03-07-2025
Dems are gearing up to weaponize Trump's megabill
Tina Shah, a doctor who launched her bid against Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) this week, attacked Republicans for 'gut[ting] Medicaid,' and Matt Maasdam, a former Navy SEAL who is challenging Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) , said 'the price of healthcare is gonna go up … all to line the pocketbooks of billionaires.'
Some Democratic strategists are urging the party to capitalize on this momentum even more aggressively.
'We need to be doing early, paid communications on this — not just the same old cable buys, token digital buys in swing districts and press conferences,' said Ian Russell, a Democratic consultant who served as the DCCC's political director in 2014 and 2016. 'Democrats need to take some risks here, mobilize early, spend money they may not have because voters' views harden over time, and this is when we can shape it.'
In 2024, Democrats failed to break through with their message after President Joe Biden dug the party into a hole with voters on the economy. Trump successfully cast himself as focused on bringing down costs while painting Kamala Harris as overly obsessed with social issues like protecting transgender people. Harris, for her part, ran a scatter-shot, three-month messaging blitz that jumped from cost-of-living to abortion rights to Trump's threats to democracy, which ultimately didn't move voters.
Republicans, for their part, plan to emphasize the megabill's tax cuts, especially those on tips and overtime, and increased funding for border security. On Medicaid cuts, they hope to neutralize Democrats' attacks by casting them as reforms: tightened work requirements and efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, a pair of Medicaid-related changes that generally polls well among voters.
'This vote cemented House Democrats' image as elitist, disconnected, snobby, unconcerned with the problems Americans face in their daily lives, and most of all — out of touch,' said NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella in a statement. 'House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026, and we will use every tool to show voters that Republicans stood with them while House Democrats sold them out.'
But as Republicans look to sell their bill, public polling on it is bleak. Most Americans disapprove of it, in some polls by a two-to-one margin, according to surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University , The Washington Post , Pew Research and Fox News .
Meanwhile a pair of Democratic groups, Priorities USA and Navigator Research, released surveys this week showing majorities of voters aren't fully aware of the megabill. Nearly half of Americans said they hadn't heard anything about the bill, according to Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC. Of those who had heard about it, only 8 percent said they knew Medicaid cuts were included in the legislation.
Two-thirds of survey respondents who self-identified as passive or avoidant news consumers, the kinds of tuned out and low-information voters Democrats failed to win in 2024, said they knew nothing about the bill.
