Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi always said the only way for Democrats to win elections was to focus on the proverbial “dinner table problem.” She has a pretty good record as caucus leader for 20 years, presiding over a lot of big wins and a lot of small wins, so she knows what she’s talking about. To her way of thinking, people vote out of concern for their material well-being, which in recent years has meant basics like health care, job security and the cost of living.
Republicans, by contrast, tend to rely on broader, overall security appeals. “Law & Order” has always been their bumper sticker, covering a variety of free-floating anxieties in American society related to cultural change, race and the loss of status of white heterosexual males. Their answer to economic stress comes down to blaming the evils of the day, whether it’s immigration or the deficit, and the answer is always tax cuts and more tax cuts.
Democrats are generally more trusted on table issues, depending on whether they happen to be in office when some kind of economic crisis hits. Jimmy Carter paid a high price, losing his re-election bid in 1980 after inheriting severe stagflation from his Republican predecessor and suffering a severe recession as a result of the Federal Reserve’s policies he supported to break stagflation. His successor, Ronald Reagan, benefited from it, a common consequence of painful policies adopted by Democrats to clean up the economic mess of Republican administrations.
After Carter’s defeat, the Republican spent 12 years in the White House, which included a great boom that inevitably turned into a recession and helped Bill Clinton defeat George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election. The economic boom Clinton presided over saved his presidency, which had been plagued by scandals largely due to the Republican Party’s eventual evolution from the party of mainline Protestants and primarily street-level business owners to one of ruthless street fighters.
Of course, the economy isn’t the only issue motivating voters. While more abstract concepts of foreign policy and national security rarely top the agenda, war definitely can. George W. Bush understood this in 2006, when the American people finally realized that the Iraq War was a disaster. But something else is looming. Bush also made the fatal mistake of trying to privatize Social Security, undermining trust in the Republican Party to safeguard hard-won benefits. Democrats swept the midterm elections.
Two years later, Barack Obama suffered a double whammy. The Iraq war remained a top issue, but during the height of his campaign against Republican candidate Arizona Sen. John McCain, the housing market hit bottom and the world suffered its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the same time, the health care crisis reached its peak, with millions going bankrupt and many suffering and dying due to high insurance prices. After his victory, these kitchen table issues became front and center in shaping Obama’s presidency. Indeed, two years into his first term, as the Great Recession continued to drag on, the American people let out what amounted to a political primal scream and gave the Democratic Party the “bombardment” Obama famously delivered in the 2010 midterm elections. Perversely, this was largely due to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the party’s health care plan, which emphasized that good deeds do not go unpunished.
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Then there’s Donald Trump. In 2015, when he announced his candidacy for president, the economy was recovering and enough people were deceived by his false reputation as a great businessman with a promise to make everyone rich that he barely won the Electoral College. Since taking office, Trump has largely just gone along with the economic recovery that has begun and taken credit for it. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and his incompetence became fully apparent, voters turned against him. If there’s ever been a problem at the dinner table, it’s the pandemic: We’ve all been sitting around the dinner table for months wondering if the world will ever be the same. Trump failed to deal with the situation.
But Joe Biden was re-elected after he presided over a painful economic recovery from the pandemic that brought inflation to a population that had never experienced it for the first time in decades. The issue has put him and his replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, in a difficult position, allowing Trump to return to the White House and promise to return the economy to the so-called golden era of his first term. Unfortunately for America and the world, enough people have once again believed Trump’s machinations, and today we are in a crisis of confusion, distrust, incompetence, and despair over the aggressive policies implemented by the second Trump administration.
The dinner table issue remains a top concern for most voters. The cost of living remains high and continues to rise. As Trump chooses war with Iran, housing is out of control and gas prices are skyrocketing. His much-ballyhooed tariffs have kept inflation high, and there’s now little doubt what’s driving polls showing Republicans will suffer a crushing defeat in the November midterm elections.
But the concept of kitchen table problems has its limits. Not everything in life is actually about money, and people’s views on the economy are often influenced by other issues that may not seem directly relevant at first glance.
But the concept of kitchen table problems has its limits. Not everything in life is actually about money, and people’s views on the economy are often influenced by other issues that may not seem directly relevant at first glance. For example, Bush’s losses in 2006 were affected by his mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq, both of which created a sense of arrogance and incompetence in the administration. There is no doubt that the backlash against Obama during his first term was also fueled by revulsion at his entitlement as the first black president. Trump also benefited from the role misogyny and racism played in his victory over the previous two women to win the major party nomination.
The problem is that Democrats often rely solely on the agenda of table issues and fail to address the underlying anxieties that are causing their pain. To Donald Trump, they are outnumbered.
The relentless chaos of his presidency, from a brutal crackdown on immigration to the blatant corruption and depravity of the president himself, as exemplified by his obsession with gold and the construction of personal monuments in times of economic stress, is leaving the public frustrated and angry. The fact that Trump has broken one of his fundamental promises not to plunge the country into war as he continually complains about being denied the Nobel Peace Prize is maddening. His continued disregard for the rule of law and attack on the democratic process is clear. There is a huge gap between how ordinary Americans feel and how their leaders behave.
People have longed for a holistic explanation of the chaos and confusion — and Democrats have finally found a way to express it. As POLITICO recently noted, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, Michigan Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, while each distinct, are “pushing an anti-corruption message heavily in the final weeks of the campaign, as new research shows that linking corruption to America’s economic struggles could propel Democrats into the sprint.”
The corruption argument is compelling. In addition to the abhorred Iran war (and the resulting gas prices), Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and old friend Steve Witkoff’s dealings in the Middle East have come under scrutiny and outrage, with government contracts awarded to companies in which Trump’s son has invested. Even though Republicans are cutting Medicaid and Medicaid, pardons are available to anyone with enough cash, some of whom have been convicted of health care fraud. Contrary to his rhetoric, Trump’s Louis XIV-style monument to himself was largely paid for by taxpayers. On top of that, there are reports that Trump has earned $2 billion since returning to the White House, a figure that is too high even for him.
This shameless bribery is too obvious for voters to ignore, and Democrats are finally realizing that criticism of Trump and MAGA Republicans must go beyond the dinner table because they are all interconnected. Chaos, incompetence, deceit and self-dealing are at the heart of America’s troubles, benefiting Trump and his cronies at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.
Distilling all of this into a media-ready indictment, a brief snippet, is difficult, but “Washington is rigged to benefit the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans” is as good as it gets. We hope Democrats will take this message of reform and actually take action after Election Day.
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About the 2026 Midterm Elections