When people see candidates like Platner and Dan Osborn, they think: those people’s lives are a lot like mine, maybe they will actually fight for me.

Our country is at the high water mark in terms of a kind of screw the establishment populism. Democratic leaders should embrace the moment rather than fighting it.

A common habit of the pundit class DC centrists is to just throw all the people and movements and voters who are rebelling against the establishment into the same “populist” bucket. According to this way of thinking, Trump, Bannon, Bernie, and AOC are all just another form of scary extremism.

Besides being offensive to progressives, and the obvious fact that there are profound differences in the goals and policies advocated by progressive and right-wing populists, this kind of thinking is exactly what would allow Republicans to win in 2028. (Democrats are likely to win in 2026 no matter what.) If we dismiss working class voters’ anger and disdain at elites, and try to convince them that the establishment “center”, whatever that might mean at any given time, is the thing they should be voting for, we will not win their votes.

The latest example

The reason I am writing about this today is I just saw the latest example of this kind of thinking in a column from the Messina Memo by their Vice-President Tara Corrigan. It’s called The Center Can Hold.

Corrigan is writing about how establishment political parties can win and are winning against right-wing populism. I am all for joining forces with centrists and anyone else who is working to defeat right-wing politicians and political parties, but the framing in the column is troubling. More importantly, I think in her quest to elect centrists, she is choosing a strategy for Democrats which would be fatal: she wants us to try to talk voters out of their populism rather than embracing it. She writes:

“Populists run on grievance, fear, and fury. Their movements are born of frustration with the status quo, and so they instinctively frame elections as a simple binary: more of the same, or change. It’s a frame that strongly favors outsiders who promise to shake things up and return power to the aggrieved.”

Her solution is to:

• First, make the election about “results, not change”. She writes that “A campaign framed around results, rather than sentiment, gives incumbents the ground they need to compete.”

• Second, she says that the incumbent or establishment party should seek to “frame first, frame fast.”

• Third, she wants the anti-populists to use fear as a weapon. She writes “Fear no longer just propels change; it also restrains it. Voters have seen what populist governance looks like, and many want no part of it.”

To Corrigan’s credit, she never actually lumps progressive populism in with right-wing populism, as some pro-corporate centrists overtly do. And, look, if you are running an incumbent’s campaign against a right-wing Trump style populist, and your candidate is determined not to be a “populist”, then the advice here is reasonable.

The question for Democrats, though, is why would you be determined not to be a populist? As even Corrigan’s article implies, it is so much easier to run against the establishment. Notice that she acknowledges that the anti-establishment frame “strongly favors outsiders who promise to shake things up and return power to the aggrieved”. And note the phrase “A campaign framed around results rather than sentiment…” When you are trying to come up with ways to overcome the sentiment that is out there, you have a much tougher road to hoe.

We need to embrace populism not fear it

I have written many times about how voters are becoming more and more angry and cynical about both political parties and powerful, wealthy corporations screwing over working people. With Republicans the party in power, and reveling in giving every advantage to wealthy, powerful corporations as opposed to working folks, now is the time for Democrats to embrace pro-working class economic populism: raising wages, stopping price gouging, fighting corporate corruption, breaking up monopolies, strengthening unions, and taxing the wealthy. These ideas are all massively popular with voters right now, especially the angry working class voters who are the main swing voters we need to win.

Democratic strategists and campaigns should not be spending their time figuring out how to win in spite of the voters’ populist sentiments. We should be embracing that populism full steam ahead.

Thursday night was a Holy Shit moment in Democratic politics.

Arguably a Holy Fucking Shit moment, if you want to be technical about it.

In case you missed it, here’s a recap:

• Shawn Harris, a Black retired brigadier general, cattle farmer, and Democrat, got 44% of the vote in Marjorie Taylor Green’s blood red GOP district (votes still being counted). That number represents a 30 point swing for the district away from Trump’s voteshare in 2024.

• In Wisconsin, Chris Taylor, a liberal Supreme Court justice was elected with a 21% swing from Kamala Harris’s performance in 2024.

• And that’s on top of other recent mega-swings, like Democrat Emily Gregory winning with a 20% shift in the Florida district that includes Mar-A-Lago, or Eileen Higgins riding a 19 point swing to become the first Democratic mayor of Miami since before Britney Spears dropped “Baby, One More Time” in 1999.

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These shifts aren’t just happening because Democrats’ more educated coalition turns out at higher rates in special elections; Democratic candidates are also winning independents in these races by overwhelming margins, mostly on account of them recognizing that everything is fucked.

Farmers know how badly tariffs have hurt them.

Latinos know that ICE could grab anyone at any time, regardless of citizenship, based on the color of their skin.

And everyone knows that gas prices are up because Trump attacked Iran without good reason.

If these swings of 20-30 points continue happening through the midterms, scores of House seats will flip and Democrats can win the Senate.

But if you’ve ever been surfing or boogie boarding, you know that you can’t catch a wave by sitting back and doing nothing.

To catch a wave, you’ve got to get yourself just ahead of it and kick forward like your life depends on it. Then, when you’re right at the front of the wave, you can ride it all the way in to shore.

In practical terms, that means:

1. It’s time to start donating. Democratic fundraising has been struggling since 2024 because donors have been understandably pissed. But part of the reason Shawn Harris in GA was able to run 30 points ahead of Trump’s performance in 2024 – instead of 20 like the recent winners in Florida and Wisconsin – is because he had money to mount a real campaign. Good campaigns can outperform their environment by as much as 10 points, which on top of a 15-20 point Democratic environment puts all kinds of races in play at every level of the ballot.

2. It’s time to run for office. If you’ve ever thought about it, now is the time. If you know someone who you think might be good at it, especially someone in a red or purple state, pester them until they get in. Organizations like Run For Something and Contest Every Race have staff standing by, ready to walk you through the logistics – which are not as complicated as you fear. We cannot let a single seat anywhere, for any office, go uncontested in a cycle like this one when the wind may be at our backs.

3. It’s time to volunteer. Organizations like Volunteer Blue are putting together volunteer job boards for people with specialized skills – from graphic design to video editing to data analytics. At the same time, canvassing, letters, and phone calls are at their most effective early, before the fall when voters get deluged. If you have a few hours a week, jump in now.

This is a harrowing moment. The damage Trump has done is going to last for the rest of our lives. But in every crisis there’s also opportunity.

It’s time to start kicking and catch the wave.

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That’s not just because of Sherrod Brown’s run for the Senate, although you could make a damn good argument (as we do below) that this will be the most important single election of the year. But it is also clear the Governor’s race is the most important Governor’s race of the year because of its centrality to the future of public sector collective bargaining in one of the labor movement’s biggest states member-wise. And the five congressional races at play will go a long way to determining who controls the House in 2027-8.

Beyond 2026, Democrats have to start focusing now on how to expand the Electoral College map. If we had managed to pull off squeaker wins in PA, MI, and WI in 2024, we would have won the Electoral College with 270 votes, not a single vote to spare. Given that those three states are always close, and especially given that in the 2030 census Democratic and purple states will be losing more electoral votes, we desperately need to compete in more states. Obviously, the sunbelt purple states that Biden won in 2020 — GA, NV, and AZ — are states we should compete, as well as NC, where he came close. There are certainly demographic arguments for a long-term strategy for competing in TX and FL. But Ohio and its smaller Midwestern sibling Iowa were much more amenable for Democrats for the four decades leading up to the Trump years, and if Democrats return to our working class roots, they could become purple again.

At 17 electoral votes, Ohio provides us far more options in terms of electoral math.

But Ohio is only going to become purple again if we start making significant investments of time and money there now. Here are the reasons we think that investment is one of the best Democrats can make in 2026.

Why is the Ohio Senate election the most important race in the country this year?

That is a pretty bold statement – there are lots of big races out there. But we make this argument for two reasons, and we are going to use the bridge analogy for both of these reasons.

The first is that Sherrod Brown winning this seat is our bridge to having a real shot at retaking the Senate.

Let’s say for a moment that this cycle continues to be favorable to the Democrats. Winning the Senate is still a high mountain to climb, but in a Democratic year, it becomes possible. Let’s assume for a moment that it is a Democratic enough election to get all the seats we hold back in Democratic hands. In that kind of a year, it is likely that we also pick up the open seat in North Carolina, with a popular former Governor running. Let’s assume as well that Maine is Democratic enough in a Democratic year that we can overcome the tough primary we are going through up there. (Side note to the Dems in Maine: the point here is to win the Senate seat, not beat each other bloody enough to just win the primary.) That gives us two seats we are well positioned in.

Beyond those two, every other state where we have a chance in is a red state, most of them very red: Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, maybe even Arkansas. In every one of these states, we have a good candidate and interesting dynamics, but these are really, really tough states. In a blue tsunami of a year, we could win a few of them. In a pretty good Democratic year, we might be lucky enough to win one or two. And that’s where the bridge comes in.

Sherrod Brown is the one Senate candidate running in a tough state who is well-known with a long track record as a statewide elected official with a positive brand. He has a long-term field organization built around the state and fundraising connections both inside and out of the state.

If Sherrod wins this race, and we are doing well enough overall to win those other close states we mentioned earlier, we only have to win one of that sizable list of red states with good candidates. That seems possible.

Here’s the other bridge: Sherrod is the bridge to a tougher, more populist, more fighting-for-working-people Democratic caucus in the Senate. Sherrod is the pro-labor, tough on Wall Street and Big Tech, anti-corporate abuse of power Democrat who has the respect of both wings of the Democratic caucus. When Democrats from blue states say we should be more populist, they are more easily written as lefties from lefty states. When Sherrod says it – after representing working class, red leaning Ohio for so long – other Democrats listen. He is a bridge to a better, more working class oriented Democratic caucus in the Senate.

In the four Senate races Sherrod Brown has run over the last 20 years, he has consistently out performed national Democratic number because of the populist fighter for the working class brand he built. He has successfully aligned himself with the core economic identity of the state: a pro-labor, pro-dignity of work, anti-corporate concentration of power politician. While he couldn’t overcome the disintegration of the national Democratic brand on the economy in 2024, he has shown it is possible to compete in Ohio with that kind of message and brand.

One final note on the Senate: Ohio will be home to two more Senate races in 2028 and 2030. If we can bring Ohio back so that we are competing in these races, we could pick up not only one but two Senate seats.

House races

Gerrymandering, in both state legislative and congressional districts, has made Ohio look more Republican than it actually is. The new congressional map which the Republicans just passed makes things even tougher, but as in Texas might turn out to backfire if this turns out to be a solid Democratic year.

Ohio is one of only four states which will likely have at least six House seats up for grabs this year, and the only one with both a competitive Senate and Gubernatorial race.

The Republicans in the Ohio legislature redistricted to make Democratic House members Marcy Kaptur’s and Greg Landsman’s districts tougher, so both are a little more Republican than they were. The good news is that these two are very good candidates who fit their districts to a tee: Landsman is the perfect kind of suburban nice guy for his Cincinnati suburbs district, while Kaptur is an old school working class Ohio populist for her old school working class populist Ohio district.

Emilia Sykes’ very competitive district is, if anything, a little more Democratic than it was. It will still likely be a close race.

Meanwhile, there are three districts we have the chance to take back from the Republicans in Ohio.

In Ohio 7, a working class Northeast Ohio district, the Republican incumbent barely won last time. We have a great opportunity there this time around.

In Ohio 10, Kristina Knickerbocker is running in a southwestern Ohio lean Republican district against incumbent Mike Turner. She is a strong candidate with deep roots in the district, and currently leads Turner by two points in public polling just out.

The Republican maneuvering made Ohio 15 a little more Democratic, adding some Democratic leaning Columbus suburban turf to the mix. The Democratic candidate is Adam Miller. In 2024’s Republican year in Ohio, Miller lost the district 56-44. In a better Democratic year with a better district, this one is a live round.

If we do well in the Senate and Governor’s races, we have a real shot at keeping all three of the seats we have and picking up two more.

The Governor race

The public polling since September of last year has basically been a dead heat – a couple showing Democrat Amy Acton ahead by 8-10, a couple showing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy up by that much, everything else showing a statistical dead heat.

Ramaswamy is showing the same lack of grace on the campaign trail in Ohio as he did in his presidential race, saying one dumb thing after another, while Acton has proven to be an adept candidate even though she has never run for office before.

She served as the current Republican Governor’s head of the Department of Public Health during the covid crisis, which gives her a bipartisan aspect in a state with a lot of moderate Republicans.

The toughest thing about this race is that Ramaswamy is a billionaire with a lot of billionaire friends, so he will have unlimited money. Ohio voters will be inundated with anti-Acton ads and social media. But if Acton can raise the money this is a very winnable race.

Here’s the thing: the DSCC and Sherrod’s longtime network of donors and raisers will be able to raise a lot of money for his campaign, but national donors and organizations need to get over their mentality that Ohio is too tough a state to win in the Governor’s race. If Acton can’t raise the money to compete and ends up losing by a lot, Sherrod and those 5 House candidates are going to get beaten as well. Politics is a team sport, especially the way it is played right now. Sherrod did 8 points better than Harris, but could not overcome her 13 point loss. Tim Ryan did 9 points better than Nan Whaley, the 2022 Democratic candidate for Governor (who donors and groups gave up on early), but couldn’t overcome her 24 point loss.

We have a path to winning the Governor’s race in 2026, but donors and organizations need to invest now to make it happen.

The future of the Ohio labor movement and factory towns

Ohio’s Republican Governors over the last 20 years, John Kasich and Mike DeWine, are old school pro-corporate Republicans who never loved the labor movement and tried to undermine it, but weren’t willing to stake their legacy on destroying unions in Ohio. The fact that they were not all out, far right, Trump-style Republicans helped them win elections, and after losing a couple of ballot measure fights to the labor movement, they mostly kept to an uneasy truce with unions.

Ramaswamy is an all out MAGA warrior who will declare total war with unions, including wanting to end public sector collective bargaining in the state. Ohio is the 9th biggest state in the country in terms of union membership. Remember the devastation caused to the labor movement by Scott Walker’s anti-union jihad? Ohio is almost twice as big as Wisconsin.

I visited Ohio recently and spent a lot of time talking to union leaders. They know how important this Governor’s race is: they described this Governor’s election as an existential threat to the future of the labor movement in Ohio. Ohio without a labor movement basically would be devastated – it would basically become like Kentucky, both politically and in terms driving wages down for workers. And having a weak labor movement in Ohio would be a serious blow to the labor movement nationwide.

If we ever want Ohio to start moving back our way politically, we need to keep labor strong in the state, and we do that by winning the Governor’s race and these other elections in 2026.

The reason the blue wall broke in PA, MI, and WI – and the reason OH, IA, and MO went from being always purple to being red states – was because of factory towns. We need to regain ground there.

Ottumwa, Iowa used to be the most Democratic town in Iowa. Bethlehem, Johnstown, and Scranton always used to turn out big margins for Democrats in PA. Youngstown used to be one of the most Democratic cities in Ohio.

These and many other mid-sized factory towns in the old industrial belt of PA and the Midwest all went for Clinton, Obama, and then strongly for Trump. Our research and organizing work in these factory towns shows that these are still swing voters – unhappy and cynical about both parties, skeptical about some government programs and immigration, but strongly populist in being angry at corporate abuse of power and billionaires rigging the system.

Ohio still has a lot of union members, union retirees, and people who used to be union members that still believe in the labor movement. It still has plenty of workers who work in manufacturing, including small manufacturers in small and mid-sized towns. It still has a lot of multi-generational working class families rooted in their historic hometowns. These are not natural Republican voters, even though many of them have been moving toward the Republicans in the last decade. They are instead economically oriented voters who have been culturally and informationally realigned over time. If Democrats want to rebuild a durable working-class coalition nationally, Ohio is one of the only places where that can happen at meaningful scale.

Bringing Ohio back to purple

I will never forget sitting in the boiler room of the 1992 Clinton campaign HQ and tracking the turnout numbers, waiting for the states to come in on election night. We had been on the state targeting committee, and that committee had as our top goal from Day One to win Ohio. We went into Election Day feeling pretty good, with a 6 point lead in the national polling and knowing we would bring home states like CA, IL, and NJ that we hadn’t won since 1976. But we also knew that we could still fall just short if Ohio didn’t come through. When Ohio was called late that night, we knew we had just elected a Democratic President.

Ohio had been one of the key states for JFK, and had been the state to give Jimmy Carter the victory in 1976. If we had won Ohio in 2000, all those hanging chads in Florida wouldn’t have mattered; if we had won Ohio in 2004, John Kerry would have been President.

Ohio is not that far away from being a purple state again. It has several outstanding young mayors and other local elected officials in its urban cores of Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, and Dayton. The labor movement and other progressive forces still have strength there – we don’t have to build from scratch, but can extend and integrate what is already on the ground.

Democratic states will lose enough electoral votes in the 2030 census that just winning the usual blue states plus PA, MI, and WI will no longer give us the presidency. Thank goodness NV, AZ, NC, and GA have moved from solidly red to purple, but none of those states are easy.

After the 2000 election, Democrats started giving on working class states like WV, AR, TN, MO, IA, and OH. Some of those states have slipped so far away after years of neglect that they may be lost for the foreseeable future. Ohio and Iowa were the least two to go, and have the strongest promise to come back to purple. (Iowa is also high on my 2026 priority list but is a lot smaller state than Ohio.)

Ohio rests at the intersection of three different major strategic imperatives:

• Rebuilding a national working-class coalition

• Counteracting Electoral College erosion

• Restoring geographic balance to the Democratic map

Ohio is still winnable with an economically populist, working class oriented message and strategy. In 2026, with Republican voters discouraged, Democrats fired up, and working class swing voters back in play, we have a real opportunity to begin winning Ohio back. We should seize the damn day, and reverse the trends. It will take some serious investment, but this is the year to go all out.

One final point: if Democrats want to start competing for working class voters again, what does it say about us if we leave Ohio off the target list? Bringing Ohio back into the mix is not just optional for Democrats, it is imperative. Let’s do this.

As Democratic Party strategists have gotten more and more invested in Big Data targeting, we have created a culture which has narrowed our interest in targeting voters, districts, and states that are harder to win. I have been having this debate with the Democratic establishment for more than 25 years, as party leaders began giving up in one state after another.

Up until 2000, West Virginia was a reliably Democratic state in presidential elections with two Democratic Senators and a Dem Governor. After we lost it in a surprise in 2000, we stopped targeting it, and because we paid no attention, it became one of the most Republican states in the country.

Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, and Ohio all used to be purple states in presidential elections and have at least one Democratic Senator.

There are all kinds of problems with this narrowing of targets mentality. One is that once you give up on a state, it becomes more and more Republican, and harder to win any elections there. Another is that more and more people get radicalized by the non-stop social and legacy media domination in those places. But the number one reason to not give up on states is simply math. Look at the states that are generally considered blue, red, and purple:

Blue (17)

VT
MA
CT
RI
NY
NJ
DE
MD
VA
MN
IL
NM
CO
CA
OR
WA
HI

Purple (9)

ME
NH
PA
WI
MI
NC
GA
AZ
NV

Red (24)

WV
SC
AL
FL
MS
LA
TN
KY
AR
MO
IA
IN
OH
ND
SD
NE
KS
OK
TX
MT
WY
ID
UT
AK

Let’s talk about the Senate for a while. I know that many progressive-minded folks like to bemoan the way the Senate is deeply biased toward rural and Republican states, and there is certainly some truth to that complaint. However, that is the system we have for the foreseeable future, so if we care about passing legislation, and confirming or stopping judicial nominations and administration appointees, we need to figure out how to win the Senate.

With many party strategists and pundits ascribing to the view that Democrats can no longer compete in red states, that means the Democrats would have to win every single Senate race in both blue and purple states to get to 52 seats.That leaves almost no margin for error. Give the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC credit, they do really well in those swing state races: they’ve won 14 of the 18 races in those purple states over the last three cycles. But we are very unlikely to win them all: we need to win some of those “red state” races, and we need to turn more red states purple.

A lot of pundits and party leaders forget that nothing in politics is immutable and unchanging.

Look at just how politics has shifted since the turn of the century, 25 years of American politics. Within that timeframe, Democrats have had both Senate seats in MT, ND, SD, AR, LA, and WV, and one each in OH, MO, IA, and NE. Democratic presidential candidates have won or come very close in 9 different states that Trump won in 2024: IN, MO, AZ, NV, NC, FL, GA, PA, MI, WI. And in case you think it’s all been bad news for Democrats, at the beginning of this century VA, GA, NC, and AZ were all considered reliably red in presidential races. In 2018, we won Senate seats in OH, MT, and WV; since then we have picked up two Senate seats in AZ and two more in GA.

We have to get out of a mindset that says we should only compete in the usual purple and blue seats and districts.

Great candidates and a message taking on corporate abuse of power

There are two ways Democrats, and Independents who share many of our values, can win in red states.

One is to recruit kickass candidates who truly represent their districts and states, and are genuine about identifying with working class folks. The best red state/district candidates are those actually rooted in the working class, and who speak to the strong anti-establishment populism voters are feeling today. I’m going to highlight a few of those folks below.

The kinds of candidates who have the best chance in working class red states and districts are the populists. Not all of these kinds of candidates are Democrats – Dan Osborn, the Nebraska pipefitter and former union President who got 47% of the vote in the 2024 Senate election is an Independent. He is running again this year and is tied with the Republican billionaire incumbent right now.

Here’s a great video of Dan talking about corporate America while fixing a car.

Let me show you a couple more of my favorite campaign videos, where working class candidates have kickass populist messages.

The first is from firefighter and local union Vice-President Sam Forstag.

The second is from a farmer who had to sell her farm last year because of Trump’s terrible policies hurting the ag economy. Check this out.

These videos are amazing. They take corporate abuse of power head on and promise to fight for working people on those issues, and show off really appealing, charismatic candidates fighting the good fight.

But it’s not just the message: how do we deliver that message?

The media landscape has changed radically in recent years. 3,000 newspapers have closed in the last 10 years. Most radio and TV stations have been bought up by huge national media conglomerates, many of them with a far right-wing bent like Sinclair Broadcasting. Meanwhile, most people are moving away from watching traditional TV, getting most of their entertainment from streaming services and most of their news from social media.

We need to stop spending so much money on TV ads and invest far more into social media, especially local pages that can build trusted communities, and get people news and information about issues.

Progressive non-profit groups need to be investing in long term social media infrastructure. Democratic candidates need to invest in building campaign Facebook pages that engage people in every community in their districts, pages where you can deliver content and do organizing at the same time.

Over time, I hope that some wealthy progressives buy more media properties, and that our progressive movement can organically support genuine talent who build audiences for the progressive worldview. In the short term, we need to be organizing at the local level to give our candidates a chance.

If we do this kind of local organizing, and build our message delivery capacity through a serious social media strategy, we can win in red districts and states.

I think this phrase exactly fits the scary moment American politics and economics are in right now. Between the chaos and open fascism and corruption of the Trump administration, the rapidly evolving brave new world of social media and AI, and the crushing weight of global corporations and billionaires who dominate our economy, it is most assuredly a new world we live in. And with the brittleness of an economy built by those global corporations to serve only their money and power, our economy is on very thin ice, brittle as can be.

What do I mean by brittle? Massive global corporations more and more have decided that the best way to maximize their profits is to put most or all their factories in the same places, usually in low wage Asian countries. That means when there are economic problems – like, say, oil shortages and sudden price hikes now being caused by the Iran war – it can cause severe problems both with those factories and the supply chain, as shipping and air freight costs suddenly also go through the roof. Remember all the supply side problems during the pandemic? Get ready for Round 2.

Then there is the world of speculative financial markets. Crypto and AI are two of the most obvious examples, with hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing around with no steady anchor or ways to generate actual profit-making products yet. The only way to profit right now is to keep speculating and hope it doesn’t crash down on you at the wrong time. In fact, many of the biggest companies with the highest stock prices have massive outlays in ventures with highly uncertain futures, based on – again – speculative spread sheets.

Here’s another domino that could fall: lots of the investment capital these companies have raised is from what’s called “private capital”, as opposed to actual banks which are regulated and backed by real deposits and FDIC. If private capital companies start getting shaky, which is already happening in some areas, it could create a wave of financial waves that could topple key businesses.

I am not the only one worried about all of this. This article is by one of several people who predicted the 2008 financial collapse who is concerned about another one.

Into this fragile, brittle, creaky economy, with the regulators Trump has appointed letting the financial and tech industry run wild, inject the uncertainties and high stresses of the Iran war.

So what do Democrats and progressive minded folks do with this knowledge in mind?

Number one, we have to do what we have done as Trump is unleashing all his threats against us: we have to stick together in hard times. Help each other weather the storm by showing the kind of mutual aid and solidarity that the people of Minneapolis showed us. As the economy gets worse, we need to step up and give help to our neighbors in trouble.

Second, we need to sound the alarm. It is not enough to attack Trump and say the word “affordability” over and over again. Democrats and their progressive allies need to be warning people about the economic dangers of monopolies, corporate concentration, and the lack of effective oversight on the financial, tech/AI, and crypto industries. We need to be doing more than telling about the problem of high prices; we need to talk about the reasons prices are going up and talk abut the villains of the story. And we need to show we are fighting for solutions: stopping price gouging, tough enforcement of antitrust laws, raising wages, and empowering working people and consumers.

If we sound the alarm and talk about solutions now, when this crash comes we will have far more credibility to deal with it then.

The inspiring victory won in the streets of Minneapolis gives Democrats an opening for a realignment of American politics, but only if we build a bridge to working-class voters conflicted on immigration, based on the populist economic issue driving their anger right now: the abuse of corporate power. We must show people that the same government that is terrorizing people in cities like Minneapolis is also allowing big business to abuse its power to make life tougher for all working families.

The combination of wages’ not rising fast enough plus the inflation of recent years has hit working families very hard. These voters have not liked the excesses of ICE, so we have an opening with them on immigration, but it will never be their main issue. Economic struggles will always be the first order of business for most working-class voters.

Right now, the political dynamic favors the Democrats. Republicans are no longer winning the immigration debate, and the economy is hurting them because they are the party in power.

The problem is that Trump is moving fast to develop and promote his own populist-sounding affordability agenda, including proposals to cap credit-card interest rates at 10 percent; prohibit large corporate investors from buying up single-family homes; and slash the cost of prescription drugs.

The Danger Ahead

For all the good news, Democrats are at a dangerous moment politically. On a high from winning the 2025 elections so decisively and seeing Trump’s numbers tanking, much of the party leadership believes they can glide into a 2026 election victory by simply attacking Trump and repeating the word affordability. But Trump’s team is politically flexible enough to craft a populist-sounding affordability package that—rhetorically, if not substantively—borrows key elements of the Elizabeth Warren and Zohran Mamdani agenda.

It is no accident that Trump has surprised observers by recently saying favorable things about both Warren and Mamdani. Even his rejection of popular healthcare subsidies long supported by Democrats has been framed with a populist twist, attacking “subsidies” as handouts to greedy insurance companies.

At this moment in time, Donald Trump is sounding more like a progressive economic populist than many Democrats. If that perception holds—if he succeeds in rebranding himself as more of a fighter against big business than the Democratic Party—then Democrats may eke out a smaller-than-expected victory in 2026 but will face serious danger in 2028. They will also have squandered their best opportunity since 2008 to produce a genuine political realignment.

The Populist Moment We Live In

I have never seen a political environment as intensely populist as this one.

Part of this dynamic is that people feel increasingly hard-pressed. When my organization began Factory Towns polling in 2021, respondents were asked whether they or an immediate family member had recently experienced hardships such as job loss, health problems or coverage loss, medical bankruptcy, retirement income loss, foreclosure, or eviction. More than half answered yes to more than half of these questions.

A recent poll by GQR and the Century Foundation showed that life remains difficult for working-class voters and that their first instinct is to blame corporate CEOs, corporate power, and corporate greed.

Another poll that Lake Research and I conducted for the antitrust trial bar in late 2024 revealed exceptionally strong populist, anti-corporate-power sentiment. Voters strongly opposed corporate monopolies and expressed support for politicians advocating vigorous enforcement of antitrust law.

Working-Class Voters and Realignment

Recent private polling on working-class voters and immigration echoes these findings. While some voters remain sympathetic to Trump on immigration, many are deeply populist and strongly opposed to concentrated corporate power. This pattern is particularly evident among working-class men, both Latino and white.

These voters are highly skeptical of both major parties. A Manhattan Institute study identified “New Entrant Republicans” who diverge sharply from traditional party orthodoxy:

Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies…

Many populist voters have supported both Trump and anti-establishment Democrats or independents such as Bernie Sanders, Dan Osborn, and Mamdani. In New York City, approximately 10 percent of Trump voters supported Mamdani—sufficient to affect close elections.

In addition to strong anti-corporate sentiment, these voters are highly pro-union. One Fair Wage polling has shown broad support for a $25 minimum wage.

These voters were central to the Factory Towns Project.

Donald Trump recognizes this electorate and is adjusting rhetorically toward economic populism. Many Democrats, by contrast, remain hesitant to define themselves as working-class-oriented, anti-corporate populists.

What an Affordability Agenda Could Look Like

There are three major pathways Democrats could pursue on affordability.

First, government could directly subsidize or fund more services. While popular in specific domains, swing and middle-income voters often remain wary of large-scale expansion.

Second, Democrats should emphasize raising wages and strengthening unions. Workers understand that wage stagnation remains central to their struggles.

Third—and most critically—Democrats must address corporate concentration. Voters already recognize that monopoly power drives price increases. From groceries and housing to healthcare, corporate consolidation shapes everyday economic pressures.

Yet many Democratic leaders resist a full embrace of anti-corporate populism, fearing its effects on campaign finance. However, public demand for such policies would likely prove politically powerful.

Highest Possible Stakes

Government policy is not the only threat to working families. Corporate practices—from wage suppression to price gouging—compound economic insecurity.

If Trump succeeds in positioning himself as the primary anti-corporate populist while Democrats avoid confronting corporate power, the long-term consequences for democratic governance could be severe.

Democrats remain far more credible messengers on corporate accountability than Trump, whose record reflects favoritism toward concentrated wealth and corporate interests.

The moment to decide is now.

Here is how the Reverend changed American politics:

1) He showed people a candidate could go over the heads of the establishment and win voters over to your side with a movement oriented campaign.

People forget how many Black elected officials disdained Jackson’s run in 1984 and endorsed Mondale instead. The Mondale campaign assumed those Black elected officials could deliver the Black vote, but those endorsements were overwhelmed by the passion and excitement Jesse Jackson created. Progressive insurgent campaigns ever since have used that kind of model to win surprise upset victories.

2) He showed people a Black insurgent populist could draw White working class votes.

Before the Rev ran, most voting in America in primary elections followed closely along racial lines. There were exceptions, but there hadn’t been many. The other thing that had been conventional wisdom before Jesse was that only “safe” Black candidates, people who weren’t rabble rousers, could win White votes – think Tom Bradley in CA or Wilson Goode in Philly.

Jackson changed that assumption. While he dramatically exceeded exceptions in 1984, it was mostly by winning higher percentages of the Black vote and by turning out more Black voters than usual. But in 1988, his progressive populist campaign once again exceeded expectations, this time with not only higher Black turnout but with lots of White voters. He won over 11% of the vote and 13% of the county delegates in Iowa, where only 1% of the voters were Black. He won the Texas caucuses by putting together a coalition of Blacks, Latinos, and populist Whites. After sweeping through the mostly Southern Super Tuesday primaries, he shocked the Democratic establishment by dominating the Michigan caucuses, winning a ton of White labor union voters.

At that point, he had more delegates and state primary victories than any other candidate. He even won states like Vermont and Alaska that have hardly any Black voters.

3) Jackson dramatically out-performed his fundraising, proving the power of his populist message.

The way Democrats usually won Democratic primaries was to win Iowa and/or New Hampshire, and then ride that momentum to raising a lot of money, allowing them to compete in the later states. Dukakis repeated that pattern, but raised so much early money that he was able to swamp other contenders like Gephardt even though Gephardt had won Iowa.

Jesse’s early momentum did not result in him raising that usual flow of money, because he was Black and populist and scared the hell out of the money men (they were almost all men) in the party. But he won all those votes, delegates, and states I listed above anyway. I think it is safe to say that no candidate for president’s vote total has ever out-performed the amount of money he raised so dramatically. Jesse’s populist message allowed him to punch way above his weight.

If internet fundraising had been around in the 1980s, I think it is likely Jesse would have won the nomination in 1988. And when Obama ran 20 years later, no one was writing off his chance to win the White voters he needed to win to get the nomination.

4) Jackson’s voter registration and turnout capacity allowed Democrats to compete in the South again.

After the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, Democrats had a lot of trouble winning in the South. Carter won a few Southern states in 1976, but none other than his home state of Georgia in 1980. We didn’t win a single Southern state in the presidential races of 1972, 1984, or 1988. But the Black voters Jackson energized helped the Democrats win back the Senate in 1986, and over time, we started competing again for the Southern states in presidential races. Virginia has now become a lean Democratic state, and North Carolina and Georgia are now two of the most competitive states in the country. We have won Florida a couple of times since the 1990s and it was stolen from us in 2000. Texas is becoming more competitive, and in Mississippi we only lost the Governor’s race last cycle by 3 points, and Cindy Hyde Smith only won by 4 points 6 years ago when she ran.

And by the way, it wasn’t just his registration efforts in the years he ran. Jesse would hit the trail every single cycle for Democrats, and he never lost his ability to inspire and mobilize and turn out voters. I lost track of the number of times I would get calls from party fundraisers asking me to help raise more money for Jesse to go out and get more folks to the polls, because party strategists knew how important he was in turning out the vote.

5) Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition rebuilt the potential for the Democratic Party to become a majority party again.

After the crumbling of one of the most enduring electoral coalitions in American history, the New Deal coalition that lasted 40+ years, Democrats were searching for a new way to win elections. The corporate wing of the party was arguing that we should be working to win over higher income “office park dads” and move away from the New Deal’s focus on working class folks. Jesse Jackson understood that those numbers didn’t ever add up in the end – that a charismatic candidate like Clinton could keep enough of the old Democratic coalition together while winning over some higher income voters, but that it wasn’t an enduring majority coalition.

Jesse argued that with populist economics and a welcoming message, we could stay engaged with working class voters of all colors and generate excitement from voters and activists who had never been involved in politics before. No Democratic politician in that era did more to reach out to Latino voters, to Asian-Americans, to LGBT folks, or to young people; but Jesse also carried the flag of farmers who were being foreclosed on during the 1980s farm crisis, and the factory workers who were being decimated by bad trade deals and deindustrialization.

Jesse’s vision of the Rainbow Coalition did not carry the day often enough in party councils. If it had, Democrats would have won a lot more elections in recent years. His legacy, though, is enormous.

Reverend Jackson, rest in peace and rest in power. Thank you for the changes you made in our politics. Those of us who loved and admired you will carry on.

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Peggy Flanagan, the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota who is running for the open Senate seat there, and one of the most exciting candidates running this year (please help her out), has maybe the best metaphor for 2026. She says that what the people in Minnesota have been going through is neither a sprint nor a marathon: it is a relay race. People working together, moving forward, handing the baton off to each other as the race goes on.

With Tom Homan’s announcement that the Minneapolis ICE surge was drawing down, maybe- maybe- things will get better for the courageous Minnesotans who have been dealing with the federal occupation of their city these last months. We can only hope so, although we know that everything coming out of the administration’s mouths seem to be lies.

But no matter what happens next in Minnesota, the relay race continues. Our side in this long and hard fight will need to continue to support each other, take care of each other, and come to each other’s common defense when we are attacked by ICE, the DOJ, or any other Trump administration department that is running amuck.

And it’s not just when government agencies attack. The Trump administration and Republican members of Congress are leaving big corporate CEOs free to screw us in any nasty way they think will make them more money: closing factories, cutting wages (or committing wage theft) and health care and retirement benefits, busting unions, forcing workers to sign non-compete clauses, price gouging and jacking up utility prices, junk fees, crushing small business competition, polluting our air and water, and all the other ways Big Business abuses its powers.

We have to show solidarity in the face of regular working folks getting hurt every day, whether from Trump’s government which values cruelty over dignity, or from the predatory monopolistic corporations Trump is letting run wild.

We are in battle over two different definitions of the word freedom.

Trump defines freedom as the freedom for his followers, and for the Epstein class of elites who give them money, to do anything they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want to do it. They think they are so rich and so powerful that nothing they do will ever be held to account.

Progressives define freedom as the ability to build good lives for their families and their community, to have dignity at the workplace, to live in a trusted community where they won’t be seized by masked secret police because of the color of their skin, or be taken advantage of wealthy and powerful corporations who don’t care about their families’ well-being.

That is the choice in front of us: which side are you on? I’m on the side of the relay team fighting for dignity and community.