Like the weather, everyone complains about the Democrats, but no one does anything about them. Well, we do point out what the perennial hapless loyal opposition is doing wrong. But we rarely offer useful suggestions for what they ought to do instead.
Democrats are favored to take back the House in this year’s midterm elections, and possibly the Senate too. When you are opposing someone as reckless as Donald Trump, however, you have an ethical obligation not to leave any votes on the table or miss any opportunities. Winning, in other words, is not the only thing. Winning big is the only thing.
The first step should be to look at examples of big midterm victories. With the exception of years like the 1974 Democratic landslide, when all you had to do to win big was not be associated with the Watergate scandal, 1994 stands out. Even though the economy was recovering nicely from the Reagan-Bush recession of 1987–1992, House Speaker Newt Gingrich led the GOP to a sweeping “Republican Revolution” victory by nationalizing the election with his “Contract with America.” The fact that nobody remembers what was in that document doesn’t matter. Nationalization was key. Going into this fall, Democrats ought to come up with a list of promises that all of their candidates agree to sign and run ads accordingly in every market.
As to the contents of a 2026 Democratic Contract with America, polling clearly suggests that the top three promises need to involve lowering prices, increasing wages, and getting the United States out of the Middle East once and for all.
Politics have changed a lot since Gingrich, and one of the ways American voters have become more sophisticated is that they are now far more aware of the parliamentary obstacles that can prevent the fulfillment of a campaign promise in the form of legislation. It’s no longer enough to be vague when you say that you are going to tackle affordability. You have to explain the exact legal or regulatory mechanism you’ll use to make it happen. And you have to explain how you are going to enact it given such legislative realities as a right-wing U.S. Supreme Court, the lack of a veto-proof supermajority in the House of Representatives, and obstructionist tactics such as blocking bills by threatening to shut down the government.
Not only do your promises have to be credible in the sense that voters believe you are serious about fulfilling them after you win, but the approach you promised to take to enact those promises also has to have a credible chance of success given political realities.
Thanks to President Trump and his blizzard of executive orders, Democrats have a path forward should they choose to take it: move fast, push things through with or without constitutional or legal legitimacy, and rely on the delay machine that is the court system to delay the blowback. If and when you are forced to back down, it will only be after you’ve had the chance to demonstrate to people that you were serious about addressing their concerns all along.
Hoping and praying for lower gas prices is not a plan. Promising to close all U.S. military bases in the Middle East, normalize relations with Iran, and cut off military and financial assistance to Israel — all moves that would be popular with voters — would of course have a significant downward effect on energy prices over the long term. Meanwhile, in the short term, Democrats could promise to invoke the same wartime emergency measures they used during the COVID-19 pandemic to nationalize energy infrastructure and reserves in order to reduce prices to a fixed rate set by the federal government. Don’t laugh: Richard Nixon did much the same thing when he confronted inflation with wage and price controls.
Increasing the federal minimum wage, which has been frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009, may be politically unrealistic with the Congress we have, even after the midterm elections. Still, there’s a lot that a Democratic majority in Congress could do to put upward pressure on American wages, like refuse to do business with any government contractor in the private sector that doesn’t pay at least $25 an hour to its lowest-paid workers.
Presumably Trump will still be president next year under a Democratic majority. But Democrats can do exactly what Republicans do: hold the purse hostage to guarantee that we distance ourselves from Israel and withdraw from the Middle East. Simply refuse to sign off on the next defense spending package.
The message should be simple: we hear your complaints, loud and clear. We’re all on board—no DINOs invited. We have some great ideas that can fix those problems, and we have a plan for accomplishing them no matter what Republicans do. That’s the kind of party people might just want to vote for.
(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)
