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Background:
On July 21, 2024, Biden sent seismic waves throughout our nation’s political landscape by terminating his 2024 presidential reelection campaign. The decision came nearly a month after his disastrous June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump which sparked Democratic infighting over whether or not he was fit enough to remain the nominee. But even before this catastrophic event, the campaign was struggling.
Immediately preceding the debate, the 2024 presidential race was neck-and-neck. According to an in-depth New York Times poll, Biden and Trump were tied nationally, each with 46% of the electorate’s support. Trump maintained between a two and five-point lead in this year’s seven critical battleground states. Nate Cohn—the New York Times’s chief political analyst—said referencing the poll that “today’s polling average shows a closer race than the final November polls did in any election of the last two decades.”
This exhaustively-researched op-ed focuses exclusively on the key revisions Democrats must make to revitalize their campaign not out of partisan bias, but because they’re running an objectively worse campaign. Their GOP opponent had an abysmal approval rating of 34 percent upon leaving office in 2020, staged a violent insurrection at the U.S. capitol, was found civilly liable for sexual assault, at one point faced 91 felony counts, and was recently convicted on 34 felony counts. In many situations, such a close race would indicate a strong Democratic campaign. But compare Trump’s immense baggage and national unpopularity with the Biden Administration’s many policy successes, vigorous economic recovery from the COVID pandemic, and (until now) generally stable presidency, and the Democrats should’ve been on their way to a clean sweep. This was obviously not the case.
The previous campaign made the narrative that Biden is our democracy’s sole savior its principal message. Both in advertisements and real-time speeches, the president frequently used lines such as “democracy is on the ballot” and “your freedom is on the ballot.” The campaign’s attacks on Trump also heavily emphasize his purported authoritarianism, flawed character, and legal woes, instead of his failed policies, ludicrous proposals, or incompetent executive appointments.
This message resonates with politically engaged voters securely in the Democrats’ camp, but deeper polling analysis reveals that it’s the politically disengaged voters with whom Biden was fairing the worst and who the new nominee’s campaign must tailor their message towards. According to polling analyses, they will decide the 2024 election.
“The disengaged voters do not necessarily like Mr. Trump, the polling shows. But they’re motivated by pocketbook issues, more desiring of fundamental changes to the political system, and far less concerned about democracy as an issue in the election. Many low-turnout voters—notably including many who consider themselves Democrats—now say they’ll back Mr. Trump,” explains a recent special-edition polling analysis.
This dynamic explains Trump’s recent gains amongst young, nonwhite, less-educated voters, many of whom fall under the ‘less likely to vote’ category. While described as “determined to avoid political news with a determination normally reserved for toxic exes and food poisoning”, this crucial voting bloc favors populist economic policies, which both Democrats and Trump proclaim to champion.
Many in this category don’t hold a college degree, are working-class, registered democrats, and back Democratic candidates in non-presidential elections. However, they also believe the economy is ‘poor’, and that Trump is better equipped to ensure their financial security and personal well-being, their principal concerns. Only 14 percent say democracy or abortion is their top issue, yet the top two pinned posts on the Biden Campaign Instagram page spotlight these topics, with one reading “DONALD TRUMP VOWS TO BE A DICTATOR ON DAY ONE” and the other, “TRUMP DID THIS: THERE ARE NOW 22 STATE ABORTION BANS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES.”
The Biden Administration’s economic record and Democrats’ proposals should make them the obvious choice for these politically disillusioned, financially vulnerable, populist voters, regardless of the name topping their ticket. However, Trump’s masterful marketing—and Democrats’ hyper-emphasis on issues disengaged voters don’t care about—have cemented him as the ‘populist champion’ in these voters’ minds.
It must be noted that the vast majority of this publication’s research, outlining, and drafting was completed before Biden dropped out. Much of the evidence cited herein pertains to Biden’s record in the Oval Office and second-term proposals. However, as a centrist establishment Democrat, most of Biden’s views and policies are espoused by most other Democrats. This publication’s arguments and evidence retain their validity because while the face of the party may be changing, its platform isn’t, and Biden is about as in line with his party’s mainstream as one can get. With few exceptions, whoever replaces Biden at the top of the ticket will share the same or similar positions on the issues, especially those pertaining to the economy.
Furthermore, as of July 23, Vice President Kamala Harris has secured sufficient delegate support to become the party’s presumptive nominee. She’s also received public support from 262 of 282 elected Democrats, including 23 governors, 45 senators, and 194 representatives. It seems all but certain that Harris will face off against Trump in November, and since she and Biden literally share a record—and until Biden dropped, their campaign too—the argument that little to nothing will change for the Democrats regarding policy gains even more legitimacy.
Regardless of the nominee and with their fresh start, here are dire revisions Democrats must make to revitalize their campaign and win back what will likely be the deciding voting bloc in the 2024 election.
Opinion:
Biden is out, and the Democratic Establishment should seize this opportunity to enact a comprehensive revision of its message regarding Trump and the 2024 election.
To keep things blunt, the current message is too esoteric. The issues it spotlights—saving democracy, Trump’s authoritarianism, and the sanctity of our institutions—are too intangible for the politically disengaged or disaffected voters expected to decide the 2024 election. The existential political crisis narrative pushed by Democrats will not push this crucial bloc to the polls. These voters want to hear the Democratic nominee discuss issues with an immediate impact on their everyday lives, not some fantastical political melodrama in which the Democrat saves democracy against super-villain Trump.
As put by digital media strategist Ms. Elizabeth Spiers, “Messages about the threat that Mr. Trump poses to our nation’s democracy—real though it is—can fail. They seem abstract, especially compared with voters’ day-to-day struggles over the cost of living.”
Ultimately, the Democratic campaign needs to adjust its message both with respect to how it portrays its nominee and how it seeks to convince populist voters why Trump is not their proponent. With its pro-Democrat messaging, the campaign must end its fixation on their candidate ‘saving democracy’ and spotlight the current Democratic administration’s legislative record and policy proposals that will ensure populist voters’ financial security and personal well-being. As for the anti-Trump messaging, it needs to exclusively attack his policies and governing capacity (or lack thereof), instead of his personhood.
Pro-Democratic Candidate Messaging:
On the ‘why our nominee’ front, Democrats must think more empathetically about the voters to which they must appeal. Democracy is Democratic loyalists’ driving issue for the 2024 election, but the same can’t be said for most of the usually-democratic undecided populist bloc. It's an objectively critical issue, but voting is an utterly subjective exercise. Voters elect whoever inspires them most, on a personal level. The Democratic Campaign must acknowledge voters’ grievances and priorities and tailor the campaign accordingly, even if that means spotlighting issues they may not personally feel are the most significant.
They ought to give nearly all air time to the current administration’s populist philosophies and policies for ensuring working-class voters’ financial security and personal wellness, presently and during a second term. The campaign must also terminate nearly all communications focused on protecting democracy or designating its nominee as its sole savior. For these politically disaffected voters, their pocketbook and physical well-being aren’t political issues; they’re personal issues for which they, despite their pessimistic attitudes toward politics, are willing to go to the polls. While seemingly paradoxical, the campaign’s enduring message is too political.
Before identifying the specific victories and future policy ideas the Democratic Campaign should present and elucidate to voters, it’s important to recognize that the ‘save democracy’ message’s impact isn’t just neutral, but destructive, with Democrats’ must-win audience.
These voters already despise politicians, political activity, and apparently partisan issues. The ‘savior of democracy’ portrayal paints the Democratic nominee as some mystical, omnipotent hero and further solidifies Democrats as an aloof establishment party. It makes them seem above the day-to-day struggles working-class citizens want addressed, the ultimate anti-populists, a perception that’s particularly concerning given the Biden-Harris Administration’s record’s abundant evidence to the contrary. Because this message doesn’t just fail to resonate with the critical undecided bloc but alienates them further, Democrats must stop calling themselves ‘democracy’s savior’ and instead celebrate being the populist champions they’ve genuinely been over the past four in the White House.
Merely telling voters that they’re a populist and represent working-class people may work for Trump, thanks to his perceived status as a political outsider and ingenious marketing, but for Democrats, the task is more difficult. Thankfully, policy records reveal an unequivocal truth: despite Trump’s proclamations, the Democratic nominee will be the only populist candidate running in the 2024 election.
Washington Post Columnist Catherine Rampell confirmed this affirmation in a recent op-ed entitled, “Okay, Biden isn’t Popular. But His Policies Sure Are.” Referencing findings in a recent blind test conducted by YouGov surveying voters of any and all political affiliations, Rampell asserts that “President Biden’s policy agenda is incredibly popular, much more than his opponent’s.” She cites, “Of the 28 Biden proposals YouGov asked about, 27 were supported by more people than opposed them,” including 24 of which received support from more than 50 percent of respondents. As for Trump, only nine of his policies garnered more support than opposition, and just six were favored by 50 percent or more of respondents. Further alarming, many of Trump’s most popular policies received similar support to Biden’s least popular. Again, these Biden policies are also Democrats’ policies, so this disparity remains regardless of the nominee.
Rampell then logically concludes—in accordance with my motive for writing this op-ed—that the Biden campaign was at least partially responsible for the abysmal disconnect between Biden’s popularity and that of his policies. She states that “Biden has been an ineffective messenger for an agenda that should be easy to sell,” and adds that he “somehow managed (so far anyway) to take a winning platform and sink it.”
To inform the undecided populists who actually represents their interests, the new Democratic Campaign must leverage the Biden Administration’s policy record, emphasizing the following financial security and pocket book-centered achievements and proposals:
Taxation:
When it comes to fiscal policy, taxation undoubtedly preoccupies the vast majority of voters’ minds, as it has since our nation’s inception. Unfortunately, Donald Trump and Republican officials have convinced working-class people that Democrats will raise taxes should they be elected for a second term. However, according to the White House’s official website, no family or individual making under $400,000 per year will pay ‘a penny in new taxes,’ and instead save an estimated $765 billion over the next 10 years under the current Democratic administration’s tax plan.
These savings would come in the form of measures such as increasing the Child Tax Credit for 66 million children, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-paid workers to 19 million new individuals, and making tax credits on insurance premiums permanent. Per the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, these have “a long history of success,” including a marked drop in the child poverty rate in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit, some 16 million low-wage workers receiving assistance from the EITC amidst the pandemic, and historic gains in the number of people receiving health coverage in the ACA marketplaces during the 2024 open enrollment season, with most enrollees able to find coverage for less than $10 per month.
In fact, contrary to Trump’s recent claim that Democrats were going to deliver working-class people the “greatest, biggest, ugliest tax hike in the history of our country,” an analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center shows that his tax changes will amount to a net cut of around $600 billion by the end of Biden’s four years. This comes as the reductions and credits Democrats provided to lower-income individuals and strategic businesses—including those manufacturing semiconductors and reducing fossil fuel dependency—were offset by the increases he’s imposed on mega-corporations and their shareholders. His administration even provided $1,400 direct checks for low and middle-income Americans in its American Rescue Plan COVID stimulus bill, which were technically advance payments on tax credits.
This all goes to say White House Democrats have successfully reduced taxes for hardworking everyday Americans while making big corporations “pay their fair share” to fund essential programs, perfectly aligned with populist voters’ interests. Their campaign must celebrate this.
Inflation:
If taxation is 1-A, then inflation is 1-B in the realm of issues dearest to politically disaffected swing voters. One could convincingly argue high prices are 2024’s top issue not just for this particular bloc, but Americans at large. Interest rates—a tool wielded solely by the independent Federal Reserve—hold primary power for fighting inflation, but the Democratic agenda contains measures for mitigating the most punishing costs on fundamental goods, specifically food, energy, homes, and healthcare.
In response to denunciations over the cost of groceries, the Biden-Harris Administration is diverting funds and other resources to the agricultural sector to boost domestic output and diligently enforcing antitrust regulations to combat anticompetitive practices such as price-fixing in the meat and poultry sector.
At some 13.5 million barrels a day, today’s White House has overseen the greatest oil output of any country in history—including Donald Trump’s America—to combat exorbitant prices at the pumps. Furthermore, amidst record gas costs following the Russian Ukrainian invasion’s onset in 2022, the Biden Administration opted to release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) while encouraging our allies to release an additional 60 million from their own. The result: a reduction in gasoline prices by as much as 40 cents per gallon, according to analysis by the Department of the Treasury.
Misleading statements from opponents claim this move will ultimately raise prices for American taxpayers when the government begins buying back oil to replenish the reserve. However, the Biden Administration leveraged the decreased oil prices caused by their historic release to restock at a bargain per barrel price, masterfully implementing a classic buy-low sell-high strategy. After receiving an average of $95 per barrel from its SPR release in 2022, the Biden Administration bought barrels back at just $76, securing an unequivocal win for American consumers at the pumps (and taxpayers) while maintaining the vital SPR.
While admittedly disenchanting for climate-focused Democratic voters, the fact that Democrats prioritized lowering energy prices over their ‘Green Agenda’ should persuade the undecided populists, the more important bloc of the two, that their pocketbooks truly are the issue closest to Democrats’ heart. Faced with a tough decision between two worthy causes, the Biden-Harris Administration chose the option with the most immediate impact on everyday citizens’ lives, embodying the populist spirit.
Housing:
On the issue of soaring home prices, Democrats’ proposals couldn’t be more pragmatic: build more homes. President Biden is currently urging Congress to appropriate funds to build one million homes by extending federal financing assistance to new construction that meets certain affordability and accessibility criteria and rewarding communities that eliminate arbitrary restrictions on home building.
During his March State of the Union Address, Biden also called for the enactment of a $10,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and those selling their starter homes. This proposal has received bipartisan congressional support as it will both reduce the intimidating up-front costs associated with home ownership. It will also encourage greater turnover (and availability) in the housing market by assuring sellers' fears about exiting their secure situations to purchase a home in a new, less forgiving market.
Healthcare:
Healthcare costs also occupy the forefront of many undecided voters’ minds. Through the esteemed Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats have passed numerous measures preventing the cost of fundamental services and medicines from draining Americans’ pockets.
The legislation extends the Obamacare enhanced premium tax credit, saving individuals about $800 per year on health insurance, empowers Medicare to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma companies, forces vendors to increase their drug prices faster than the rate of inflation to pay into Medicare, protects against surprise medical bills and junk fees, and caps the cost of insulin at $35 monthly and cumulative out-of-pocket payments at $2,000, amongst a plethora of other actions.
Democrats seek to extend these abilities and benefits to private insurers and their recipients during a second term. The Inflation Reduction Act also contains many common-sense cost-saving reforms working on the government’s end, resulting in $176 billion in federal savings over the next decade and enabling these benefits to work for the American people at no additional tax burden. Again, Democrats must highlight not just the legislation, but the resulting quantifiable benefits in their new campaign.
Worker/Consumer Support and Protection:
Beyond mitigating inflationary costs, today’s Democrats also espouse traditionally populist views, proposals, and policies pertaining to minimum wages, labor unions, and consumer protection that serve to safeguard the public’s pocketbooks regardless of the macroeconomic climate.
Last year, AFSCME President Lee Saunders referred to President Biden as “the most pro-union, pro-worker president of our lifetimes—hands down, no contest.” Biden’s 2024 campaign endorsements supported Saunders’ claim. Nearly all the major labor unions had endorsed Biden, with his first coming from the board of AFL-CIO—which represents 60 unions and has over 12 million members—in June of 2023, a staggering 17 months before the general election. Over 30 organized national labor groups followed suit before his campaign’s termination, and the Biden-Harris record unequivocally warranted the support.
In terms of policies specifically enacted to help workers, union and non-union: In 2022 Biden enacted an executive order raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal employees and employees of federal contractors and has since called on Congress to do the same with the federal minimum wage; he’s the first president to join a union strike, having walked the picket line with workers against the Big Three auto manufacturers and dubbing their organizing and collective bargaining efforts “democracy in action”; he’s steered apprenticeship funds, federal loans, and clean-energy subsidies to Rust Belt states; he successfully urged the Federal Trade Commission to ban most employee non-compete clauses, which trap workers in jobs; he’s ramped up enforcement of federal job-safety laws; he’s appointed accomplished union-backed officials to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB); he’s increased the number of people eligible for overtime pay; he’s married labor and environmental incentives in his Inflation Reduction Act to create more than 270,000 good-paying unionized clean energy jobs; and he signed into law a $36 billion bailout to save the Teamster Union’s embattled pension fund. If working-class Americans don’t believe Democrats’ rhetoric, the Biden-Harris Administration’s record speaks volumes about its support for laborers.
For consumers, Democrats are trying to cap credit card late fees at eight dollars, saving Americans $10 billion a year. They’re also eliminating hidden and/or arbitrary charges known as ‘junk fees’ which have netted big businesses an estimated $90 billion annually, at customers’ expenses. However, these measures have been temporarily blocked by Trump-appointed judges. Biden also appointed an aggressive antitrust team, headed by the voracious Lina Khan, at the Federal Trade Commission to shield consumers from predatory business malpractices.
General Economic Conditions:
Lastly, ‘the economy’ in general is the undecided populists’ top issue, and per a pre-Biden fallout ABC News/Ipsos poll, 46 percent trust Trump to handle it, while only 32 percent trust Biden (the remaining 21 percent trust neither). However, by the major macroeconomic indicators, the current administration’s economy is and has (mostly) been historically robust. The June Jobs Report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the economy added 206,000 jobs, marking the forty-second straight month of growth under the Biden-Harris Administration, and held a 4.1 percent unemployment rate, squarely within the ‘ideal’ three-to-five percent range; inflation—formally known as the Consumer Price Index (CPI)—fell to a modest 3 percent in June, from 3.3 percent in May, and is below America’s long-term 3.28 percent average; and real earnings (wages against inflation) rose 0.4 percent from May to June.
The aforementioned targeted policies and proposals combined with the positive macroeconomic climate should galvanize populist swing voters, yet few believe Democrats are better equipped to safeguard their pocketbooks, raising serious concerns about the campaign’s messaging.
A recent New York Times poll found that many of Biden’s most popular policies are also his least known, and vice versa, with voters being most familiar with his least popular ones, affirming his campaign’s failure to effectively communicate policy. The relative irrelevance of some of Biden’s key victories underscores how bad his team struggled in the marketing department. And of greater concern, some voters struggle to distinguish between certain Trump and Biden policies, including an alarming portion who attribute the fall of Roe v. Wade to Biden, instead of Trump. This lack of attribution for successes and misattributions on key issues is downright detrimental for the Democrats and should propel them toward dire strategic revision.
Regardless, Democrats have taken many popular actions that Trump voices support for but doesn't follow through on, rendering their nominee the populist champion Trump claims to embody. But as proven by the aforementioned data, voters don’t realize this, and it’s the new Democratic nominee’s campaign’s responsibility to inform them. In the words of United States Veteran and former Democratic Congressional Candidate Michael Kripchak, “People don’t admire Trump at all. They admire the strength that he puts out there. These people think that he’s fighting for them. Why? Because he’s an excellent salesman. Now imagine if you have someone like Biden actually doing things to help the people, and then push that strong image out there. Right? That’s the combination we need.”
Mr. Kripchak couldn’t have said it better. Democrats must make their populist economic policy victories not just a major component, but the focal point of their new campaign. Biden’s campaign did run some policy-focused ads, but these ads’ salience was overshadowed by the copious others preaching about democracy and Trump’s character. The campaign’s critical adjustment thus requires more overtly touting the Biden-Harris Administration’s record while simultaneously mitigating the ‘our nominee is our democracy’s savior’ ads, with an extra emphasis on the ladder due to its alienating effect on already politically disaffected voters.
Anti-Trump Messaging:
To undermine Trump, Democrats have generally framed the election in existential terms. According to their narrative, Trump is no mere politician worthy of condemnation based on ideology and policy but a crazed tyrant, bound to dismantle the 248-year American Experiment as we know it, should he assume the presidency come January 20, 2025.
While warranted and defendable, the message is melodramatic, intangible, and seemingly politically motivated to the voters Democrats must tailor their campaign towards; they need a palatable, immediate-impact message. It also comes off as hypocritical. One of Biden’s Instagram ads before he dropped out read, “This race is about our freedom. It’s about our democracy. It’s about the very soul of America. Are we prepared to fight for that? I know I am—and I will.” To a politically disengaged voter—who likely isn’t aware of the contextual discrepancies in which each statement was made—this rhetoric (and its sincerity) may be indiscernible from Trump saying, “We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore” during his January 6th speech. It’s not a good look, to say the least.
With Democrats’ must-win apolitical bloc, attacking Trump’s personal qualities and controversies are dismissed as jars in one big partisan catfight, lacking any validity. They negatively impact Democrats by putting them on the same maturity level as Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, which is particularly worrisome given Trump’s lack of maturity and professionalism comprise a dominant portion of their anti-Trump campaign. The Democrats’ supposed hypocrisy arguably puts them a level below, again, as perceived by politically disaffected voters.
Similar to the ‘our nominee is our democracy’s savior’ message, ‘Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy’ also has an alienating effect on Biden’s must-win politically disaffected populist voters. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, Georgetown Government Professor and Senior Political Commentator E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote that “Donald Trump’s threat to democracy is the overriding question before the country—and the centerpiece of the president’s case for reelection.”
Dr. Dionne Jr. correctly identified democracy as the defining issue for Biden’s campaign, but it (sadly) is not the top issue for many voters across the country.
Defending democracy from a convicted felon’s radical, authoritarian, retributive agenda is almost exclusively a priority of the liberal establishment. For example, Dr. Dionne Jr., who champions this objective, attended a private boarding school, received his B.A. from Harvard, and doctorate from Oxford University. He now teaches at a top-25 university while writing for the New York Times. Dr. Dionne Jr. and the many others who help disseminate this failing message embody the liberal establishment, which the critical populist swing voters vehemently despise. Again, these voters’ financial security and personal well-being are their sole priority; they don’t care if the president ensuring these necessities is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person. The personal attacks against Trump make it seem as though Democrats are blind to their true needs, prioritizing a seemingly solely political issue over their real-life experiences.
Unfortunately—for the undecided voter—Trump’s character, controversies, or legal track record won’t be their deciding factor. If they weren’t convinced of his unfitness for office with all that’s been uncovered, nothing new will change their mind. They’re disaffected by the partisan quarreling, the personal jars. Besides, as the Biden campaign presented them, the personal attacks on Trump weren’t just ineffective, but backfiring.
The data solidifies the argument for Democrats to end the personal attacks. Following Trump’s 34-count felony conviction—which many Democrats expected to be a pivotal, nail-in-the-coffin moment for Trump’s reelection bid—polling shows Trump grew his leads in the key swing states of Arizona and Nevada to five points and tied the race in Virginia, which Biden won by 10 points in 2020. Furthermore, Trump’s campaign saw a record surge in fundraising, including a $50 million donation from a reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, Timothy Mellon. Mellon’s donation was one of the single largest campaign contributions ever disclosed and caused the Trump campaign to overtake the Biden-Harris Campaign in cumulative on-hand cash.
Contrary to Democratic aspirations, the conviction rallied Trump’s supporters behind his cries of martyrdom, invigorating support amongst his own party and having little effect on undecideds. MAGA superstar Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene went as far as to equate Trump’s legal woes to Jesus’s crucifixion at a Las Vegas rally saying, “The man that I worship is also a convicted felon.” To her and many other MAGA loyalists, Trump and Jesus are one and the same, and their persecution narrative fortifies with each mention of his character or legal troubles by the Democrats.
In summary, the Democrats’ strategy to take down Trump has proved counterproductive. It presents as frivolous jars in a partisan squabble amongst party elites to the populist voters he most desperately needs to win over. Instead, the new nominee must treat Trump like any other politician—not a supervillain—and explain why he’s a phony, targeting his policy record and proposals (or lack thereof), to the demographic he claims to represent. Democrats must tailor the campaign to the 2024 election-deciding voting bloc’s priorities, instead of continuing pandering to loyalists; thus they must attack Trump’s governing and legislative abilities, emphasizing policies and proposals that’ll directly hurt working and middle-class Americans. They must completely abandon the ‘vilify Trump’ approach. These are some of Trump’s policies, enacted or proposed, that Democrats should spotlight and dismantle:
Taxation:
To begin: taxation; and yes, there’s significant material. Through his trademark 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, former President Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, and reduced income taxes for the highest earners. These cuts—while applicable to all income levels—disproportionately benefited the wealthiest individuals and businesses, and Trump promises to further them in a second term.
According to a Tax Policy Center study, under this law, “Households with incomes in the top one percent received an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent.” Effectively, tax cuts at the top were more than triple the total value of those received by people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent, as a share of after-tax income. Trump also touted that his corporate rate cut would “very conservatively” lead to a $4,000 boost in household income, yet scholarly analysis shows that “workers who earned less than about $114,000 on average in 2016 saw ‘no change in earnings’ from the corporate tax rate cut, while top executive salaries increased sharply.” This would make the Trump tax law another classic failure of trickle-down economics, where wealth flowed opposite the direction its proponents claimed it would.
These statutory cuts may be the most visible, but the plethora of newly introduced corporate tax liability reduction measures make the law far more insidious, and the U.S. tax code under Trump, significantly more regressive.
While often overlooked by non-tax experts, these drastic changes lowered the average effective corporate tax rate—the percentage of income actually paid after taking into account tax breaks including loopholes, deductions, exemptions, credits and preferential rates—from 16 percent in 2014 to a meager nine percent by 2018. For comparison, the American citizens paid an average effective income tax of 13.6 percent under Trump’s tax system. To clarify: the everyday American citizen, working and middle-class people, pay 4.6 percent more of their income in taxes than big corporations. Even more alarmingly, the bigger the company the less it seems they pay. Analysis shows that five of the largest and most profitable American companies—General Electric (GE), General Motors (GM), Meta, Tesla, and T-Mobile—paid a combined average of just 6.9 percent. But it gets worse. A nuanced breakdown of this average reveals that GE paid zero dollars in taxes, not a single penny, while GM paid 4.1, Tesla 1.5, and T-Mobile, 0.4 percent. Meta paid the highest tax rate of these firms at 11.5 percent, just barely more than half of the 21 percent statutory rate.
This is the American tax system under proclaimed populist champion Trump, where everyday citizens bear tax burdens many multiples greater than that of our largest corporations.
Beyond extending the 2018 cuts, Trump’s principal second-term tax proposal is a universal 10 percent tariff on nearly all imported goods. He’s also indicated the figure may increase to 60 percent for Chinese imports across the board. Tariffs can be used to bolster domestic products and industry, spurring job creation, but most imported goods are also cheaper than domestic ones, rendering lower to middle-income Americans their primary consumers.
Thus while Trump’s second-term tax proposal doesn’t include an explicit increase for working-class Americans, experts at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that Trump’s tariffs alone would mean, in effect, a $1,700 tax increase each year for the average American family—or more.
Trump also has troublesome plans for an unpopular yet widely misunderstood executive agency at the heart of all fiscal matters, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS’s budget has been on the chopping block since 2010, but Trump plans to gut it almost entirely. Trump’s 2018 budget allocated the IRS $11 billion, representing an additional $239 million cut from the prior year, and a 21 percent decrease since the initial slashing in 2010. The severely underfunded IRS lacks agents and other resources in crucial areas such as technology, customer service, compliance, and enforcement, undercutting its ability to perform its core functions of collecting taxes, raising revenue, and enforcing the nation’s tax laws.
Americans have always despised taxes (and likely always will). They often project their sour sentiments onto the IRS. However, Americans hate taxes even more when only some play by the rules, and the IRS serves to prevent such ubiquitously frowned upon cheating.
In short, as put by Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Vanessa Williamson, “cutting IRS funding is a gift to America’s wealthiest tax evaders.” Top earners exploit the IRS’s under-resourced state by hiring private tax attorneys to complete their filings and dispute audits. This deters the IRS from even attempting to vet their returns, resulting in many millionaires and billionaires' dubious returns ‘slipping through the cracks.’
According to a Forbes report, in 2022, “the number of millionaires’ returns out of a 1,000 being audited was just 2.3, while for the low-income wage earners, it stood at 12.7.” Similarly, CNBC reports that “the audit rate for Americans earning more than $5 million a year plunged to just over 2% in 2019 from over 16% in 2010,” per a Government Accountability Office study, an 87.5 percent decrease. The only people benefitting from an underfunded IRS are those wealthy enough to fight and avoid it, largely due to Trump’s crusade against it. The IRS focuses its limited auditing capacity on those it feels it can audit successfully, resulting in greater scrutiny for citizens with just pennies to hide while the highest income earners withhold millions and billions legally owed to the U.S. government.
The IRS’s lack of enforcement resources is starving the federal government of significant revenues it’s legally entitled to that could work to help the American people, instead of deepening the deepest pockets. The IRS estimates all this conspicuous tax avoidance cost the U.S. government $625 billion in 2021, the most recent calculation to date. Despite this, Trump has indicated he’d sign a Republican-proposed congressional bill that “would rescind all unobligated portions of the $80 billion in funding for the IRS that the Biden Administration provided in the Inflation Reduction Act,” dismissing the appropriations as wasteful government spending. However, this funding would increase government revenues by $440 billion over the next decade, paying for itself five-and-a-half times over by enforcing the collection of taxes already owed by wealthy individuals and corporations. Funding the IRS increases tax revenues for the government, not tax rates. Nonetheless, Trump will continue depriving it of essential financial resources—and by extension the American people of essential programs and services—during his second term.
Lastly under the umbrella topic of taxes under Trump, beyond funding federal programs, tax revenues are the government’s primary source to pay down the national debt. Trump and Republicans generally paint themselves as the party of ‘fiscal restraint and responsibility,’ yet by the numbers, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. According to a 2023 study by the Center for American Progress entitled ‘Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio,’ the 21st-century Republican tax cuts, enacted by Bush and Trump, have added $10 trillion, comprising 57 percent of the cumulative increase since 2001, and over 90 percent excluding the one-time expenditures in response to COVID-19 and the Great Recession.
Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act alone added $1.7 trillion by fiscal year 2023’s conclusion, and is forecasted to heap an additional $5 trillion onto the debt should he extend them during a second term. During his presidency, the national debt increased by a whopping $7.8 trillion, the third most of any president relative to the economy’s size behind only Lincoln and Bush Jr., and Trump didn’t have a civil war or the two largest foreign conflicts since World War Two to pay for. Even before COVID, the deficit (annual debt) grew $310 billion between 2017 and 2019 to reach $980 billion. It then skyrocketed to $3.1 trillion in 2020 but has declined under the Biden-Harris Administration, with the deficit for fiscal year 2023 estimated at $1.69 trillion.
While economists still debate the long-term implications of an ever-growing debt-to-GDP ratio, interest owed by the federal government grows proportionally with the national debt. Interest rates on the national debt also correlate with consumer interest rates, raising the cost of borrowing to afford fundamental goods like housing, cars, higher education, and much more; anything you can buy on borrowed money becomes more expensive. As with Trump’s tariff, while higher interest rates don’t explicitly target less-wealthy Americans, this demographic suffers at disproportionately greater rates since they borrow far more often and make much smaller down payments than wealthy Americans, who make many big purchases in cash or with significant down payments.
All of this goes to say, that Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made the U.S. tax code significantly more regressive—as in more punitive for those who make less, many of whom fall into the apolitical populist category—and worsened wealth inequality. His proposals, including the universal import tariff and further tax cuts, will only bleaken this reality, a fact the next Democratic challenger’s campaign must capitalize on.
Inflation:
Next up: inflation. Inflation is undeniably a weak spot in the Biden-Harris Administration’s record, but as previously enumerated, they’re enacting strategic, targeted measures to fight it. The president’s efforts have already cut inflation from 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022 to just three percent today. Furthermore, inflation indicates a bullish economy with robust consumer spending, a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration's powerful recovery from the Covid-induced contraction and successful avoidance of a widely forecasted recession.
Trump enjoyed a 2.1 percent average inflation rate during his first three years in office, but this is far from the fruits of his own labor. The economy was still at the tail end of its sluggish recovery from the 2008 recession when Trump took office in January of 2017. Inflation averaged just one percent during Obama’s second term, meaning Trump inherited almost no inflation. An overly wary recession-haunted Federal Reserve also remained reluctant to cease their interest rate hikes in efforts to maintain stable economic conditions, even at the expense of hindering growth, which Trump repeatedly criticized.
Then the pandemic hit, and the economy came to a screeching halt, bringing simultaneous interest rates and price drops seeking to mitigate the contraction. These conditions persisted as Trump left office, causing him to claim credit for record-low mortgage rates and gas prices. However, nobody wanted to buy a home (or much else for that matter) and driving became nearly obsolete with the shelter-in-place mandates. Yes, prices were low and inflation non-existent when Trump left office, but as a result of an economy in crisis, not any deliberate presidential action.
In reality, economists agree that Trump hasn’t articulated sufficient economic policy proposals to accurately forecast his second term’s cumulative inflationary impact. But from what we know so far, “it certainly won’t be a disinflationary agenda” says Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
At the forefront of many economists’ concerns lies Trump’s universal import tax proposal. His first term imposition on $200 billion of Chinese goods already hit Americans’ shopping carts hard, but it pales in comparison to phase two. Former Biden Treasury Department official and UCLA professor Kimberly Clausing warns that “the tariff issue is extremely important—and people are not paying enough attention to the magnitude of the Trump tariff policy, what the consequences would be.” Regarding magnitude, Clausing notes that his second-term proposal would affect more than $3 trillion worth of imports, a tenfold increase over his first-term tariffs. This could increase prices on the imported raw materials U.S. factories depend on, causing certain domestic goods to become more expensive, while also inflating imported goods purchased directly by consumers.
Trump justifies the move by claiming the tariffs will increase demand for domestic goods, and thus, create American jobs to boost production and meet the greater demand. However, a research paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzing the effects of Trump’s first-term tariff found that it failed to boost employment, but did help him electorally. Some economists say the second-term tariffs may bring just a one-time price bump, rather than persistently increasing prices (inflation), but price increases nonetheless, with no proven domestic industry benefits to support them.
Economists have also flagged Trump’s plan to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” as having potential significant inflationary impacts. Beyond the civil rights concerns surrounding this radical, logistically infeasible proposal, it’ll likely induce nationwide labor shortages. A recent analysis by the Peterson Institute of International Economics showed that deporting 1.3 million workers would cause the size of the U.S. economy to shrink by 2.1 percent, essentially creating a recession. The impacts would be particularly prevalent in the agricultural and hospitality sectors, where it's estimated roughly eight million undocumented workers are employed, a substantial portion of these industries’ workforces. Companies would be forced to either produce less or raise wages, both of which would translate to greater burdens on American buyers; so much for “tackling the cost of groceries.”
While certain deregulatory actions Trump has proposed could reduce prices should corporations choose to pass down their cost savings to consumers, eroding antitrust and consumer protection regulations would do exactly the opposite. As with the majority of his economic agenda, former President Trump hasn’t articulated precisely which “costly and burdensome regulations” he plans on cutting (besides those included in the Inflation Reduction Act promoting green energy use and fossil fuel dependency reduction).
However, given his lucrative big business career and enduring cozy relationships with Wall Street’s biggest power brokers, it's guaranteed that a Trump-staffed Federal Trade Commission—which includes the Bureau of Consumer Protection—would take a far less active role in fighting hidden fees, collusion, price-gouging, price-fixing, fraud and other anti-competitive and/or deceptive business practices. These regulations exist to ensure large corporations can’t cheat everyday citizens, which often manifests in deceptive or artificially inflated prices, and Trump’s broad deregulatory agenda seeks to eliminate them.
Every proposal Trump’s campaign has described in sufficient detail to estimate its inflationary impact (those just discussed) is forecasted to increase prices. Apart from these, Trump mostly speaks in vague, surface-level terms when discussing (or avoiding) precisely how he plans to curb inflation during his second term; he often senselessly equates abstract goals like “deporting illegals” and having “the strongest economy in history” to lowering inflation.
“Drill Baby, Drill!” is as close as he’s come to providing specific answers, but as previously asserted, the Biden-Harris Administration is already producing more oil than any country in history. Whatever marginal increases Trump could make in oil production by circumventing or ending environmental protections would do little to affect prices that are largely dictated by global forces, rendering this proposal’s deflationary impact negligible.
As for the rest of Trump’s plans, chapter one of the Trump Republican National Convention official platform lays out their entire ‘inflation-fighting’ agenda, yet it’s just two-thirds of a page long and consists of ambiguous rally-ready one-liners. Its primary ‘policies’ are comically vague and include “unleash American energy,” “rein in wasteful federal spending,” “cut costly and burdensome regulations,” “stop illegal immigration,” and “restore peace through strength.” Seriously, read the PDF; that’s as specific as it gets. Meanwhile, Democrats’ 184-page budget contains boundless targeted policies with inspiring prospects for reigning in prices, despite the White House’s general lack of inflation-fighting tools and responsibility.
So we really don’t know much about exactly what Trump will do to fight inflation now that he’d be adopting a robust economy, instead of one at the tail end of a recession, should he win a second term. But, to quote New York Times U.S. Economy Reporter Jeanna Smialek, “Based on what Trump has proposed so far, there’s little to suggest that his policies would alleviate price increases—and some reason to think that they could exacerbate them.” Trump’s second-term inflation-fighting agenda paints a bleak future for undecided financially vulnerable voters’ pocketbooks, another reality Democrats must emphasize and elucidate moving forward.
Moving beyond inflation but staying in the price realm we have Trump’s plans for housing and healthcare, quintessential goods for Americans across the socioeconomic spectrum. As with those targeting inflation, his policies in these areas are also more likely to increase, not decrease, prices.
Housing:
On January 20, 2017—during Trump’s first few hours as president—his administration blocked an Obama Administration cut in the cost of mortgage insurance for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans, which are designed to increase housing accessibility for low-income and first-time buyers who often can’t qualify for a conventional loan. The measure would’ve reduced insurance premiums from 0.85 to 0.60 percent of the loan amount, which, for example, would’ve saved a borrower $500 annually on a $200,000 loan, but Trump eliminated it. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said the move would “chill the market” for a portion of buyers, making it harder for cash-strapped or first-time buyers to afford a home.
As for his second term, the Trump RNC official platform acknowledges high housing costs as a key issue but again only uses broad terms when defining ‘solutions.’ It suggests that “slashing inflation,” “stopping illegal immigration,” and “cutting unnecessary regulations” will directly lower home prices, which while possible, are changes too abstract to accurately forecast their effects. The platform also ironically mentions “promoting home ownership through tax incentives and support for first-time buyers.” As demonstrated by his blocking of the Obama mortgage insurance cut, this is just a flat-out lie, and the opposite of what Trump’s administration has already done and will continue doing in a second term for housing affordability and accessibility.
Healthcare:
Similarly, Trump’s team has offered scant information on the original measures he intends to implement to mitigate healthcare costs. However, his first-term reversals of widely popular Obama-era policies and plans to reverse many of Biden’s will surely have a negative impact.
In 2016, Trump campaigned markedly on a vow to negotiate drug prices, but abandoned the pledge once in office, declaring it “price fixing” after a meeting with drug company executives in early 2017. Instead, during his first year as president, America’s largest drug companies received massive tax breaks from Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, enjoyed soaring profits, and the list prices of Medicare’s top 20 drugs increased from three to nine times the rate of inflation. In 2019, drug prices across the board rose 21 percent and continued outpacing inflation in 2020. He also opposed the proposed Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019, which would’ve empowered the government to negotiate maximum drug prices much like it does now under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
Some of Trump’s MAGA allies in Congress now seek to repeal the section of the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. While a complete repeal would have to come from Congress, Trump, and numerous health officials from his first administration indicate he’ll drastically soften the program in a second term by tightening the criteria that qualify a drug for negotiations and restricting its human and financial resources. This would come in the name of reducing “bloated federal program spending” and “government overreach” even though 83 percent of Americans support allowing the government to negotiate lower Medicare drug prices.
Trump has also led a fervent crusade against the widely popular Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare or ACA) since his political career’s inception. He declared the failed 2017 effort by a Republican-led Congress to repeal the law that 45 million Americans rely on for coverage a “low point for the Republican Party.” His proposed 2019 federal budget would’ve repealed ACA entirely, cut Medicare funding by $800 billion, and siphoned an enormous $1.5 trillion from Medicaid, all of which would’ve caused Americans to lose coverage or at a minimum, massive amounts of benefits.
Trump passed multiple executive orders weakening Obamacare during his first term. His administration slashed funding that helped patients sign up from $62.5 to $36.8 million; they reduced the advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million, making it harder to learn about the program; they cut the open enrollment period in half from 12 to six weeks; and they eliminated federal payments that help reduce deductibles and out-of-pocket charges for low-income participants, prompting insurers to raise premiums to cover the loss of these cost-sharing subsidies that they still had to offer. These subversive moves resulted in sign-ups for Obamacare falling from nearly 12.7 million in 2016 to just 11.4 million by 2020, right before the pandemic hit.
The Biden-Harris Administration has reversed many of Trump’s actions and enhanced Obamacare’s popularity by enhancing the federal premium subsidies, but Trump has renewed his pledge to dismantle the law in a second term, saying he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” and will replace it with ambiguously “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE.” Losing the Affordable Care Act would result in tens of millions of Americans losing coverage, patients with pre-existing conditions being dropped by their insurers, drastic funding cuts causing the shrinkage of Medicaid (which provides coverage for low-income Americans), the reversal of the policy allowing children to remain on their parent’s plans until age 26, and insurance premium hikes—including for employer plans—thanks to the elimination of ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits. Any or all of these Trump changes would be felt most by financially pressured working Americans, and Democrats must capitalize on this with their new-and-(hopefully) improved messaging.
It’s worth clarifying that while seemingly impossible, Trump’s goal in repealing the Affordable Care Act would not be to raise healthcare prices for everyday Americans. As mentioned, lowering healthcare costs has been a cornerstone of his political agenda for nearly a decade. Trump denounces Obamacare for political reasons because he wants to be the one to fix America’s healthcare affordability issue. Should he accompany his cries for its repeal with detailed explanations of his own concrete and viable alternative, the benefits of his new plan could outweigh what we’d lose from ending Obamacare. Then the conversation wouldn’t just include the negatives of Obamacare’s termination, but the potential positives of Trump’s proposal, and the future of American healthcare may not look so gloomy.
However, as of now, Trump’s plan only includes what he’ll terminate, and nothing regarding what he’ll implement in its place beyond “much better healthcare.” His Congressional allies recognize this, which is why they voted in favor of preserving Obamacare in 2017. They knew Trump hadn’t actually come up with an alternative program, thus repealing Obamacare would unwarrantedly strand billions of Americans.
In reality, ‘winning’ and ‘strength’ are central to Trump’s appeal. He’s promised to end Obamacare for years but has failed to do so, and failure isn’t something he’ll accept, even when his failure benefits the American people. Obamacare isn’t a flawless program, but Trump’s “kill Obamacare” campaign isn’t really about providing citizens with a more affordable, transparent, and choice-promoting alternative, but preserving Trump’s political image as a winner; it’s a purely political stunt, something politically disillusioned populist voters should recognize and rebuke, but again, the new nominee’s campaign must guide them. It’s proof of his unfitness to lead, not on the basis of his character, but his judgment and leadership abilities.
Higher Education:
Higher education, while not essential for working-class people seeking well-paying labor jobs, can be a golden ticket for social mobility, and many lower-income populist voters care deeply about its accessibility. As president, Trump’s proposed 2019 budget cut $3.6 billion in funding from the Department of Education, which he’s recently announced plans to completely shut down during a second term in an effort to “send it (education) all back to the states.”
However, states already hold the vast majority of power over education in their jurisdictions. They alone set curriculum, establish schools, and determine enrollment eligibility. They even have the power to fund school choice policies, allowing parents to use state dollars to send their child to the K through 12 schools of their choice, despite protecting school choice being MAGA Republicans’ main motive for the change. The Department of Education almost exclusively controls the programs affecting education funding and accessibility. It distributes federal funds—as appropriated by Congress—to K through 12 and higher-education institutions, manages federal student loan and student aid (FAFSA), and sets accountability standards for universities.
Eliminating the Department of Education would have virtually no impact on the amount of control states have over the education curriculum, but it would erect purely financial barriers to higher education and reduce resources—and thus, quality—at all levels. States generating the least tax revenue, where education access and quality are already in jeopardy, would suffer the most, despite these places being the most dire for stronger education systems. Should it prove successful, Trump’s move would curtail or outright cancel affordable student loan repayment plans, end student debt relief, end federal student financial aid programs, and pull essential funding from under-resourced public institutions.
In short, Trump will gut public K through 12 education while making higher education completely inaccessible for those who can’t afford it outright or receive academic scholarships from universities themselves. Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris Administration has fully funded the Department of Education. It has also canceled hundreds of billions in student debt and restructured payment plans for roughly 4.76 million Americans, demonstrating its commitment to promoting equitable access to higher education.
For many lower-income voters, it’s not inequality, but unequal opportunity that disillusions them. The Department of Education currently serves to ensure students an equal chance of receiving higher education (to the best of its ability) by providing financial assistance to under-resourced institutions and individuals. Its elimination would only bolster the preservation of a highly-educated upper class and less-educated working class, rendering higher education as the primary means of achieving the ‘American Dream’ of social mobility obsolete. It’s time for Democrats to inform the voters of this anti-American Trump proposal.
Worker/Consumer Support and Protection:
As we’ve observed time and time again, candidate Trump is different than President Trump. Despite his bountiful campaign pledges to fight for laborers, union and non-union alike, many in organized labor say Trump was “no friend of labor as president.” Following Trump’s criticism of the United Auto Workers (UAW) during his RNC nomination acceptance speech, the UAW wrote on X that “@realDonaldTrump is a scab and a billionaire and that’s who he represents. We know which side we’re on. Not his.”
As with laborers’ certifiably warranted support for the Biden-Harris Administration, their distaste for Trump is equally justifiable. During term one, Trump and his administration took many steps to undermine organized labor. Take the following policy actions highlighted in a recent report on Trump’s anti-union record by the Communications Workers of America (CWA):
Trump made it easier for employers to fire or penalize workers trying to bargain or exercise their right to strike by banning them from using their work emails in the process; he tightened qualifications for overtime pay, making more than 8 million workers ineligible and costing them over $1 billion per year in lost wages; he threatened to veto legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour (the same legislation Biden has promised to sign); he pushed for a corporate tax cut bill that gives companies a 50% tax break on their foreign profits, making it financially rewarding to move jobs overseas; and he’s broken his campaign promise to take on companies that move good jobs overseas, and instead having given over $115 billion in federal contracts to companies that offshored roughly 185,000 jobs during his presidency.
Arguably more damaging than these policies were Trump’s administrative appointments to the NLRB and its subsidiary agencies, as they’re immediately in charge of creating and enforcing the rules and regulations intended to protect workers' human and civil rights.
Eugene Scalia—an anti-worker, union-busting corporate lawyer who had spent years trying to dismantle government regulations—was Trump’s Secretary of Labor when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. He left 42 percent of the positions in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) empty, including the critically important Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. Consequently, the drastically understaffed OSHA failed to enforce workers’ health and safety measures, enabling employers to ignore such protections without fear of penalty. For instance, in the first six months of the pandemic, the OSHA received upwards of 10,000 complaints from workers alleging unsafe conditions but issued just two citations.
Similarly, Trump’s NLRB general counsel, Peter Robb, “earned the wrath of many unions for seeming to favor employers over workers,” writes Eyal Press for The New Yorker. For example, he insisted Uber drivers should be classified as ‘contractors’ instead of employees in order to exempt them from federal labor-law protections. He was also instrumental in the infamous firing of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization workers back in 1981 under President Reagan. These are just two of the many anti-labor officials Trump appointed to lead the governmental department tasked explicitly with ensuring workers’ rights, health, and safety.
In contrast with the Biden-Harris Administration’s multitude of targeted pro-labor policies and administrative appointments, Trump’s primary second-term pitch to workers focuses on his plans to restrict immigration, as he claims, “The biggest threat to your unions is millions of people coming across the border.” However, economy and labor experts have long debunked this theory, asserting that newly arrived immigrants take jobs at the very lowest rung on the economic ladder that American workers don’t want, such as day laborer positions. These are not union jobs, rendering Trump’s ‘solution’ non-applicable.
Couple this fact that Trump’s main union worker protection policy will hardly impact union jobs with the anti-labor officials he’s sure to appoint to the NLRB (as he did in his first term), and it becomes obvious that despite his rhetoric, Trump was not and will not become a pro-labor president.
Some workers recognize Trump’s failures. Rick Smith—a truck driver, talk show host, and Teamster union member—said the following when asked his thoughts on Trump’s appeal to union members: “I think it’s a false attempt, like everything else that Donald Trump does. It’s all show and no substance. We went through an entire four years of Donald Trump promising to restore manufacturing and invest in infrastructure. He did nothing but talk.”
But despite Democrats’ support from labor leaders and Trump’s multitude of anti-worker policies and proposals, many rank-and-file workers still say they’re more likely to vote for Trump. As put in a recently published Center for American Progress report, “Workers are inclined to support everyone associated with the project yet likely to need additional education to understand the role that politicians who supported it played.” The Democratic nominee must play this critical educational role much more effectively than Biden did, emphasizing Trump’s specific first-term failures and bound-to-fail proposals to set the record straight on which candidate will follow through on their promises once becoming president.
Last on the topic of worker support is Social Security. Earlier in his career, Trump called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and supported raising the retirement age to 70, positions he has since retracted after recognizing their political unpopularity. More recently he’s made ambiguous remarks regarding benefits cuts, but ultimately backtracked on those too.
He’s since campaigned ardently on protecting the program but has provided no details for how he plans to keep it solvent despite it being projected to run out of funds to support full benefits by 2035. His campaign merely claims that the “economy will be stronger” under Trump, and that alone will strengthen the program in the long term. From the text of the Trump Republican National Convention official platform, “Republicans will restore Economic Stability to ensure the long-term sustainability of Social Security.” That’s the entire plan. A strong economy could help, but it won’t keep Social Security solvent absent additional, targeted actions. This is another weak point in Trump’s agenda that Democrats must spotlight.
Regarding consumer protection, it’s unknown precisely which regulations Trump plans to repeal, or which agencies he wants to dismantle. But he appointed many corporation-friendly officials to lead various departments and agencies in his first term, and given ‘deregulation’ is also a cornerstone of his second term agenda, he almost assuredly will again. Beyond the corporation-friendly personnel, Trump also placed numerous utterly unqualified officials in consumer protection-centered roles while president.
For example, Trump appointed former neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson as his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Housing prices are a key issue for voters right now, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)—which supports equitable access to home ownership and fair mortgages—fell under Carson’s purview. In her book, I Swear: Politics is Messier Than My Minivan, Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) details a congressional hearing with Carson in which she asked him to define ‘REO,’ a basic term pertaining to foreclosure. He responded by asking Porter if she meant ‘Oreo’; yes, as in the cookie.
In this same book, Representative Porter describes a similarly embarrassing encounter with Kathy Kraninger, Trump’s appointment for Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency that verifies lenders follow consumer protection laws (to prevent predatory lending) and generally prosecutes deceptive or abusive business practices. During this hearing, Porter asked Kraninger how one calculates APR (Annual Percentage Rate), one of the most fundamental measures regarding borrowing in any shape or form. It represents the total cost of borrowing money over the course of a year. Appallingly, Kraninger couldn’t do it.
These individuals' lack of qualification are a testament to Trump’s governing abilities, as he hand-picked them for their roles. While the president can influence policy and Congress creates it, executive agencies interpret and apply it. They dictate the rules and regulations derived from Congressional legislation that people experience in real life, giving their actions the most immediate impact on American consumers. Without proper leadership, these purportedly consumer-friendly bureaucratic bodies become extensions of the greedy corporate actors, leaving citizens’ pocketbooks exposed to their malignant practices.
It's safe to assume that Trump will erode protections across the board for American consumers should he reclaim the presidency either directly or through his executive appointments, just as he did during his first term. This will lead to unjust prices, deceptive fees, and collusive business practices, all of which serve to deepen the pockets of wealthy corporations, again, at the expense of everyday citizens. Consumer and worker protection is yet another vulnerability in Trump’s record and proposals that the new Democratic challenger’s campaign must unapologetically exploit to convince the working class who’s really on their side.
General Economic Conditions:
For the sake of fairness, the following figures representing Trump’s presidency are taken from before the pandemic derailed the U.S. economy.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth after inflation averaged 2.67 percent under Trump, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. For context, annual growth during the second term of Obama’s presidency averaged 2.33 percent, which Trump adopted. However, Trump left the Biden-Harris Administration with a staggering negative 3.4 percent growth rate when he vacated the Oval Office in 2021, meaning they had to work much harder than Trump did to get growth back to where it is today.
Through February of 2020, the U.S. economy added 6.8 million jobs under Trump. But again, these pre-pandemic job gains were “right in line with what had occurred in the six years leading up to when Mr. Trump became president,” clarifies Jay Bryson, chief economist at Wells Fargo. For example, the economy added 2.7 million jobs annually during the last three years of Obama’s administration compared to an average of 2.2 million under Trump before the pandemic sent his cumulative total to negative 2.8 million.
Biden and Harris have since added 15.4 million jobs and frequently tout this preeminent record, albeit somewhat misleadingly. Covid caused a loss of 9.4 million jobs. Subtracting this from their 15.4 million means through their first three years, Biden and Harris added 6 million non-COVID rebound jobs. However, it would be wrong to completely discredit or ignore the fact that the Biden-Harris Administration (with support from their congressional Democratic allies) was able to reverse a spiraling downward jobs trend and restore pre-pandemic net growth in a matter of a few years. Trump maintained a good situation for his first three years, while Biden and Harris saved a failing economy and ignited new growth, a much more challenging and impressive feat. The trend is nearly identical for manufacturing jobs, with Trump adding 461,000 before the pandemic, but leaving with a net loss of 178,000. Biden and Harris have added 783,000 as of May 2024, meaning Democratic policies restored Trump’s lost jobs and added new ones.
Glenn Youngkin, Virginia's Republican governor, recently complained that under the Biden-Harris Administration, "66 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck." While not exactly an inspiring data point, a 2019 survey by the American Payroll Association found that 74 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck when Trump was president. Similarly, Turning Point USA's executive director Charlie Kirk recently claimed, "When Trump was president, young people were richer than ever before, and he will do it again." However, an analysis of Federal Reserve data shows that for 2023's fourth quarter, the average wealth of households under 40 was $259,000, a 49 percent increase since the fourth quarter of 2019. Yes, these income figures are adjusted for inflation, and despite Republicans' criticisms, American families are better off under the current administration than they were under Trump.
Lastly, ‘violent crime’ is by no means a key macroeconomic indicator, but it is another Trump talking point pertaining to voters’ personal well-being, which Democrats must also convince them they are equipped to ensure. Violent crime is also a notoriously difficult statistic to accurately convey as many crimes aren’t reported and it requires diligent tracking and honest reporting by local law enforcement agencies around the country to the FBI.
However, after falling consistently since the 1960s, murder rose by nearly 30 percent under Trump in 2020, the largest one-year increase on record. Violent crime followed a similar, albeit less pronounced trend. The murder rate has been falling again since 2021 and has continued to do so each year under the Biden-Harris Administration. According to preliminary FBI statistics, it declined by roughly 30 percent in 2023, the largest one-year decrease to date. The violent crime rate decreased by 6 percent over the same time frame, another record-setting figure.
Again, crime is difficult to track due to the decentralized nature of law enforcement agencies nationwide, but according to the available data, the notion that crime has dramatically increased under the Biden-Harris Administration is patently false. This is an area Trump’s campaign targets aggressively, yet Democrats rebut their claims with equivalent tenacity, something they must do moving forward so voters know they are personally safe under their governance.
Conclusion:
Towards the twilight days of the campaign, Biden’s team did begin honing in on Trump’s ludicrous second-term proposals, directing conspicuous heat onto the “Project 2025” playbook developed by at least 140 of his allies and members of his first-term administration. This is good progress, but Trump’s first term record, campaign addresses, and the second term agenda enumerated on his campaign website provide ample appalling material for his Democratic challenger to leverage; there’s no need to award him the ‘out’ of being able to truthfully say, “well I didn’t actually say that” when condemning his policies.
To reinforce the crux of this paper’s argument:
The Democratic Establishment message ridiculing Trump’s character and emphasizing his threat to democracy isn’t objectively bad. However, for the politically disaffected Democratic-leaning voters they absolutely must win to secure the White House in 2025, it’s not just ineffective, but backfiring.
These voters only want to hear policies and proposals pertaining to their everyday lives, namely their financial security and personal well-being. They vehemently despise politics and politicians. The highly politicized, esoteric, melodramatic ‘existential crisis’ narrative pushed by the Democrats only alienates them further. The next Democratic campaign must tailor its message to the 2024 election’s deciding voting bloc and stop pandering to devoted Democrats, even if swing voters’ top issues aren’t naturally their own.
This entails celebrating the Biden-Harris Administration and congressional Democrats’ populist economic policy record and vigorously criticizing Trump’s lack thereof. It also means a complete stop to portraying the Democratic nominee as an omnipotent political superhero (as they did with Biden), as the kryptonite to evil Trump and the existential democratic threat posed by his fascist tendencies. The next Democratic nominee’s campaign—be it Kamala Harris or anybody else—must utilize policy, not personal attacks.
But reality is confusing. Economically, Democrats and MAGA Republicans have virtually identical proclaimed positions. CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash said the following regarding J.D. Vance’s economic views after he delivered his vice presidential nominee acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention: “Bernie Sanders could have given some of these talking points tonight. Elizabeth Warren could have as well.”
Both parties claim to represent the working class, but as the record unequivocally proves, only one party lived up to their campaign promises during their stint in the Oval Office. Trump’s son-in-law and first term senior advisor Jared Kushner even conceded that Trump lies to his base, alleging in regards to Trump’s “birther” conspiracy theory that Trump “doesn’t really believe it. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it.” Kushner’s colleague and editor in chief of The New York Observer Elizabeth Spiers backed Kushner’s assertion in stating, “Trump did not con Democrats; he conned—and is still conning—his base.”
It’s the Democrats’ job to educate and galvanize the politically resentful populists using Trump and the Biden-Harris Administration’s respective records. They must unambiguously prove their case that his support for ‘the common folk’ is a facade and that his true alliances lie amongst others like him: the elite business class. J.D. Vance also declared at the Republican National Convention that “we need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man,” embodying Trump and MAGA’s populist message of rejecting the elitist establishment and bought-out politicians in support of the laboring class.
But, as Trump’s personal and political history shows, Trump epitomizes everything this movement stands against. His career was jump-started by a “small loan of a million dollars” from his father; he’s inhabited a penthouse made completely of marble and 24-karat gold inside his very own Trump Tower; and he has his name on skyscrapers throughout the world, one of which although never completed was literally planned to be named ‘Elite Tower.’ The man isn’t just big-business friendly; he is big business.
The politically disaffected populist voters need not be excited about the next Democratic administration, but they should be utterly terrified of another Trump term, ultimately making the decision obvious. Fear-mongering has been an underlying theme of both campaigns so far, but the Democrats must change what they’re telling voters to fear; it shouldn’t be about losing democracy, but confidence in their finances, personal well-being, and opportunities for social mobility.
The new Democratic campaign must hone in on the fraudulent nature of Trump’s populist appeal, but again, using policy to sell the narrative, not seemingly unfounded personal attacks. It must explain how MAGA versus Democratic proposals will impact these voters’ everyday lives starting in 2025, painting the bleak future for their pocketbooks and personal well-being under Trump in vivid detail, leveraging his own official plans.
They must prioritize the concerns of the voters who will decide the 2024 election over their own, articulating with concision and conviction the facts that truly are in their favor. Only then will the Democrats’ prospects at reclaiming the presidency be revived, regardless of the nominee topping the ticket.