{"id":14812,"date":"2026-02-12T17:15:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T17:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14812"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:16:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T17:16:03","slug":"how-democrats-can-crush-the-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14812","title":{"rendered":"How Democrats Can Crush the Midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trump has offered up the issues on a silver platter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Mona Charen<\/a><\/em>, The Bulwark<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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DONALD TRUMP\u2019S APPROVAL RATING is sinking and gasping for air. His average net approval<\/a> stands at -13.7, which is lower than Joe Biden\u2019s was at this point in his term. Meanwhile, the share of Americans who strongly disapprove of the president broke 46 percent for the first time ever. This matters beyond cosmic justice: The president\u2019s approval rating is the best predictor of midterm election outcomes. When it falls below 50 percent, his party tends to lose seats, as in the 1982, 1994, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018 elections. By contrast, when presidents enjoy approval above 50 percent, as in 2002 and 1998, the president\u2019s party can actually gain seats in an off-year election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the Democratic party, written off as dead<\/a> by some a few months ago, stands poised for victory in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s good\u2014but not good enough. The stakes are so high that a win isn\u2019t sufficient to meet the moment. We need a crushing repudiation of this fascistic horror show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I were designing a Democratic party to please former Republicans like me, it probably wouldn\u2019t be able to hold on to large chunks of its base,1<\/a> so what follows is not my personal fantasy political agenda, but instead some practical suggestions about framing on a few issues that would be both popular with independent voters and acceptable to traditional Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The easiest issue, perhaps surprisingly, is immigration. Since 2024, Democrats have been snake-bit on the subject, afraid that their instinctive pro-immigrant positions were unpopular enough to lead voters to select a snarling villain vowing mass deportations. They fell silent for a while and still seem unsure how best to position themselves. They can exhale. What the polls over the past year suggest is that most Americans are not white-supremacist goons like Stephen Miller, ready to trash the Constitution in the name of purifying the Volk<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, voters actually believed (na\u00efve at best, I know) that Trump would only deport \u201cthe worst of the worst.\u201d Many a focus group participant has lamented<\/a> that they thought Trump was only about deporting criminals. As they watched the inhuman treatment of gardeners, veterans, children, and American-citizen protesters, they soured fast. Following the shooting of Alex Pretti, fully 60 percent of respondents told NBC they disapproved<\/a> of Trump\u2019s immigration policies, 49 percent strongly so. Asked who deserved most of the blame for clashes and unrest in Minnesota cities, 57 percent cited the Trump administration versus 19 percent who named protesters. Asked whether ICE should be maintained<\/a> in its current form, abolished, or reformed, 72 percent chose abolish (29) or reform (43). That is as close to national recoil as we are going to get in an era when so much of the GOP is MAGAfied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other surveys<\/a> have found that even Republican voters have relatively warm feelings toward legal immigrants\u201471 percent of 2024 Trump voters had a positive view of legal immigrants, compared with 72 percent of all voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Democrats present themselves as opposing the brutal tactics of ICE and CBP and favoring firm border controls, they should find themselves in the sweet spot. Messages like Billie Eilish\u2019s \u201cNo one is illegal on stolen land<\/a>\u201d are unhelpful. This is the moment for Democrats to express their idealism about America as a haven for the oppressed and a melting pot\u2014or salad bowl or potpourri plate or whatever\u2014for people of all races, creeds, and countries of origin. By all means, get angry about the savagery; stress that law and order means that first and foremost the state cannot be the lawbreaker. But also add that borders are not notional and chaos cannot be permitted to prevail along the Rio Grande.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE OTHER BIG ISSUE on voters\u2019 minds is inflation, or in Democratic parlance, \u201caffordability.\u201d The reality is that politicians cannot actually bring prices down, as Trump promised to do in 2024, except by crashing the economy. Still, some voters presumably believed him (perhaps they overlap with those who thought he would only deport criminals)\u2014but in any case they are disillusioned now<\/a>. Some Democrats may be tempted to run on taxing the rich to pay for health care or rental assistance or other expenses of daily life. This is a comfortable old shoe for Democrats, but as a political strategy it hasn\u2019t been terribly successful. Middle-class voters often fear that they will be labeled as rich. Besides, taxing the rich will not bring down prices, as the experience of high-tax states like California, New Jersey, and New York demonstrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, voters have already concluded that tariffs are making life more expensive. The issue is a layup\u2014if Democrats can get out of their own way. Nearly 60 percent of Americans blame<\/a> Trump for rising prices, and 65 percent disapprove of his tariffs. Fifty-nine percent of independent voters say the tariffs have hurt the economy and their personal finances. Voters are rarely able to connect policy to outcomes, but they have done so in the case of tariffs. Back in 2024, Americans were about equally divided<\/a> on the question of trade, with some favoring higher tariffs and roughly similar numbers opting for lower tariffs. Experience has changed their views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Biden whiffed on tariffs, choosing to keep most of Trump\u2019s first-term tariffs in place, which leaves a legacy for Democrats to explain or live down. And the progressive wing of the party represented by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren has long favored tariffs as a way to protect American workers from competition from low-wage nations. This muddies the waters. Democrats can head into the midterms saying they\u2019re for \u201ctargeted tariffs\u201d and in opposition to Trump\u2019s chaotic tariffs, and maybe that will be effective, but wouldn\u2019t a full-throated repudiation of the international trade war be cleaner?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats can run as the party of competition, prosperity, and global alliances. Above all, cutting tariffs is one of the only levers governments can pull that will actually reduce prices, and since price sensitivity is very much on voters\u2019 minds, does it make sense to temper that message at all? Some Democrats have already adapted<\/a>. All House Democrats voted<\/a> in favor of a resolution that would end the national emergency excuse for tariffs, and three Republicans joined them. This is the moment. Tariffs bad\u2014full stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FINALLY, A VULNERABILITY that Democrats must overcome is seeming soft on crime. Here again the Trump administration has handed them a golden opportunity. MAGA is so fixated on ethnic cleansing that it is pulling Justice Department officials off crime-fighting to pursue immigration cases. A memo from then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed<\/a> officers who had been working on transnational organized crime, money laundering, and major drug trafficking networks to focus instead on assisting ICE. Ditto for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces. In fact, roughly 25 percent<\/a> of FBI agents (and 40 percent in larger field offices) have been diverted from fighting financial crimes, public corruption, cybercrime, and complex corporate investigations and pulled into immigration enforcement. Most maddening are the thousands of FBI and Homeland Security agents who\u2019ve been pulled<\/a> from investigations of child sex abuse to assist with deportations\u2014as if the administration needed more ways of signaling that it\u2019s okay with child sex trafficking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats should stress that diverting federal agents from crime-fighting toward grandma-snatching is making Americans less safe. The funds appropriated for ICE would be far better deployed to local police departments. Bill Clinton\u2019s promise to hire 100,000 police officers was very popular in the \u201990s and cut against the Democrats\u2019 soft-on-crime image. The slogans write themselves: More Cops, Less ICE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The voters are the last redoubt in the fight to reclaim American democracy and decency, and the Democratic party, the world\u2019s oldest political party since the advent of universal suffrage, is the only entity that can carry the burden. If they can win a resounding victory in the House and Senate in nine months, there is hope for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mona Charen is the Policy Editor at The Bulwark. Host of the Mona Charen Show podcast.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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