The Urgency of Marrying Affordability to Anti-Corporate Populism

The inspiring victory won in the streets of Minneapolis gives Democrats an opening for a realignment of American politics, but only if we build a bridge to working-class voters conflicted on immigration, based on the populist economic issue driving their anger right now: the abuse of corporate power. We must show people that the same government that is terrorizing people in cities like Minneapolis is also allowing big business to abuse its power to make life tougher for all working families.

The combination of wages’ not rising fast enough plus the inflation of recent years has hit working families very hard. These voters have not liked the excesses of ICE, so we have an opening with them on immigration, but it will never be their main issue. Economic struggles will always be the first order of business for most working-class voters.

Right now, the political dynamic favors the Democrats. Republicans are no longer winning the immigration debate, and the economy is hurting them because they are the party in power.

The problem is that Trump is moving fast to develop and promote his own populist-sounding affordability agenda, including proposals to cap credit-card interest rates at 10 percent; prohibit large corporate investors from buying up single-family homes; and slash the cost of prescription drugs.
 

The Danger Ahead

For all the good news, Democrats are at a dangerous moment politically. On a high from winning the 2025 elections so decisively and seeing Trump’s numbers tanking, much of the party leadership believes they can glide into a 2026 election victory by simply attacking Trump and repeating the word affordability. But Trump’s team is politically flexible enough to craft a populist-sounding affordability package that—rhetorically, if not substantively—borrows key elements of the Elizabeth Warren and Zohran Mamdani agenda.

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It is no accident that Trump has surprised observers by recently saying favorable things about both Warren and Mamdani. Even his rejection of popular healthcare subsidies long supported by Democrats has been framed with a populist twist, attacking “subsidies” as handouts to greedy insurance companies.

At this moment in time, Donald Trump is sounding more like a progressive economic populist than many Democrats. If that perception holds—if he succeeds in rebranding himself as more of a fighter against big business than the Democratic Party—then Democrats may eke out a smaller-than-expected victory in 2026 but will face serious danger in 2028. They will also have squandered their best opportunity since 2008 to produce a genuine political realignment.
 

The Populist Moment We Live In

Ihave never seen a political environment as intensely populist as this one.

Part of this dynamic is that people feel increasingly hard-pressed. When my organization began Factory Towns polling in 2021, respondents were asked whether they or an immediate family member had recently experienced hardships such as job loss, health problems or coverage loss, medical bankruptcy, retirement income loss, foreclosure, or eviction. More than half answered yes to more than half of these questions.

A recent poll by GQR and the Century Foundation showed that life remains difficult for working-class voters and that their first instinct is to blame corporate CEOs, corporate power, and corporate greed.

Another poll that Lake Research and I conducted for the antitrust trial bar in late 2024 revealed exceptionally strong populist, anti-corporate-power sentiment. Voters strongly opposed corporate monopolies and expressed support for politicians advocating vigorous enforcement of antitrust law.
 

Working-Class Voters and Realignment

Recent private polling on working-class voters and immigration echoes these findings. While some voters remain sympathetic to Trump on immigration, many are deeply populist and strongly opposed to concentrated corporate power. This pattern is particularly evident among working-class men, both Latino and white.

These voters are highly skeptical of both major parties. A Manhattan Institute study identified “New Entrant Republicans” who diverge sharply from traditional party orthodoxy:

Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies…

Many populist voters have supported both Trump and anti-establishment Democrats or independents such as Bernie Sanders, Dan Osborn, and Mamdani. In New York City, approximately 10 percent of Trump voters supported Mamdani—sufficient to affect close elections.

In addition to strong anti-corporate sentiment, these voters are highly pro-union. One Fair Wage polling has shown broad support for a $25 minimum wage.

These voters were central to the Factory Towns Project.

Donald Trump recognizes this electorate and is adjusting rhetorically toward economic populism. Many Democrats, by contrast, remain hesitant to define themselves as working-class-oriented, anti-corporate populists.

What an Affordability Agenda Could Look Like

There are three major pathways Democrats could pursue on affordability.

First, government could directly subsidize or fund more services. While popular in specific domains, swing and middle-income voters often remain wary of large-scale expansion.

Second, Democrats should emphasize raising wages and strengthening unions. Workers understand that wage stagnation remains central to their struggles.

Third—and most critically—Democrats must address corporate concentration. Voters already recognize that monopoly power drives price increases. From groceries and housing to healthcare, corporate consolidation shapes everyday economic pressures.

Yet many Democratic leaders resist a full embrace of anti-corporate populism, fearing its effects on campaign finance. However, public demand for such policies would likely prove politically powerful.
 

Highest Possible Stakes

Government policy is not the only threat to working families. Corporate practices—from wage suppression to price gouging—compound economic insecurity.

If Trump succeeds in positioning himself as the primary anti-corporate populist while Democrats avoid confronting corporate power, the long-term consequences for democratic governance could be severe.

Democrats remain far more credible messengers on corporate accountability than Trump, whose record reflects favoritism toward concentrated wealth and corporate interests.

The moment to decide is now.

The Kavanaugh fight was a painful loss. We saw the legitimate concerns of survivors of sexual violence swept aside so that a far-right partisan could take a crucial Supreme Court seat. Folks are furious and exhausted from the psychic toll of the last few weeks, but there is no loss that can’t be overcome if we keep fighting. As the old labor slogan goes: Don’t mourn, organize.

Right now, we must channel every bit of energy on winning the midterms. If we win a big, broad victory on Election Day, we will have some power to hold the Republicans accountable. But right now, less than 30 days out, we need to take the passion and energy from the Kavanaugh fight, and refocus it on winning the election. We need to keep speaking out strongly for the rights of women, but we also need to have a message that gets back to the basic issues and themes that were winning so decisively just a couple of weeks ago.

Republicans are master manipulators, brilliant at using fear and lies to distract swing voters, and to motivate their angry, white-male base to vote. They are having an impact using those tactics, although they probably would have gotten their Trump-loving base voters to turn out regardless of the Kavanaugh fight. The question now is what the Democrats focus on to motivate their own base voters to turn out, and to appeal to undecided swing voters.

Democrats will win if (and only if) they do the following in the 2018 elections:

1. Turn the passion of the Kavanaugh fight into voter turnout. All of the demonstrating has been enormously inspiring—now it is time to harness that energy to turn out the vote. Knock on doors, hit the phone banks, and reach out to your friends and family. That means a lot of conversations with folks who are not normally very engaged in politics and voting. Be patient with them; persuade them with facts; help them find their polling place; offer them a ride to the polls. All of these things will help us to win. Remember, the key factor that will decide this election is whether Democrats—and the demographic groups that trend heavily our way, including people of color, women, unmarried folks, and young people—turn out to vote.
2. Talk to people about race and class. The way Democrats win elections is by having a message that works with both people of color and working-class white folks. Consider this report and corresponding handout, which we co-developed with Ian Haney Lopez and Anat Shenker Osorio for Demos: This message leads with race and class at the heart of its narrative. It says to people that whether white, black, or brown, a newcomer to America or someone whose family has been here for generations, we all want to build a better life for our families. Politicians like Trump are trying to divide us along racial lines, so that they can pick our pockets and give out benefits to insiders and the rich. If Democrats can convey that they will unite us rather than divide us, and want to help all working people by raising our wages and lowering our health-care costs, their constituents will listen. Every other economic issue can be addressed through this race/class lens.
3. Talk to people about health care, especially women’s health care. Women activists have been impassioned ever since Trump got elected. From the Women’s March to the stunning surge of women running for offices at all levels to the Supreme Court fight, women have taken the lead. According to polling, the number-one issue all cycle for Democrats has been health care; can build the widest majority of women voters by homing in on that issue. This includes Roe v. Wade and protection from sexual violence, but it also includes access to decent health care and coverage for preexisting conditions.
4. Reach out to young people on the issues that matter to them: climate change, student debt, mass incarceration, and our dysfunctional immigration system. Most young people are cynical about politics, but passionate about progressive issues that affect their lives. Democratic candidates need to focus in on the youth and let them know that they will actually deliver for them on these crucial issues.
5. Actually drain the swamp. Despite his promises to drain it, Trump is the most corrupt toad in the DC swamp. But the system was corrupted by big money and insider favoritism long before Trump got to Washington. Voters have to believe that that we can combat cronyism, a deeply rooted cancer that allows the rich and powerful to do whatever they want to do and get whatever they want to get. From closing tax loopholes to holding sexual harassers and corporate polluters accountable, we need to make ending corruption a central priority of the next Congress. That will only happen if Democrats win majorities and create a check on Trump’s cronyism.

We have less than a month to go before Election Day. Democrats and progressives have had the edge in this election from the beginning of Trump’s presidency—not only because he is a terrible person, but also because the issues are on our side and our activists are fired up. We must be relentless in focusing that fury on voter turnout and persuasion. November is coming.

The Democratic establishment is clearly flustered by the stunning upset victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the person who was considered to be the likely next Democratic leader of the House, Congressman Joe Crowley. Former DCCC Chair Steve Israel, in a quote I found entertaining as a former Iowan who has knocked on a lot of doors in Brooklyn, Iowa, opined that “What sounds good in Brooklyn, New York, doesn’t work in Brooklyn, Iowa.”

Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, who is at least a Midwesterner, said in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s victory that a political platform “too far to the left” could not win in the Midwest. Other Democratic insiders are insisting that this upset isn’t that big a deal, making the case that Ocasio-Cortez’s ideas are actually no different than mainstream Democratic Party stuff, she just wraps it in the label “socialism.” Which of course is a direct contradiction of the first two quotes. Meanwhile, AOC (as people are calling her now) has become a rock star to progressive insurgent activists and other candidates, becoming a major fundraiser for the candidates she has endorsed and the groups affiliated with her. What is going on in Democratic politics?

As I write in my new book How To Democrat In The Age Of Trump, the answer to that question, as well as to the more vexing question of how Donald Trump came to be our president and the Republicans came to control every level of government, can be explained by looking at the way Democrats drifted from their historic identity as the party of working people over the last decade.

After the 2008 economic collapse, blessed with dominant majorities at every level of state and federal government, a demographic edge that was expanding across the board, and a thoroughly discredited Republican economic philosophy, Democrats could have passed into law a series of big, bold, fundamental reforms that would have both thrilled their growing political coalition and solidified their credibility with working-class voters angered at the way Wall Street had destroyed the Main Street economy. Had they fundamentally restructured the financial industry, immigration, energy policy, the criminal-justice system, and the way campaigns were financed, Democrats could have built as sustained a governing majority as the New Deal had created in the 1930s. When they failed to deliver on restructuring how the economy worked for working people, and, importantly, failed to prosecute the Wall Street bankers whose fraud had led to the economic collapse, they lost credibility with working-class swing voters and the enthusiasm of their base. Democrats broke their own political coalition, and it remains broken to this day.

It didn’t help that party leaders were invested in a top-down party structure and were determined to control what happened to congressional candidates. Over the past decade, it has been painful to watch party leaders in DC deciding to support primary candidates that were unexciting to grassroots Democrats, frequently without any dialogue or consultation with local folks whatsoever. Progressives around the country are so electrified by AOC’s shocking victory precisely because of this pattern of national-party big-footing in local races.

So how do we reunify the Democratic Party and create a message that plays in both the big-city East Coast version of Brooklyn and the small-town Iowa version? First, the bridge between grassroots progressives and the party’s leaders need to be rebuilt. Party leaders need to genuinely listen to their grassroots rather than battling or ignoring them. Democratic leaders need to learn what the Republicans have understood for decades now: that to win, a political party needs enthusiasm from its activists and base voters. That means a message that embraces the passions, values, and agenda of grassroots leaders.

Some party leaders will say, that will alienate swing voters. That is where the DC conventional wisdom gets it the most wrong. We have to have the courage to talk directly about the tough issues facing us like the racial divisiveness Donald Trump is trying to stir up, and connect that to the economic hardships most of working America is still facing. We have to be willing to say: You know why Trump is attacking immigrants and the black folks upset about the criminal-justice system? It’s because he wants to pick your pocket.

We have to lay out an agenda that boldly takes on the powers that be—the monopolistic companies and “too big to fail” banks who want to dominate the American economy and weaken the power of consumers, workers, and voters. We have to remind people that Trump is all about looking backward, but that the Democratic agenda is about the future. And we need to have the definitional debate with Republicans about what the word “freedom” means. Is it the kind of freedom that Trump wants, to be able to do anything to anyone any time, regardless of the consequences—to pay your workers a poverty wage, to poison the air and water, to engage in the kind of reckless financial speculation that brought down our economy in 2008? Or is it the freedom to build a good life for yourself and your family, on your own terms, with a decent income, the choice to live how you want to, and the freedom to chart your own course?

That message plays in Queens and the Bronx, where Ocasio-Cortez is from, but it also plays in Omaha, where Kara Eastman won an equally surprising victory against a former congressman who was the Democratic-establishment candidate in the primary, and in Kentucky, where Amy McGrath beat the mayor of Lexington, who had been recruited by national party leaders to run in the congressional primary. It’s a message that has won in special elections in mostly white districts carried heavily by Trump in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Missouri, and a message that Ocasio-Cortez rode to victory in the melting pot of her district in New York City.

Democrats will win by returning to their roots as the party of the people—all the people, not just swing voters or base voters, not just people who live in one region or another. We will win if we tell people directly and without fear what we believe, what we value, and what we will fight for—fairness, the future, freedom, and the working people of this country. Not everyone will want to run the exact kind of race Ocasio-Cortez ran—every candidate needs to define themselves in a way that makes sense in their local district and state. But if Democrats think a working-class-oriented economic message doesn’t work because it is too “left,” they will be making a grave mistake and once again cost themselves a victory that should be theirs.

I close How To Democrat In The Age Of Trump with a call to arms for the Democratic Party that explains how we square the circle and have a message that resonates in Brooklyn, Iowa, as well as in Brooklyn, New York:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not a post-truth era. If we fight the good fight, if we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the people and go toe-to-toe with the foes of democracy, the truth will come out. If we organize, friend to friend and neighbor to neighbor, our message will be heard. Our party needs to rediscover its roots and its soul. We need to remember how progressive warriors fought throughout history to build a nation dedicated to freedom, fairness, and a better future for the generations that follow. If we return to being the party of the people, we will start winning elections again. It really is as simple as that. And if we start improving the lives of regular folks in a tangible way that they can see and feel, we can heal this nation, reap the benefits for generations to come, and build a new progressive future.