With the Finish Line in Sight, Dems Have to Keep Their Eyes on the Prize

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With a week to go before the midterms, things are looking extremely good for the Democrats. Despite the GOP’s efforts to rig the congressional maps of several states in its favor and the massive funding advantage the Republicans enjoy — courtesy of dark money, crypto cash, and hundreds of millions of dollars from Elon Musk — the party of the donkey is in a strong position to win the House and perhaps the Senate, which seemed impossible a few short months ago. 

The dynamics of the race haven’t really changed in weeks. If anything, the conditions have gotten even better for the Democrats and more red states and districts have come into play. Therefore, all they have to do in the coming days is to stay the course and not screw this up. 

While that may sound like a fairly simple thing, it’s a tall order for a party that has a tendency to self-destruct. 

Ahead of recent elections, Democrats were often plagued by internal divisions and/or they focused on unpopular cultural issues that were foisted upon them by the GOP and the right-wing media machine.

Not this time.

After sometimes contentious primaries, the party’s different factions have (largely) pulled together and rallied behind a roster of widely appealing nominees. For the most part, Democratic voters chose strong candidates, especially in states Donald Trump won in 2024 but that are now competitive — and that hold the key to wresting the Senate majority from Republicans. States like Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, and perhaps even Nebraska, South Carolina, and Mississippi (Mississippi!!!).

Perhaps more than anything, throughout the year they have been able to count on a boost from their most important asset in the quest to win control of Congress and exercise some much-needed oversight over the president: the president himself.

Trump has been a gift that keeps on giving. Where Democrats have chosen solid candidates, he has saddled the GOP with handpicked liabilities like Ken Paxton (Texas) and Darline Graham (South Carolina). 

More importantly, the president has shown a real knack for tanking his own approval ratings and turning strengths into weaknesses. For example, the people who voted for him were totally on board with mass deportations of undocumented “aliens” until a couple of peaceful US citizens were gunned down and killed in the streets of Minneapolis (and then labeled “terrorists”), protesters were brutally assaulted, masked ICE goons fabricated stories to cover up their crimes, and it became clear that “the worst of the worst” really meant “everybody.” 

Of course, there were plenty of other lowlights, like the continued cover-up of the Epstein files, and his support for everything from unrestrained artificial intelligence development and data center expansion to Vladimir Putin. 

Then there is the constant chaos and insanity that might work for Trump on the campaign trail but not when he is in the (ever more gilded) Oval Office, the lawlessness of the administration, or his constant lying about how everything is going great and prices are coming down.

And that brings us to his two most calamitous decisions: the war and his tariffs. Taken together, just these two actions have exacerbated an affordability crisis that has most voters gravely concerned about the economy.

But wait, that’s still not all. 

While Americans are struggling financially, in large part owing to Trump’s blunders, the president and his family are raking in unprecedented piles of cash from shady crypto ventures, investments in companies that miraculously score government contracts soon thereafter, and thousands of stock trades. In addition, it’s $40 million for a documentary here, a Qatari jet and golden trinkets there, plus $100,000/month from stock traders paying for early access to social media posts, IRS immunity, and millions of dollars from settling frivolous lawsuits (some of which may have gone missing). 

That’s just the stuff we know about. 

It also appears as though a healthy pardon industry (healthy for Trump’s hangers-on, not the country) has sprung up over the past couple of years — and you better believe that, if a dilettante like Alina Habba can score $50 million for helping a billionaire secure a pardon, the Trumps are also raking it in. 

We also wouldn’t be surprised if the president and his family had explored other “revenue streams” from individuals, companies, and countries with business before the US government. 

This unprecedented megagrift hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

While Americans are concerned about their cost of living and high prices, they are even more troubled by government corruption, which covers things like a president enriching himself to the tune of $2.2 billion in one year, or one man spending a few hundred million dollars to buy himself a senator or two (not to mention a Senate majority) who will then reward his largesse.

And that’s all the Democrats should be talking about in the next few days (and beyond): affordability, greed, and corruption. 

Everything else is just a sideshow. 

Of course, those three things are related and the connections have never been more obvious. For example, Americans don’t want data centers in their backyards, but all those rich tech donors do. So, what happens? Data centers everywhere. 

Meanwhile, the crypto industry is spending $55 million to keep one of its critics out of the Senate. 

Or remember how Trump asked oil executives for $1 billion ahead of the 2024 election? Those are the same companies that are now earning massive profits by jacking up gasoline and diesel prices. 

It’s all just one very exclusive club whose members keep scratching each other’s backs while amassing unimaginable wealth, with everybody else getting left behind.

To change that, the Democrats don’t just have to win the midterms, they also have to do something about it once they control one or both chambers of Congress. And it’s no longer enough to nibble around the edges of a system that doesn’t work for the vast majority of Americans. Wholesale changes are needed (but that’s another column for another day).

For now, Democrats just have to tune out all of the distractions, especially those coming from Trump.

No talk about the lawlessness (apart from in the context of corruption, for example by highlighting that the current system allowed someone like Epstein to get away with his heinous crimes for too long, and that it still protects others), the ridiculous things the president says, and definitely not impeachment — just a laser focus on bringing down prices and addressing the things that really matter to Americans.

Every debate, every interview, every ad should be about reinforcing that simple message: Trump and the GOP said they would bring down prices, but they made your household budget woes worse while they and their billionaire buddies got rich. 

There is a reason that Republicans want to make this election about anything other than corruption and high costs — such as trans people and Muslims.

They are even hiding from their signature achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, because it was mainly beautiful for billionaires while taking away health care and food benefits from millions of Americans and adding another $4 trillion to the national debt.

Instead, it should be Democrats talking about it and pointing out that most people have experienced little to no benefit from that legislation, its massive price tag notwithstanding.

Make no mistake about it, this is a moment in history when the trajectory of a country can change… and the nation can’t afford for the Democrats to let it go to waste.