The Democrats’ Message Is Broken. These Strategists Have a Few Fixes.

The stark consequences of President Donald Trump’s unpopular signature budget bill—including the millions set to lose healthcare, access to food, or both, as well as the slashing of funds and subsidies for clean energy improvements—are becoming clearer, and more worrisome, in the days since its passage. National Democrats are now scrambling to respond, with an eye toward an August soft-launch of their next campaign.

There is a sense that the opportunity to lay some groundwork was distressingly missed. Some polling indicates that the public wasn’t as well-informed as it could have been about the contents of the bill and its real-world consequences before it narrowly passed both the Senate and the House last week. According to one poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, around half of respondents did not know the effect the bill would have on Medicaid, Medicare, or SNAP food assistance payments. But national Democrats plan to stake their claim for the 2026 midterms on the very real harms that these new policies will cause, according to a July 3 article in Politico. As with the Dobbs decision that ended the federal right to abortion, Democrats once again find themselves reacting to Republicans’ boldly undertaken, but disastrous policies.

Whatever alternative they plan to offer remains on the drawing board. But money is heading out the door, all the same. As Politico goes on to report, Democratic PACs and affiliated institutions have started ramping up their ad buys in red districts, focusing on making clear to voters how much the spending and tax cuts affect their day-to-day lives and recruiting candidates to try and flip Republican seats. But these chess pieces didn’t start moving until after Trump’s bill was passed. Some Democratic strategists rue the fact that the party held their fire until now.

“I’m a little discouraged that, as far as being a really crafty, swift opposition—even though ultimately, we probably couldn’t have prevented [the bill from passing]—we certainly could have made it harder to pass and increased awareness that it is a bad bill,” Philip de Vellis, a partner at Democratic media strategy firm Beacon Media said. The bill is unpopular, but not necessarily because Democrats effectively communicated what it would mean for voters. “It’s built up any resistance because it truly is not good legislation.”