Democrats see political gift in Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'

The Hill

5 hours ago

Democrats say Republicans have given them a political gift with President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill.'
They say they can easily sell the bill to the public as a threat to working class voters, given its cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and significant tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.
'This is a rare policy gift to Democrats in that it was perpetrated by Republicans, harms almost everybody, and it's actually relatively easy to talk about,' said Democratic strategist Christy Setzer.
With that in mind, Democratic campaign operatives — with a big assist from liberal advocacy groups — have kicked off a messaging blitz that's likely to continue until Election Day.
On Monday, the House Democrats' campaign arm launched its first national digital ad campaign of the year targeting 35 battleground Republicans who voted for Trump's bill despite reservations over Medicaid cuts.
The House Democrats' top super PAC is finalizing another slate of ads — a six-figure mix of television and digital — that will launch in the coming weeks.
And Unrig the Economy, an outside advocacy group, wasted no time complementing the effort. They've launched a seven-figure ad blitz targeting 12 vulnerable Republicans, with plans to spend an additional $10 million in the coming months. The ads highlight three of the most contentious provisions of the GOP bill: the cuts to health and nutrition programs, combined with a rollback of green-energy subsidies that's expected to spike utility costs across large parts of the country.
'Those are the three arguments that we see as the ones that hurt people the most, and the place that Republicans are most vulnerable to accountability,' a spokesperson for the group said Tuesday.
The strategy is reminiscent of the Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act, another wildly contentious bill that was broadly unpopular when Democrats passed it under President Obama in 2010. Months later, Republicans would pick up 63 House seats and flip control of the chamber — the same goal Democrats have set for next year's midterms. And the campaign extends far beyond Capitol Hill.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), who says he is weighing a 2028 presidential bid, has already begun using the controversial legislation as a talking point as he looks toward next year's elections.
'Next year, I'll also be the head of the Democratic Governors Association, and especially in these rural states, where Republican governors have not spoken up whatsoever to stop this devastating bill, we're going to have strong candidates, we're going to win a lot of elections,' Beshear said in a CNN interview on Sunday.
Republicans are also vowing to go on the offensive, highlighting the tax cuts as a windfall for workers and the immigration crackdown as a boon for public safety. If anyone should be on the defensive, they say, it's Democrats for opposing the legislation.
'National Democrats' desperate and disgusting fear-mongering tactics are nothing more than a lame attempt to distract voters from the fact that they just voted to raise taxes, kill jobs, gut national security, and allow wide open borders,' Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the House Republicans' campaign arm, said Tuesday.
'We will use every tool to show voters that the provisions in this bill are widely popular and that Republicans stood with them while House Democrats sold them out.'
But some Republicans have already handed Democrats easy soundbites to put in their ads in the lead-up to 2026 midterms.
'What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding isn't there anymore?' Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), one of the three GOP senators to oppose the bill, said last week on the chamber floor.
The criticisms were not overlooked by Democrats, who see Tillis as an asset to their messaging efforts. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) cited Tillis in arguing against the bill last week, and Tillis himself warned his colleagues about an Obamacare-style backlash to the bill.
'When you have even Republicans saying it on the record, it kind of rebuts any argument that the NRCC's gonna try to make,' said a Democratic operative. 'I think you will definitely see Thom Tillis in campaign ads — or his words, at minimum.'
On the heels of the bill's passage, Democrats are already pointing to polling foreshadowing favorable outcomes in 2026. A Quinnipiac University poll out in late June revealed that 55 percent of voters oppose the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' and a Fox News poll out last month showed 59 percent of voters oppose it.
But some Democrats worry that merely defining Republicans with the bill may not be enough, saying that the party needs to coalesce around an agenda of their own for voters to turn to.
'Democrats have done a good job defining the bill as being bad for regular people. The Democrats have to do better at making an argument that they have an agenda that will challenge the status quo on behalf of working people to make their lives better,' said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons. 'It's something Democrats need to start doing now because it's a long term problem that needs a long term solution.'
A further challenge facing Democrats involves the timing of some of the law's provisions. While benefits like the tax cuts take effect long before the midterms, the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps are delayed until January of 2027 — after voters go to the polls.
'It will be harder to show someone who has lost his or her health care. Instead, they'll have to talk about who's at risk,' said Simmons. 'From a messaging perspective, it's more compelling to show someone who has…already lost their benefits than to discuss someone in jeopardy of losing their benefits.'
Regardless, Democrats agree that the bill's impacts must be told at the local level with the stories of voters who are at risk or already affected. They're already pointing, for instance, at a rural hospital in Nebraska that's closing its doors as a direct result of the coming Medicaid cuts.
'You might see rural hospitals closing a little bit sooner. It's got to be about rural hospitals that were open and this month they're closed because of what Donald Trump and Republicans did,' said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. 'It's got to be an effect. It's got to be stories. It's got to be individuals and real people.'
'…This can't be a Washington, inside-the-Beltway story. This has to be a story that's told all around the country,' Payne added.
In recent years, political observers say Democrats have struggled to reach broader audiences, the latest example being their inability to connect with middle-income voters in the 2024 presidential election.
But they say the time is ripe for Democrats to push beyond their 'very same tried and true tactics,' as Setzer put it.
'We have a messengers problem. We have a message problem. We don't actually have a substance problem right now,' Setzer said. 'We have a very important piece of legislation to run against right now that is very wide-ranging in its impact. So they need to expand who they are talking to…and expand the platforms on which we are talking to people.'
'In every electoral victory that we've seen lately, whether it is Donald Trump or Mamdani, you see someone who is willing to branch out in the platforms that they're going to,' Setzer added.