Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a typed online conversation with Lauren Egan, the writer of a newsletter about Democrats at The Bulwark, and Adam Jentleson, the head of the new Searchlight Institute and a onetime aide to Senator John Fetterman and the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid. They discuss which Democrats are mounting the most effective response to President Trump’s second term — and how Democrats should proceed in the midterms and in 2028.
Frank Bruni: Lauren, Adam, thanks for joining me. Because President Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, erratic and vengeful behavior makes even his first wild stint in the White House look tame, the stakes of containing him are agonizingly high. Democrats must get this right.
Let’s try to figure out how by grading some of the leading players, starting with two prominent Democratic governors (and possible 2028 presidential candidates) who sort of represent two poles: Gavin Newsom of California, who has been savagely mocking Trump by mimicking his unhinged social media posts, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who has found ways to collaborate with Trump — and to signal a practical, results-oriented mind-set — on projects she deems important to her state. Who’s the more instructive example?
Lauren Egan: Newsom seems to understand the demands of the so-called attention economy, which is the real currency in today’s politics. This is a dynamic that Trump has always understood, and one that I think Democrats completely misread during the Biden administration and in the 2024 campaign. To Newsom’s credit, he’s figured out how to spar with Trump in a way that drives attention, particularly around the redistricting fight. Out of all the Democratic officials who have started podcasts since the 2024 election, Newsom is the only one who has built a respectable audience. That matters.
Adam Jentleson: What I love about what Newsom is doing is he’s showing he’s got that dog in him. And we need someone who relishes the fight and can generate a lot of attention and be comfortable across a range of mediums.
Egan: Whitmer’s approach is a little mystifying to me, especially if her goal is to run for president. I think she is deeply misreading this political moment and what politics requires.
Jentleson: Whitmer has had some fumbles on social media and seems less comfortable in an unscripted environment, and that worries me some after having candidates who are not good at speaking extemporaneously. I’m going to be annoying and say Newsom has the right strategy to win a primary election; Whitmer’s more geared to winning a general election. In the general election, voters are going to look for someone who can get things done, and she is showing strength there.
Bruni: But Adam, that doesn’t tell me who’s a better example for Democrats and Democratic positioning in terms of the midterms, when Democrats must climb out of a very deep hole. Also, I want to push back a bit at the Newsom love. While Michelle Obama’s high road may well be a luxury — a fantasy — in the America of this moment, I do worry that Newsom’s approach bucks the political truism that elections are about contrasts, blurs the line between Democratic decorum and the moral obscenity of Trump, and simply ignores the lack of success that Democrats have had in talking and talking and talking about how awful Trump is. Aren’t most of the Americans who might be moved by his awfulness aware of it at this point? Doesn’t that argue for a Democratic approach that focuses on: Here’s how we’d do things differently, and here’s why that’s in your interests? Or an approach explaining the substantive failures and dangers of such concrete actions of Trump’s, like the big and very unbeautiful bill?
Jentleson: I wouldn’t tell anyone to emulate Newsom or Whitmer exactly. The perfect combination is: Fight like hell where you disagree, but look for opportunities to get things done for the American people because ultimately your job is to deliver concrete results. And to Newsom’s credit, he is also fighting to deliver better maps — so I’m kind of talking myself into Newsom a little bit here.
Part of what I’m saying is I don’t see anyone putting all the pieces together in a coherent way yet. I see a lot of people owning individual tactics, looks, lanes, what have you — but the Democratic brand is still in the gutter, and to fix that, we are going to need to put these pieces together into something more coherent and compelling.
Egan: Newsom has had a very good 2025, but the party should be careful about allowing him to become their answer to Trump. As the governor of California, a former San Francisco mayor, the owner of wineries (I could go on!), he’s a walking poster child for the coastal elite. He’s tried to shed that persona and prove he’s just a chill guy who can hang with the MAGA bros without being a scold. But California is always going to read a certain way to voters, and Newsom’s political muscle and instincts were honed by winning Democratic primaries — not by beating Republicans on contested (much less conservative) terrain.
Bruni: In terms of Democratic governors talking back to Trump, JB Pritzker of Illinois went scorched earth, oratorically, on Monday, after Trump issued an executive order that expands the National Guard’s role in law enforcement and threatened to send troops to Chicago. Any governor supporting such violations of state sovereignty is catering to “the ego of a dictator,” Pritzker said. He lambasted Trump administration officials who have “forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man.” And he said that Trump “and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller” were laying the groundwork “to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.” Amen to all of that. It felt emotionally good to hear it.
But I do worry that Trump has placed Democrats in a risky political situation: Can they push back at Trump’s provocative, performative measures regarding urban crime without seeming to be soft on it? Voters haven’t to this point shown enormous receptiveness to Democrats’ “But our democracy!” warnings, and Democrats have long faced a soft-on-crime rap, warranted or not. Trump definitely knows that and is absolutely exploiting it.
Egan: I think Democrats have made some serious mistakes by letting Trump drive too much on these issues and brushing certain things off as “distractions” — which makes it seem like they think voters’ concerns are trivial. One of the lessons from the Biden years is that you can’t just point to stats and expect public opinion to follow (even if crime and inflation were coming down). You have to make people feel like they are being heard and acknowledge their concern. Sounds simple, but it can be hard in practice.
Bruni: So is Pritzker’s truculence the right move? If not, what is and who’s exemplifying it?
Jentleson: Pritzker is just trying to fire up the base. I don’t see any reason he can’t do the same fire and brimstone against Trump and Miller, but also emphasize the due process argument more — people are legitimately concerned about masked agents grabbing people, for understandable reasons. I would love to see more Democrat also say that illegal immigrants who are convicted of crimes should be deported — there is an opportunity to seize the high ground here, which is that Trump is violating due process rights and sending masked agents to grab people; that’s un-American and extremely bad. Everyone deserves a fair trial, and if people came here illegally and are found guilty, then yes, they should probably be deported.
Bruni: Maybe it’s silly of me to talk about “tone” in an era when simply grabbing and holding attention is everything. But hey, tone still matters. And one Democratic governor whose tone impresses me is Wes Moore of Maryland. He firmly establishes his opposition, but in a way that doesn’t come across as hostile or defensive; it draws a contrast to Trump by feeling almost warm. Trump over the weekend threatened to send troops to Maryland’s most populous city, Baltimore; Moore invited Trump to walk the city’s streets with him and see that they’re not as “out of control” as Trump claimed. More recently, Moore pushed back at Trump’s preposterous boast that Moore, in private, gushed to Trump that he was “the greatest president of my lifetime.” Moore simply responded “lol” on social media — three lowercase letters. That felt to me like more of a dis — and a more artful dis — than all the capital letters and exclamation points in the world. Your thoughts?
Egan: Injecting some humor into politics can be effective (hate to keep giving Newsom credit, but he’s done this well, too). The “lol” was a great post — and Democrats need to keep finding opportunities to poke fun at Trump in a non-cringe way. It makes him look small. Moore can do this; he’s young and is authentically online.
Jentleson: I am biased here as a Marylander, but Moore does come closer to putting it all together than a lot of the other folks I’m watching. People love a happy warrior. There just isn’t a ton of precedent in our history for presidential candidates winning elections with a tone that is always angry, and I emphasize “always” — Trump ran two very fearful campaigns, but as liberals, we focus on those aspects and miss a lot of what his supporters and swing voters see, which is a guy with a sense of humor and rallies that have become like Grateful Dead concerts. There’s a reason tens of millions of Americans support him. Moore gets this — we are living in a very dark time, but in spite of all that, we still need to give people a reason to hope and to feel good about the future.
Bruni: Before we leave Newsom too far behind — he has, as you’ve noted, used the gerrymandering issue to seize the stage and drive discussion about the outrage of what Texas officials, at Trump’s behest, did. What are other issues that afford Democrats in general or specific Democratic politicians prime opportunities that the party is not fully seizing? Script for me, if you would, something you want to hear someone in particular say — ideally, someone who has the right perch, the right soapbox, to say it?
Egan: It would be interesting to see more red-state Democrats moderate on issues like gun control (and on the flip side, to see Democrats with national ambitions in blue states, like Chris Murphy, say they are open to being more of a big-tent party on the issue). I look ahead at the 2030 census changes and it’s pretty difficult for me to see how Democrats control Congress and the White House in the future without becoming more palatable in red and rural parts of the country. That means making serious and meaningful changes on cultural issues.
Jentleson: I want somebody to rise to the occasion and embrace a take-charge tone, to say that fear has been the dominant paradigm of our lives for too long, and fear leads us to be small and shrink from the world. The challenges before us are enormous but to face them we must be big and unafraid. Be unafraid of new ideas, be unafraid of one another, be unafraid of the American people, including those you disagree with. Build a big tent. Bigness, not smallness, is the answer, and I want to see someone embrace that.
Bruni: Give me a name. Point me to a Democrat or a handful of Democrats whose communication skills are up to the task of that very important and potentially eloquent message. I agree with you, but you’re laying out a kind of high-altitude challenge for a party that seems not to be able to get past the first base camp, communications-wise.
Jentleson: Wes Moore could do it.
Egan: I’m going to throw out Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona.
Jentleson: I like Gallego, too — he had that great line about how “every Latino man wants a big-ass truck,” which I love.
Egan: Senator Jon Ossoff could be one to watch in Georgia. If he wins in 2026, that will be a playbook for Democrats going forward. Ideally, no one from the deep-blue states on the coasts!
Bruni: Right, first Ossoff has to win, and that’s a race that scares me to death, in terms of Democratic vulnerability.
I wonder if in fact the party has a better chance, Senate-wise, in my state, North Carolina, now that our former governor Roy Cooper is running. And I have to say that his announcement video seemed to me absolute perfection, both tone- and content-wise. Voiced strong opposition to Trump’s agenda without foregrounding him or seeming hysterical in the least. (And there’s reason for hysteria!) Used simple language and focused on everyday, practical issues. Came across as humble, real, genuine. Just like Trump!
Jentleson: I’m also keeping an eye on the field of newcomers as models for the type of message we’re talking about. I’m interested in Graham Platner, who is running for Susan Collins’s Senate seat in Maine. He will need to show some heterodoxy to avoid getting pigeonholed, but his natural communication skills are off the charts.
Bruni: Several Democrats have stood out for their excursions into media spaces that the party’s leaders haven’t typically inhabited. Three come to mind: Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, who breached the so-called manosphere and connected with his inner bro by appearing on the “Flagrant” podcast in April; Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago and former ambassador to Japan, who appeared last month on “The Megyn Kelly Show”; and Representative Ro Khanna of California, who did Theo Von’s podcast in June. Should other Democrats be following the leads of these three, or are there dangers here, at least for people less nimble than they are?
Egan: It’s really important. I genuinely do not think you can get elected without being able to go on these types of shows and talk for three-plus hours. But it’s not a silver bullet. I’m really stuck on something that Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this year about why Kamala Harris picked him. He essentially said it was because he could “code-talk to white guys watching football fixing their truck.” But I do not think that is enough. You actually need to have more moderate cultural views — or at least you have to be willing to engage in tough, uncomfortable conversations — and not panic that the left is going to come for you. That takes a lot of skill. And there is absolutely risk involved if a candidate seems overly scripted or is too afraid to ditch their talking points. That kind of politician is so toxic right now. A lot of Democratic officials have become so accustomed to running everything by their consultants that they don’t even know how to be themselves.
Jentleson: Buttigieg is simply one of our party’s best communicators, hands down. He is a go-anywhere guy, he can go on any platform and talk to anyone and make his case in a compelling way, and the reason is that he knows what he believes and has thought about it a lot — underrated skills for a politician. Emanuel — I don’t know, we’ll see, it’s a little like, why? Khanna is in the Buttigieg category; he has thought this stuff through and doesn’t need talking points. He’s one of those where when he writes a book, you’re like: Oh, yeah, you actually wrote this.
Bruni: Khanna actually seems to be pursuing multiple tracks at once, tracks beyond just breaching the manosphere. And I want to tick them off to get your opinions on which you think are most fruitful or whether maybe he’s a model of not committing to any one strategy. Khanna has made himself JD Vance’s No. 1 online nemesis, taunting the vice president mercilessly; he even went and gave an anti-Vance speech at their joint alma mater, Yale Law. Khanna has spoken of “blue MAGA” and the need to welcome Trump voters with a Democratic “economic populism.” And he helped lead the Democratic charge in the House to demand the release of the Epstein files. Too much? Too scattered? The right mix?
Egan: Democrats need an “all of the above” strategy. The media environment is far too fractured, and people are experiencing politics in their own algorithm silos. So you have to constantly be trying different strategies and tracks. That said, I’m not really sure what vision for the future of the party Khanna is trying to sell. If Khanna is serious about welcoming Trump voters into the tent, those voters need to trust he’s not a California liberal on guns, abortion, immigration. I’m not sure he’s doing that.
Jentleson: All of what Khanna is doing is fine, but it’s not enough. The way I think about this is: What are you doing that is outside the box for a liberal? So I don’t disagree with any of the stuff he is doing, per se, but I would love to see something that makes people say: Hey, that’s a different kind of Democrat. I am all for economic populism and I want to emphasize that, because people get very mad on the internet when you say what I’m about to say, which is that it is not enough in itself, and it is dangerous for Democrats to lull themselves into thinking that economic populism can compensate for being out of step on other issues. Go as hard as you want on economic populism, but it still keeps you in the liberal box because there is nothing economic populists say that makes a voter say: Oh, hey, I’m surprised to hear a Democrat say that. So you need to find things to add that will give you that heterodox mix.
Bruni: I agree with you, Adam, about cultural issues, and I think many Democratic politicians do, too. It’s why you’ve seen both Emanuel and Buttigieg express concern about trans women in sports. Part and parcel of this is the language Democrats use, and along those lines, I want to resurface a war of words between several prominent Democrats that made news earlier this year. I think it encodes some of the big questions and strategic decisions vis-à-vis peeling off the supporters of Trump’s who might be up for grabs. Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan faulted the Bernie Sanders-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “Fighting Oligarchy” tour for trafficking in the kind of vocabulary (“oligarchy”) that estranges Democrats from many Americans or that just doesn’t emotionally land. Sanders pushed back: His receipts were the huge crowds his events were drawing. Who’s right, Slotkin or Sanders, and on that front or others, which of them is drawing a more promising map for Democrats to follow?
Jentleson: It’s fine to use new words! I have no idea if people know that word or not. To me, the question is: Does the vision you are outlining hit home for people? Billionaires are sometimes to blame, and we should definitely make that case. To me, what I hear Slotkin saying, and I don’t mean to put words in her mouth, is that a vision where everything comes back to billionaires, all the time, sounds too predictably liberal. Sometimes the problem is concentrated corporate power, sometimes it’s big government bureaucracies — we should say both.
Egan: I think a good path forward for Democrats could be the Bernie 2016 model: a relentless focus on economic populism, coupled with more moderate cultural and social positions. Bernie in 2016 was pretty chill on guns and immigration; in 2017 he endorsed an anti-abortion mayoral candidate in Nebraska (and got a ton of heat for it from Democrats at the time).
I get what Slotkin was trying to say about “oligarchy.” But I think sometimes Democrats don’t fully appreciate that they can move the needle on public opinion and they have a role to play here. Sure, it does sound somewhat academic. But a good communicator (like Bernie!) can explain it and make it have meaning in the political context. “Monopoly” is a big word, too, but it has real meaning in American politics.
Jentleson: Bernie 2016 was outside the box, mixing economic populism with stands on cultural issues that were to the right of Hillary Clinton, and he shocked the world by outperforming all expectations. In 2020 Bernie retreated back inside the box and shifted left on everything, and underperformed across the board — won fewer votes, dropped out of the race sooner, all that. So when you’re talking about Sanders, I think it really matters which model you’re talking about.
Here is a shocking proposal: Candidates should say what they think. There is simply no way that most Democratic candidates also happen to agree with liberal interest groups on all of their issue positions. They should just say what they think — as a former staffer, I would say: Don’t listen to your staff when they tell you to say something that is not what you believe! Be yourself.
Bruni: Given the congressional budget battles just around the corner and how much Democratic rancor there was about how Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, handled the budget showdown last time around, I have to ask if you think he’s the right person in the right spot right now. Adam, you have the perspective and background of having been a senior aide to a much more pugilistic Democrat who was once held Schumer’s job, Harry Reid.
Jentleson: Democrats have got to show some fight. I thought it was the right call to avoid a shutdown back in April because Republicans were giving themselves self-inflicted wounds on a daily basis and it would have shifted attention to Democrats — we did not have a message, it was early in the administration, it was teed up for Republicans to make it look like this was just sour grapes and defending big government. This time we have found our footing and we have Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act to focus on. A lot will depend on how Schumer handles this fight. I also think it’s important to know when it’s time to pass the torch, as Reid did to Schumer. Reid retired when he was 77. I also think Schumer has a very low risk tolerance, and I’d like to see more creativity in some of the candidates he’s recruiting. If Democrats had deployed that kind of low risk tolerance in 2004, we might not have recruited a certain community organizer — Barack Obama left the Illinois state senate and landed in the White House in four years flat.
Egan: Schumer has made himself vulnerable to questions about whether he’s the right person for this moment. It’s hard to argue that someone who still uses a flip phone (and thinks that it’s an endearing quality about him) is the right person to lead the party in 2025. Also, there have been more and more Democratic Senate primary candidates going on the record saying they would not support Schumer as leader if they take back the Senate (Platner in Maine, Mallory McMorrow in Michigan). That says a lot about how Democrats view his leadership.
Bruni: I never for a moment consider New York City a microcosm of America or see what happens there as any kind of political bellwether, but I nonetheless need to ask whether, in your views, Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular ascent holds valuable lessons for Democrats in the midterms? Or is the more relevant dynamic Republicans’ readiness to do to him what they always did to Nancy Pelosi and make him a symbol of Democrats’ being recklessly far left?
Egan: The only lesson Democrats should take from his win is communication. To Adam’s earlier point, he’s a happy warrior, he’s authentic, and he knows how to break through online. Aside from that, it should be obvious that the politics of a New York City Democratic primary are not going to work in, say, the Iowa Senate race.
Jentleson: Mamdani definitely carries lessons for Democrats. To me, the lessons are to go everywhere, to be optimistic and inspiring, to think creatively about how to solve problems and lower costs for people. He knows how to throw a punch when he has to, but most of the time we see him, he is smiling and having fun — he exudes that he loves New York City, and Democrats should exude that kind of love for wherever they’re running. It’s patriotic! I also have to say I find it notable that after years and years of deriding respectability politics, we almost never see Mamdani without a suit — this is a man who thinks very carefully and is very disciplined about how to draw people in and build a big tent.
Bruni: Lastly, there are many interesting Democratic leaders whom we haven’t mentioned or barely mentioned, including such governors as Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Jared Polis of Colorado. Harris, too. Does one of them or does someone else catch your eye as an effective or instructive warrior and messenger or, alternately, as a negative example and cautionary tale?
Egan: Harris is a cautionary tale that Democratic politicians who emerge from California might not have the political muscle needed for the national stage. Her 2024 strategy also led from a place of caution — she and her team overthought every media appearance, they were afraid of unscripted moments, she could never learn to be herself when the cameras were on.
Jentleson: Josh Shapiro is one of the most popular governors in America, in a critical swing state — we need to take people’s electoral track records seriously, and his is impressive. When I talk about stepping outside the box, Shapiro has done that, and I would argue that is part of why he’s so popular — people think, this is a guy who gets stuff done.
Harris is a classic tale of not saying what you believe. You can’t think of anything you would do differently than Biden? Give me a break. No one believes that’s true, so why not just say what you really think?
We have some real rising stars in the next class of governors, if they win their races: Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill and Rob Sand. Keep an eye on them.
Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. Lauren Egan writes about the Democratic Party for the newsletter The Opposition at The Bulwark. Adam Jentleson, a former chief of staff to Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and the author of “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy,” is the founder of the Searchlight Institute.
Source photographs by Scott Olson, Chip Somodevilla and Mario Tama, via Getty Images.
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Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram Threads @FrankBruni • Facebook
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