As President-elect Trump prepares to return to the White House, a prominent Democratic pollster and strategist argues that her party requires a fresh strategy to tackle the former and soon-to-be future president.
“The 2025 playbook cannot be the 2017 playbook,” Molly Murphy, a prominent pollster for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said during a presentation at the first meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s executive committee since last month’s victory.
Trump’s decisive victory over Harris — he won the popular vote and swept all seven important battleground states — as well as the GOP winning the Senate and maintaining their shaky House majority, have Democrats looking for answers as they attempt to escape from the political desert.
Murphy, citing post-election polls, claimed most Americans approve of how the president-elect is conducting his transition, and that Trump would return to the White House next month more popular than he was eight years ago, when he first won the presidency.
She also remarked that people “give him a pass on the outrageous” comments he makes on a regular basis because they approve of his economic policies.
Murphy, speaking Friday while DNC officials convened at a hotel near the United States Capitol, said the Democrats’ task moving forward is to reverse that attitude.
“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,” according to Murphy.
The Democratic message should be “Donald Trump doesn’t care about you.” “He is going to screw you,” Murphy insisted. “As a north star, I think we need to stay focused on … the economy and costs.”
“A lot of people are expecting the price of milk to go back where it was,” the economist said.
She suggested Democrats follow the GOP’s 2024 campaign strategy: “We can do what they did to us…” Even if the economy improves, costs will remain prohibitively expensive for most people.
She also stated that Democrats must highlight unpopular aspects of Trump’s program, such as “tax breaks for the wealthy” and “letting corporations drive up prices and making you pay for it.”
She also said the party should describe Trump’s proposed tariffs on key American trading partners as “a sales tax on the American people that will drive up prices,” a language Harris used during the campaign.
Murphy also emphasized that Trump and Republicans gained support from critical segments of the Democratic Party’s base, including younger people, Latinos, and Black voters, due to the economy as well as the Democrats’ “wonky” rhetoric.
“A lot of times we’re talking about polices,” Murphy said. By contrast, Republicans have “culture conversations that create a connection between the party and the people that go beyond polices.”
Murphy stated that conservatives’ organic culture conversations have led to a relationship that contradicts policy. We know that we share a lot of ideals with these working Americans, and we need to find methods to make more meaningful connections there.”
Jaime Harrison, DNC chair, praised Murphy’s presentation.
However, Harrison, who is not seeking for a second four-year term as chair of the national party committee, pointed to the next White House contest and suggested that the party also pursue Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance.
“I think it will be a big error on our part if we focus all of our attention on Donald Trump and not JD Vance, particularly as we start to look at the 2028 race,” Harrison told me.
The DNC meeting came after Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley stated that Trump will play a “significant” role in backing GOP candidates.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, Whatley claimed that “as we move forward into this next election cycle, the fundamentals will remain the same.”
“We need to make sure that we are building our state parties, that we’re building our ground game, we’re building our election integrity apparatus to be in place to make sure that when we get those candidates through those primaries in ’26, that we’re going to be in a position to take them all the way to the finish line,” he told the crowd.
However, the party in power typically suffers setbacks in the subsequent midterm elections. And Trump, who was known for encouraging voter turnout, will not be on the ballot in 2026.
Whatley stated that, while he will not be a candidate, “President Trump will be a very significant part of this because, at the end of the day, what we need to do is hold on to the House and the Senate so that we can finish his term and his agenda.”
And Whatley predicted that “Donald Trump will be extremely engaged on the campaign trail for Republicans. And his agenda is the one we’ll be running on.
