WASHINGTON, D.C. – If President-elect Trump is preparing to return to the White House, a leading Democratic pollster and strategist insists her party needs a new game plan to confront the former and soon-to-be president.
“The 2025 playbook cannot be the 2017 playbook,” insisted Molly Murphy, a leading pollster on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, as she gave a presentation at the first meeting of the Democratic National Committee executive committee since last month’s elections.
Trump’s convincing victory over Harris — he captured the popular vote and won all seven major battleground states — and the Republican Party’s flipping of the Senate and clinging to their fragile majority in the House of Representatives has Democrats scrambling for answers as they now trying to get out of trouble. the political wilderness.
Murphy said, pointing to post-election polls that most Americans are giving the president-elect a thumbs up on how he is handling his transition, and that Trump will return to the White House next month in greater popularity compared to eight years ago, when he ran for won first. the presidency.
THE CHAIRMAN OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE SPELLS OUT THE PARTY’S 2026 GAME PLAN
Trump arrives to speak during an election night celebration at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
And she noted that voters “give him the outrageous comments he makes all the time because they approve of his handling of the economy.”
Murphy said in her comments Friday, as DNC leaders huddled in a hotel near the U.S. Capitol, that Democrats’ mission is to change that perception.
“We want to focus on this term … and tell the story about how this term is worse and things are not going to be good for the American people,” Murphy said.
The Democrats’ message should be: “Donald Trump doesn’t care about you. He’s going to screw you,” Murphy argued. “As a North Star, I think we need to stay focused on… the economy and costs.“
“Many people expect milk prices to return to where they were,” Murphy noted.
TRUMP ALLIES TURNING THE HEAT ON HOLDOUT GOP SENATORS
She said Democrats should borrow a page from the Republican Party Campaign 2024 playbook: “We can do what they did to us… even if the economy is stronger, the costs will still be too high for the people.”
And she added that Democrats should draw attention to what she called unpopular parts of the Trump agenda, including “tax breaks for the rich” and “letting companies jack up prices and make you pay for it.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) Executive Committee will meet for the first time since the presidential election on December 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Fox News/Paul Steinhauser)
And she said the party should frame Trump’s proposed tariffs on key U.S. trading partners as “a sales tax on the American people that will drive up prices,” a line Harris used during his campaign.
Murphy also emphasized that Trump and the Republicans made gains with key parts of the Democratic Party’s base — younger voters, Latinos and black voters — because of the economy, but also because of Democrats’ “undignified” messaging.
“We talk about policy a lot,” Murphy said, as Republicans have “culture conversations that create a connection between the party and the people beyond just policy.”
DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHAIR FRONTRUNNER OFFERS ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’ ADVICE
Murphy argued that “these culture conversations that conservatives have been able to have in an organic way have been able to create a connection that we know is not supported by policy… and we know that we have a lot of shared values with these working Americans and we need to find ways to have more authentic connection points there.”
Vice President-elect Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, joins Trump during an election night celebration at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 6, 2024. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison complimented Murphy’s presentation.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
But Harrison, who is not running for a second four-year term as chairman of the party’s national committee, pointed to the next White House race and offered that the party should also focus on Vice President-elect Senator JD Vance.
“I think it will be a big mistake on our part if we focus all our attention on Donald Trump and not on JD Vance, especially as we look at the 2028 race,” Harrison emphasized.
