How to Beat the GOP's Midterm PlaybookA sample of what Message Box Pro members are getting in their inboxes.
Hi everyone As many of you may have heard, a few weeks ago I launched Message Box Pro, a subscription product for people who work in communications or politics at any level — from candidates to staffers to local organizers and activists. This is a project I’ve been working on for years, and I’m genuinely excited about how it’s coming together. Today, I wanted to give you a real sense of what Message Box Pro members get in their inbox every week. I’m offering Message Box subscribers a special deal: sign up and your first month is free. After that, you’ll be charged $65/month for full access, but only if you stay. Cancel anytime, no questions asked. Thanks, Dan After Democrats romped in the 2025 elections, Republicans declared that their strategy for the midterms would be focused on affordability. White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, Trump’s de facto political hand, told Politico:
Trump was supposed to go on an “Affordability Tour” where he barnstormed the nation talking about the tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill and other (pretty fake) administration measures to lower costs. Of course, his pivot to an affordability message was an abject failure even before he launched his disastrous war in the Middle East. He can’t bring himself to admit prices are up, because doing so would mean admitting he failed to keep his core campaign promise. He gets visibly angry at the mere idea of affordability. He’s called it bullshit and immediately tells everyone how high the stock market is and how things have never been better. This graph from Nate Silver shows just how poorly that strategy has worked.
The Republicans have lost on affordability. With gas prices rising and unlikely to fall significantly before the midterms, it’s hard to see what they could say or do that would change the dynamic. So they are pivoting once again to a new midterm strategy. Here’s how Politico Playbook described it last week: In other words, the GOP plans to use its massive financial advantage in this election to nuke the Democrats and make them an unacceptable alternative. Why the GOP Landed on This StrategyI am in no way surprised that the GOP landed here. It’s really the only option available to them. Given that Trump is now underwater on immigration, they can’t even pivot to his favorite issue. This is their best card in a bad hand. They kind of have no viable options. I should note that in this context — for most voters, at least — “woke” doesn’t mean using your pronouns, DEI, CRT, or any of the other stuff that drives Fox News programming. It’s just another way of saying “liberal.” The real message is that Democrats are dangerously out of the cultural mainstream and too weak to protect you. The GOP has some things going for it. First, people do not love the Democratic Party. It remains quite unpopular — and in most polling, more unpopular than the Republican Party despite Trump’s abysmal approval rating. The “Woke, Weak, and Way Too Liberal” message also fits with voters’ preconceived notions about the Democratic Party. A post-2024 election survey conducted by the centrist think tank Third Way asked voters to describe Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in one or two words. You can see the results.
The fact that voters thought Trump was stronger and viewed Kamala Harris as too liberal is one reason he won and she lost. But Dan, don’t you always say Trump won because of inflation? Good catch. The perception of Democrats as too liberal and too weak is a key reason voters didn’t trust Harris to tackle the problem of inflation. Without any better options, the GOP is re-running its 2024 playbook. Will “Woke, Weak, and Too Liberal” Work?I know this causes a lot of us to want to repeatedly bang our heads against the nearest hard surface. To a lot of swing voters in 2024, Trump didn’t seem “extreme.” He said he would protect Social Security and Medicare. He demurred on abortion. He didn’t code as a right-wing cultural warrior. Meanwhile, because of a post-2020 backlash to progressivism, decisions made by the Biden administration on immigration, and a gazillion dollars in ads highlighting some of Kamala Harris’s most extreme positions, Democrats were the ones seen as extreme and culturally out of step. A lot has changed since 2024. Trump is not the president most voters thought he would be. He and the Republicans are now seen as more extreme. In that CBS poll, 58% of voters describe Republicans as extreme. A Cook Political Report poll of the 32 battleground districts found that voters — and especially independents — are more concerned about Republican extremism than Democratic extremism.
On the other hand, the perception of Democrats as weak has not improved. In the same February CBS poll, nearly two-thirds of voters describe the party as weak. These numbers are driven, in part, by Democrats who see their own party leadership as too weak to stand up to Trump — but who are still planning to vote for Democrats this fall. Two pieces of good news. First, strength is a much bigger issue in presidential or gubernatorial races than in legislative ones. Voters want their chief executive to be strong enough to protect them from threats at home and abroad. Second, Trump is no longer seen as a particularly strong figure. A recent TIPP poll found that a plurality of voters see Trump’s leadership as weak.
In other words, the GOP is trying to re-run its 2024 strategy. But Trump and the Republicans are in a very different place than they were in 2024. What to DoThe operatives running the GOP and the AI/Crypto-funded Super PACs know their only option is to nuke the Democratic brand. And even if that doesn’t fully work, it could help rally a deflated GOP base by raising the stakes of the election. The strategy may be the only one available to them, but the money behind it makes it dangerous regardless. This assault affects everyone in a tough race with a D next to their name — whether or not your face is in the ad. So the question is: what do you do about it? First, this goes back to the Message Box exercise from the first memo. A good political or communications campaign must know what the other side plans to say about them. It’s particularly helpful when the other side announces their playbook in Politico, so we can prepare. Second, if the other side is looking for ways to damage the Democratic brand, be more than a generic Democrat. (I plan to write more about this in the coming weeks.) Find ways to break from your party — by tacking to the middle, to the left, or by criticizing the party establishment, nationally or locally, where appropriate. Third, win the battle on extremism. Politics is often a fight to claim the mantle of mainstream American values. The Republican Party has given us ample opportunity to paint them as the extreme ones. Don’t hesitate to do so. Finally, the conventional wisdom in Democratic circles after 2024 was that the answer to “Democrats are too liberal” is to moderate ideologically. There’s something to that. Running as a generic progressive in a Trump +5 district is not a winning strategy. But there’s an interesting wrinkle in some recent polling worth flagging. A February analysis by Strength In Numbers found that voter perceptions of Democratic strength were a stronger predictor of vote choice than perceptions of Democratic extremism. I’d be careful about leaning too hard on a single data point. I don’t think this lets Democrats off the hook on the substantive policy questions about where the party should be positioned. But it does suggest something I’ve been arguing for years: how you fight matters as much as what you fight for. Voters reward candidates who project strength, fight for their constituents, and refuse to be pushed around — regardless of where they sit on the ideological spectrum. For a downballot candidate facing the “woke, weak, and way too liberal” assault, the takeaway isn’t necessarily to soften your positions. It’s to project strength about whatever your positions actually are. The voters who will decide your race want to know you’ll fight for them. Run your campaigns. Don’t swerve out of your lane, but look for opportunities to blunt the attack to come. If you liked what you read and you want more strategy memos, messaging guidance, polling insights, and access to an incredible community of candidates, staffers, and organizers, sign up for Message Box Pro today and get your first month free. You're currently a free subscriber to The Message Box. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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