2026: Time to Focus on Globalization Haves and Have-Nots.

For and Against Trump Can't Be Our Only Lens

Democrats have a huge strategic choice to make – one that will either be made deliberately or de facto by how candidates choose to frame their 2026 audience and messaging strategies.

Here are the options. We can focus on turning out the Democratic base and go all in on making next year’s elections one final referendum on Donald Trump?

Or we can go deeper and begin tackling the underlying dynamic that set the stage for Trump’s decade dominating American politics – globalization and the way it has dramatically realigned both the American economy and the American electorate.

This memo is an argument for door #2.

Admittedly, the first option is kind of inviting. It’s the resistance-focused victory the Democratic base is yearning for and, given the makeup of the midterm electorate, it could well succeed.

But here are five reasons why I believe Democrats should resist a totally Trump-centric 2026 strategy.

#1: We can’t wait any longer to address the underlying issue of globalization’s haves and have-nots.

Here's how Jonathan Weisman described globalization’s impact in a post-election New York Times essay titled “How the Democrats Lost the Working Class.” For decades, Weisman notes, “one president after another, Republican and Democratic, led administrations into a post-Cold War global future that enriched the nation as a whole and some on the coasts to staggering levels, but left many pockets of the American heartland deindustrialized, dislocated and even depopulated.”

And here’s how Arlie Hochschild, our nation’s leading chronicler of the emotional life of Trump voters, describes the impact. “Since the 1970s, the red states have taken the brunt of globalization: offshoring, automation and union decline have left red states poorer and in worse health than blue states, with less well-financed schools, an increased susceptibility to accidents, and lower life expectancy.”

Democrats’ failure to address the devastating economic inequality wrought by globalization has left working class families feeling unseen and unheard. And the longer Democrats fail to address that disconnect, the more open our country remains to authoritarian impulses.

As Waleed Shahid demonstrated so brilliantly in a recent Substack essay, economic inequality and the failure to address it fuel authoritarianism. Seeing the democracy vs. authoritarianism battle as a purely political one is both naïve and dangerous.

#2: An “I told you so” message isn’t going to win back in-play Trump voters.

As I’ve noted before, there were two kinds of Trump voters last year. First, of course, is the hard core MAGA base. They will be with Trump no matter what. But he couldn’t have won with just true believers in his corner. He had to attract a second group of voters – those who voted for him despite what he says not because of what he represents.

As Hochschild makes clear, the key to the political behavior of these voters is to understand their emotional journey.

Successful campaigns connect with peoples’ hopes and fears – what keeps them up at night, what touches their hearts, what pisses them off. Winning campaign strategies skillfully craft messages to match and evoke those emotions.

Unsuccessful campaigns try to persuade people with facts, base their messaging on their own emotions, and then try to force people to see and feel things their way.

And that’s what Democrats will be trying to do if we make next year nothing more than a Trump referendum. That may speak to the Democratic base. But we’ won’t be addressing the economic upheaval reluctant Trump voters are experiencing. We will just be asking them to admit they screwed up. “I told you so” doesn’t win many arguments.

James Browning, a Kentucky addiction counselor profiled by Arlie Hochschild in Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right, puts it well.

“If people in Pike County or elsewhere get socked with higher prices, there might come a tipping point. But what happens then would hinge on how Democrats handle it, what better ideas they have to offer, their tone of voice.

“If the left starts scolding, ‘You Trump supporters brought this on yourselves,’ or ‘We told you so,’ people around here will get more pissed at the snarky left than they are at the hurtful right — and Trump will march on.”

#3: 2026 is the time to present clear policies that resonate emotionally.

Scolding won’t work. Broad rhetoric about a new “abundance agenda” won’t get the job done either. We can’t offer promises that somewhere down the road a grand re-imagining will make things better.

In stark, emotional terms, we have to convey a real commitment to start unravelling a stacked political system that’s rigged against them.

More importantly, we have to describe immediate steps that will ease the burden on hard-pressed working class families – grocery bills that don’t bust the budget, homes that aren’t out of reach anymore, schools that prepare their kids for a bright future.

And a world where their hard work starts paying off for their families.

#4: We need a winning 2026 strategy that lays the groundwork for 2028 victories.

As Ron Brownstein, a keen observer of electoral politics, recently noted, failing to address the working class disconnect might not disrupt Democratic victories next year. But it leaves in place a problem that could haunt Democratic chances in the much broader 2028 electorate.

Democrats can’t afford a midterm strategy that fails to set the stage for 2028. The working class disconnect has been decades in the making. Starting to overcome it is a long-range project, not something the Democratic nominee can overcome in the final 100 days of the presidential election.

#5: Now is the time to start addressing the Democrats condescension problem.

“Condescending, elitist Democrats don’t see you. They don’t know what your life is like and they don’t give a damn what happens to you.”

That’s the message at the heart of the “disqualify your opponent” strategy Republicans have used against Democrats for decades. But Donald Trump and MAGA candidates have taken it to new levels.

It’s the message relayed by MAGA cultural populism, the storyline embedded in things like last year’s “she cares about they/them” ad and the point behind the “Dems are too woke” attack line.

Pete Buttigieg recently put his finger on why it works. “There is a condescension that is imputed to Democrats that I think we really need to deal with. So much of politics is not just about how you make people feel, but how you make them feel about themselves and so much of what they think of you comes down to what they think you think of them.”

If we adopt a “you got Trump wrong” message, we will make it all the easier for Republican candidates to adopt this strategy in 2026 and 2028.

Conclusion

Let’s hope Democrats don’t take the easy path and try to win a Trump referendum election. Sure that will be a big part of how we make emotional connections with the Democratic base.

But let’s also begin making a strong case to globalization’s have-nots – one grounded in both a progressive economic agenda and emotional eonnection. That’s the path to broader victories in 2026 and a winning electoral coalition in 2028.