Andy Beshear is governor of Kentucky and incoming chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
As we watch the consequences of the Trump presidency play out in real time, Democrats face a critical inflection point. We must meet this moment with urgency and focus — and with the clear and tangible vision it requires.
Democrats won huge victories up and down the ballot this month. We won statewide in Georgia, held the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, broke the supermajority in the Mississippi State Senate and took two gubernatorial elections by double-digit margins. In New Jersey and Virginia, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won by relentlessly focusing on the pocketbook pressures families across our country are facing.
What we saw in these wins was a direct repudiation of the Trump agenda. But we still have to grapple with the fact that the Democratic Party has lost ground in many parts of the country, especially in rural America, where President Donald Trump’s tariffs and One Big Ugly Bill threaten to devastate local economies.
Tackling affordability is not enough. To truly lead again, Democrats must be the party of aspiration.
When I look at our country, what worries me is the widespread belief that the American Dream is unattainable, even dead. This is the same American Dream — the promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead — that has inspired generations and lifted America to great heights.
This concern transcends party lines. Families know how much their grocery and utility bills have gone up, and how unaffordable rent or the mortgage is getting. But they also know that the vacation they took as children has slipped out of reach.
Democrats should be the party that will make it possible to build a better life — one in which you’re not just making ends meet but setting your family up for long-term success.
Trump has given Democrats a huge opening. He is making it so much harder for people to even get by. During the government shutdown, he was willing to use the hunger of Americans — including children and seniors — as a bargaining chip. It was cruel and wrong, and, importantly, it backfired. His One Big Ugly Bill will kick 17 million Americans, including 200,000 Kentuckians, off their health care and threatens to close 35 rural hospitals in the state, and 338 nationwide. His tariffs are jacking up prices across the board — for no reason.
Let’s look at that ugly bill, the worst bill I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s a slap in the face to rural America. Rural maternal health centers will be forced to close, which means that women will have to drive hours to give birth. Workforce productivity will drop as people who used to be able to see a specialist in their community are forced to travel, at the cost of a day’s work, for an appointment. In Kentucky alone, Trump’s bill is could translate into lost jobs for 20,000 health care workers. Rural economies — countless coffee shops, local banks, insurance agencies — will take a hit.
All of that moves the American Dream even further out of reach. By focusing on reviving it, Democrats can win back voters who have been leaving the party in droves.
When I first ran for governor in 2019, I narrowly won Henderson County. Since then, we’ve opened the cleanest, greenest recycled paper mill there, with 320 jobs that start at almost $40 an hour including benefits. This mill is in a former coal town that, like too many places in my state, had felt forgotten.
That paper mill resurrected the American Dream for 320 families. And in 2023, I won Henderson County by double digits.
That’s part of what Democrats can do to win in the areas that have been slipping away. Another is to start talking like normal human beings again. We’re not going to win the messaging battle if we say that Trump’s policies make people “food insecure.” No, they make people hungry. Kentucky was hit hard by the opioid epidemic. I didn’t lose a friends and acquaintances to “substance use disorder”; I lost them to addiction. Addiction is hard, it’s mean, and it kills people. So when people triumph over it, we should give them the credit they deserve by calling it what it is.
Finally, we have to start communicating our “why.” For me, it’s my faith. I vetoed the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the country knowing full well that the Republicans in the Kentucky legislature passed it to use in an election year. But tens of millions of dollars of misleading attack ads against me didn’t work. Why? Because I gave Kentuckians the respect of explaining my veto — that I believe all children are children of God and that I didn’t think the legislature should be picking on vulnerable kids.
Democrats are good at explaining our “what.” Let’s get good at explaining our “why.”
That’s how we will win back the American people. We have to do the hard work of convincing American families that Democrats are the party committed to addressing their day-to-day concerns, that we believe in a brighter future for their children and that we will always give them straight talk. That we will do, in other words, what Donald Trump and the Republicans have shown they will not.
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