With roughly a month to Election Day, midterm races across the country are heating up. What do Democrats and Republicans need to do to win over voters in the final stretch? Earlier this week, Post Opinions writers identified four strategies the GOP should pursue. Today, another set of writers does the same for the Democratic Party.
Shadi Hamid: Culture matters
The elusive sweet spot for Democrats has been clear for some time: Focus relentlessly on affordability, take a strong stand against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and moderate on divisive cultural and social questions so as not to alienate independents and disaffected Trump voters. It’s the latter part of this three-pronged strategy that’s proved most difficult for Democratic aspirants. Even with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) acknowledging recently that “Woke 1 was crazy,” progressives have struggled to pivot on questions such as transgender athletes participating in women’s sports — perhaps a minor issue in the larger scheme of things but one with powerful symbolism nonetheless.
Culture matters. People don’t vote solely on their material interests. With young men falling behind, a loneliness epidemic and a birth rate crisis, Democrats need to find ways to respond to America’s broader social malaise. Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — one of the standard-bearers of what Matthew Yglesias calls the “clean-living Muslim wing” of the left — has sounded “conservative” notes on porn and gambling addiction. Offering a vision of positive masculinity and strong families has not been the Democratic Party’s strong suit, and that’s a shame. Democrats too often cede this moral ground to Republicans, which is one reason young men broke for President Donald Trump in 2024.
In the final stretches of campaigning, liberals and progressives would do well to show that their moral leadership isn’t confined to the Israel-Palestine conflict and pocketbook issues. There should be room in the Democratic Party’s “big tent” for socially conservative and religious voters who are otherwise predisposed to Democratic messaging on ending an increasingly unpopular Iran war and seriously confronting the economic hardship that so many Americans are struggling with today.
James Hohmann: Make the midterms about $TRUMP
The message that won the 2024 election was: Kamala Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you. But the president has spent the past almost two years being very much for himself.
The arch, ballroom, Kennedy Center and Qatari-gifted plane he’s repurposed as Air Force One will not themselves swing any votes, but they are potent symbols of Trump’s fixation on issues that don’t make life better for the people who voted for him two years ago.
History will remember this second Gilded Age for pay-to-play self-dealing, with the president and his kids cashing in while Americans struggle with persistent inflation and high gas prices.
Trump reported more than $1.4 billion of income in 2025 from cryptocurrency, digital tokens and related partnerships. Top buyers of the $TRUMP meme coin were invited this week to a third exclusive gathering with the president. It’s no surprise that most registered voters think Trump is corrupt, and almost 7 in 10 Americans — including about half of Republicans — believe his private business interests influence his presidential decisions.
Despite the national debt crossing $40 trillion, Trump is now wasting tax dollars to air propaganda ads glorifying himself in hopes of juicing turnout. He’s diverting money that Congress approved for border security, combating drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.
The Democratic brand remains in the doldrums with independents due to the ascendancy of socialists and antisemites, the conspiracy by party elders to conceal President Joe Biden’s decline and the crazy excesses of Woke 1. Democrats will need to outline a positive vision in 2028, but they can win this year without one. It’s enough to promise oversight and a check on presidential ego.
“Pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said. On that, Democrats should oblige.
Nicholas Tomaino: An opportunity for sanity
If, as Shadi writes, Democrats continue to be intransigent on trans issues, perhaps they can moderate on another cultural concern. Every few months it seems there’s a story about what Wall Street Journal reporters have described as “a thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies and nanny services — even to pick up the newborns from hospitals — [that] has risen to accommodate the demand.” That refers, among others, to the Chinese adults wanting to “commission” babies to be born in the United States. Clients can do so without setting foot in the country, shipping sperm or eggs by mail and receiving an infant in return.
No federal law governs the issue. Contracts are lightly regulated, and the consequences predictably disturbing. See the Chinese video game tycoon Xu Bo, whose company says he has “a little over 100” children, 12 through surrogacy in the U.S. Or Silvia Zhang, manager of what seems to be her own personal surrogacy company, whose suburban L.A. mansion authorities investigated in May 2025. Police found 15 kids inside, none over 3, looked after by nannies. Video footage from surveillance cameras revealed “that toddlers were spanked, slapped and forced to do squats.”
Surely those details are revolting even if you don’t recognize, as, say, Pope Francis did, that surrogacy is a “deplorable” practice, and that children, divine gifts, can never be the “basis of a commercial contract.” Even a modicum of reform, such as Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Florida) proposal to ban the use of commercial surrogacy in the U.S. by people from some foreign countries, including China, would be salutary.
Democrats will neither win nor lose in four weeks because they signed onto that effort. The virtue, however, would be to clean up what has become an abominable mess and signal that they don’t stand, as Vice President JD Vance insists, for “pure, unadulterated crazy” over “common sense.”
Robert Gebelhoff: Be optimistic
Democrats probably don’t need much help figuring out how to win in November; my money is on them taking both the House and Senate. But if they’re looking for ways to seal the deal, I’d suggest leaning into optimism in the next few weeks.
That might clash with conventional wisdom. Democrats, of course want to stay on offense against Trump, harping on high gas prices and his unpopular war in Iran. But there’s value in showing to voters that despite the chaos of the past two years, the country is forging ahead.
It matters, for instance, that solar power is booming in the U.S., despite the administration’s stance against renewables. It matters that the administration failed to stop mRNA vaccine technology from marching onward. It matters that Trump’s threats to take away research funding from universities and bully schools into submission have largely failed.
The point here is not to minimize the massive damage Trump has caused; it is to explain to voters that, despite his policies, the world kept turning. He entered office as if he were an unstoppable force, but his momentum quickly faltered. Come November, he will functionally be a lame duck. Meanwhile, America’s innovative spirit hasn’t diminished. Democrats shouldn’t underestimate the power of that hopeful message.
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