Democrats Want to Run on Affordability:

Here’s How to Do It Right

Everywhere you look, Democrats are talking about affordability. That’s good — they should be. The bottom eighty percent of Americans can’t see a dentist. and pay $2,000 a month for rent. People are right to be pissed off but they also deserve to know who they should be pissed at.

If you want to run on affordability and actually move voters, you have to do it the right way — the way that aligns with the negative partisanship model. That means telling a clear, villain-vs.-hero story. And in that story, the villain is the Republican Party.

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Step One: Find the Villain

Voters don’t process politics in spreadsheets. They respond to narrative — simple, emotional stories that explain their pain and offer a solution. If you want voters to trust Democrats on affordability, you have to give them a clear enemy to blame for why life is so damn expensive.

And guess what? The villain is obvious: the Republican Party.

Donald Trump/Republicans promised to lower prices on Day One. What did they do? He slapped tariffs — a double tax — on Americans that nobody asked for, and nobody likes.

Its on video. Over and over. The ad writes itself.

Those tariffs raised the cost of groceries, clothes, appliances, cars, you name it. Tariffs that he’s still defending as “good for America” even as voters get hammered at the checkout line. Promises made. Promises broken. Prices up.

But the affordability story isn’t just about tariffs. It’s about decades of Republican economic malpractice — starting in 1980, when Ronald Reagan sold America on a scam: cut taxes for the rich, and the benefits will “trickle down” to everyone else. Fifty years later, here’s where that got us:

• Wealth inequality back to Gilded Age levels.

• Eroded Middle Class and social mobility

• Corporate profits skyrocketing while rural hospitals close and teachers buy supplies out of their own pockets.

• Housing no one can afford can afford so investors can make cash off our crushed dreams.

The rising tide lifted exactly one boat — yachts.

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Step Two: Tell the Big Story

This is where Democrats have failed for decades: refusing to tell voters the full story of how Republicans rigged the economy. That ends now. It must.

The message has to be simple, repeated, and relentless:

• Republicans didn’t just fail to make things better — they intentionally made things worse with Trump’s tariffs.

• Elon and Trump got rich while you got stuck with closing schools and no healthcare.

• Every time they get power, they cut taxes for the wealthy, balloon the deficit, and then demand cuts to schools, hospitals, and infrastructure to “balance the budget.” The “beast” Republicans ended up starving was the American working class.

• Meanwhile, Democrats are the only ones who ever invest in working families — from FDR’s New Deal to Obamacare and Biden’s infrastructure, the ONLY party with tangible deliveries for working Americans is the Democratic Party and no one knows it.

You can’t just say, “We’ll make housing more affordable” or “We’ll bring down prices.” You have to set the frame first: Trump + your Republican opponent caused this mess, and you (candidate) + Democrats will fix it.

Step Three: Make It Emotional

This is where most Democratic messaging goes flat. They want to talk about policy, BIG NUMBERS, and policy plans instead of anger and accountability.

No. Make your ads personal. Use real people who lost their businesses to Trump’s tariffs. Use people who now have to drive their kids to school and hour away because Republican vouchers closed their local schools and now they live 40 miles from a hospital while living with heart disease.

People don’t feel numbers, they feel people.

Here’s the reality: people are angry. They’re angry that they can’t afford to go to the dentist. They’re angry that they’re drowning in debt while billionaires shoot themselves into space. They’re angry that their kids’ schools are underfunded, that they can’t buy a starter home, that the economy feels rigged — because it is rigged.

So stop trying to calm that anger. Harness it.

Your message needs to say, over and over: You have every right to be angry. Here’s who’s to blame. And here’s who’s fighting for you.

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Step Four: Be Brutal in the Contrast

This is where negative partisanship works its magic. The party label on the ballot is far more important than the candidate in most races and even very good candidates as Beto O’Rourke was in the Texas senate race in 2018 can’t outrun the party ID next to their name on the ballot. Thus, if we ever want to win significant national power again we need to make voters love Democrats and fear/hate Republicans. We need to show Republicans in red and swing states what they have been getting from their Republican politicians: screwed.

We must turn Coke drinkers into Pepsi drinkers.

We know it can be done because they did it to us.

They didn’t steal the working class from us without undermining its brand loyalty to the Democratic Party. We can now do the same. We must.

Frame every message with a sharp contrast:

• Republicans kicked veterans off Medicaid to give the Trump family more money.

• Republicans shut down your rural hospital to pay for tax cuts for their billionaires owners.

• Republicans said they’d lower prices on day one. Instead Trump’s dumb tariffs are driving costs up even higher.

Every ad, every speech, every social post needs to drive this point home: Promises made, Promises Broken. Republicans did this to you. Democrats will avenge you.

Here, I even made you a meme.

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Step Five: Repetition Wins

This strategy only works if you stay disciplined. That means no deviation from the message. No hedging. No apologizing. Just a relentless drumbeat of accountability and action:

• Trump’s Tariffs are a tax on you

• Trump got paid, we got played

• Promises Made, Promises Broken

Repetition builds salience. Salience drives votes.

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Step Six: Tactical Execution

Here’s how you make this strategy real:

• Ads: Tell stories. Use real people. Show their bills. Then draw a straight line from their pain to Republican policies. End with a call to action that says, “Vote for Democrats. Fight back.”

• Social Media: Graphics that are simple and devastating. “They got rich. You got screwed.” “Tariffs = Trump Tax.” Keep it short, sharp, and shareable.

• Field and Canvassing: Train every volunteer to lead with the villain frame. “Republicans did this. Democrats are fighting to fix it.” Make the pitch emotional and conversational, not policy-heavy.

• Earned Media: Flood local outlets with op-eds and letters to the editor that hammer the same core message.

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The Bottom Line

Democrats can absolutely run and win on affordability — but only if they stop pretending this is a neutral issue that both parties caused when Democrats have been fighting to pass these policies for decades only to see Republicans kill off everything as socialism.

Make that ad. Every pro-working American policy Dems have introduced in the last 20 years has been decried by Republicans on the House and Senate floors as “socialism.”

Its time for voters to find out that when Republicans say socialism they mean Social Security and Medicare.

Start telling voters the truth: Republicans broke the economy, and Democrats need their help to stop them and fix it.

We’re in a constitutional meltdown. Right now, voters don’t want to be pandered to with vague promises or technocratic policy lists. They want a fight. They want a fighter. They want someone to look them in the eye and say, “You’re right to be angry. You’ve been lied to. And we’re here to take your country back from the people who sold you out.”

They want a general.

If Democratic candidates can do that — if they can tell the story of the last 50 years of Republican economic sabotage, tie it to the pain voters feel every single day, and offer a vision for rebuilding the middle class — then affordability becomes more than a talking point. It becomes a winning narrative.

And it’s a narrative the GOP can’t run away from. Because they built this mess. Its time to prosecute the case of the Republican Party’s disastrous record.