It’s not just the economy — this is how Democrats beat the GOP across the country

Democrats won big by focusing on affordability while Republicans stuck to traditional economic messaging. A political wake-up call about what voters really want.

Lee Hartley Carter is president of Maslansky + Partners, a language strategist, researcher and author of "Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don't Seem to Matter" (TarcherPerigee, September 3, 2019). Follow her on X on @lh_carter.

Democrats didn’t win because they suddenly became masterful campaigners, or because their candidates were flawless. They won because they focused on what’s keeping Americans up at night— rising prices, shrinking paychecks and the anxiety that the American Dream is slipping further away. They promised to cap drug prices, rein in healthcare costs and make life a little less punishing for the middle class.

And crucially, Democrats ran unapologetically on taxing the rich — a message that resonated far beyond their base. For years, Republicans have viewed calls to raise taxes on the wealthy as an attack on success, a threat to the American ethos of upward mobility. But for many Americans, and for Democrats this cycle, it was about fairness. If you’re rich, you can afford to pay more. After all, the rich aren’t struggling — everyone else is. That sense of basic justice, not class warfare, is what made the message so powerful and popular.