This November, Democrats will be mostly about: we are not Trump/MAGA. There will be those who are not this kind of GOP but would like to register their disgust with it. When they cast a ballot, they have a choice, and if they cannot swallow Democrats either, they can either skip the line, stay home, or hold their noses. That may work in November 2026, but in 2028? How about getting a jump-start on both 2026 and 2028 and coming up with a theme that is both an implied attack on MAGA/Trump and also contains a positive message? And do it in one or two words: How about "being fair"?
That is still not enough because the credibility of such a theme depends on what and how Democrats plan to do about it. For 2026, since all politics are local, each Senate or Congressional race may be tailored to local needs and gripes. However, in 2028, Democrats had better have their act together on public policy issues, which seem fair to more than just those who register with their party. Exactly, for example, are you going to get lower prices, less corruption, and less chaos fairly?
I proposed using "fairness" as a theme almost a year ago. Since then, there has been a lot of political water under the bridge that makes it even more relevant today. It is even more true today as both an attack on MAGA and a vision of a positive value around which public policy and a party platform can be shaped. It is about bringing fairness back to America.
Public policy words like cost, chaos, and corruption fit neatly into both an attack and a vision of the future. It is especially true as the self-dealing pocket-stuffing Trump and family ask to be exempted from IRS scrutiny and laws in their outrageous slush fund proposal to reward criminal activity committee on their behalf, from J6ers to Tina Peters, a county clerk. The stigmatizing of concentration camps of those who MAGA see as undesirables in our country, whether they had followed the law or skirted it while otherwise leading exemplary lives, is n not fair, and it is related to an administration peppered with white Christian nationalists who see themselves as superior to others. When one group strives to repress another group, racial, religious, or cultural, that is not fair, but the chaos it creates results in conflicts on steroids and a feeling that everything is short-term, depending on the news cycle and Trump's midnight tweets. When golden ballrooms and triumphal arches dominate Trump's view of prosperity for himself, while so many he governs see the affordability of everyday living decline, as evidenced by the price tags, it is not fair. When the ultra-rich and the corrupt determine public policy, it creates an unfair advantage, and those who are neither corrupt nor ultra-rich are not treated fairly because their voices are dismissed by a corrupt ruler. When one party tries to suppress the turnout of the other, that is not fair. Thankfully, the SAVE Act went down in flames, as had the attempts to unseat African American congresspeople in South Carolina and in Alabama on 5/26/26 through racial gerrymandering. https://www.vote.o rg/save-act/
Democrats could use the value of fairness to specific proposals: Following the rule of law instead of the rule of one who thinks executive orders are issues, the laws that are not enforced are a beginning. The rule of law enforced without fear or favor is one way to achieve fairness. That includes restoring the independence of the DoJ and the checks and balances of Congress. The Voting Rights Act they support is another means of restoring fairness. A tax policy in which everyone pays their fair share is, well, "fair". Those are just the beginnings of a fairness platform that looks not to the past but to a way forward. An immigration policy that provides due process and protections of constitutional rights and secure borders at the same time is also fair.. There is another way "fair" could be worked in: anti-corruption and anti-gerrymandering could be "fairplay";
Here is what I wrote in this blog a year ago.
June, 2025: Once upon a time, I thought Americans valued fairness. It was a value people embraced. I will make the leap of assuming that it is still a value held by more voters than by those who are completely self-absorbed and self-promoting. What about a good gut cry: "It ain't fair" and proposing a " fair deal for all". The implication that "all" means rich who need to chip in their fair share and ordinary people, who are just hard-working people, trying to make ends meet, caring for others or themselves and their families, who are very disadvantaged, sick, aged, uneducated, or victims of racial or cultural discrimination.
Packaging is always a challenge, but I recently heard about a way to do it. Whatever you think of former Rep. David Jolly, who morphed from a Florida Republican Congressman to an independent and finally to a Democrat to run for Florida governor, or even if you think he has no chance to win, he has a way with words 6/6/ and 6/7, 2025. He had two short phrases in a recent CBS interview that hit home to me, and he repeated them on other media: He is for Democratic values that "fight for an economy for all and a party that lifts up everyone," providing a context for the economic fairness and cultural issues he then fleshed out in short soundbites of issues relevant to Florida.
Perhaps I am a cockeyed optimist, but Democrats I think understand that the goal of the anti DEI application of the radical MAGAs is to roll back the civil rights movement and it is not fair to all, tax policies that give great deals to the very rich at the expense of the very poor are not fair to all, or propose tariff policies that screw the budget conscious families to satisfy some notion of a power grabbing president, are also just not fair.
Democrats' messaging to date has not been put into clear, sharp words. Democrats have backed into it by decrying each issue as it comes up as bad for ordinary people. It has become a predictable background noise. Democrats should reverse the order and state the value up front, rather than delivering it as a conclusion before getting into the brain-numbing weeds of public policy issues and data, as cable talkers, those at political rallies, town halls, and sound-bite interviewees often do.
Democrats have a history of the New Deal, the war on poverty, and promoting consumer and environmental protections that attempt to bring fairness in public policies to more than just the rich. Why not resurrect the slogan from a true populist president, Harry S. Truman: "a fair deal". It's roots go deep in Democratic party traditions and Truman's version was as timely then as it is today, if more so."President Truman's Fair Deal ensured the survival of social security, preserved the American welfare system, and prioritized civil rights legislation." Truman's Fair Deal | Overview, History & Significance - Lesson | Study.com It just needs to be packaged a bit differently, as a value applied to our modern times. It is both an implied attack on MAGA and a positive message about what Democrats stand for today, with appeal across party lines.
The truth is, the MAGA core group will never be moved off whatever appeals to them, including dog-whistles and attempts by Trump to execute unconstitutional policies that favor one race or economic power over another. There are voters out there who still value being fair or who count themselves as victims of the MAGA unfairness policies. Democrats do still have to make sure those being hurt know who to blame, but that is a subpoint, not the theme alone. It needs to be put in the context of fairness.
