House Democrats seek a campaign message that goes beyond anti-Trump by Mike Lillis - 02/28/26 6:00 AM ET by Mike Lillis - 02/28/26 6:00 AM ET Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email NOW PLAYING LEESBURG, VA — House Democrats promising to flip the chamber in this year’s midterms are fighting to avoid a pitfall they see as hazardous to their goal. The message, they say, can’t just be anti-Trump. While the president’s  approval ratings  are well under water — and  polls indicate  that key constituencies have soured on him after a tumultuous first year back in office — Democrats say they can’t lean on that unpopularity to secure victory in November. Instead, they’re racing to cobble together a menu of specific policy priorities to act as both the centerpiece of their campaign message and the heart of their early legislative agenda if they win control of the Speaker’s gavel in 2027.  “This cycle isn’t just about what we’re up against. We’ve got to present a real plan to the American people,” Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) said. That task was the focus of the Democrats’ annual issues conference this week in Northern Virginia, where lawmakers huddled for three days in search of the 2026 equivalent of the “Six for ‘06” message that helped them seize the House exactly two decades ago.  If the details are fuzzy, the core theme is not. “Affordability is the message,” Rep. Lauren Underwood (Ill.), a vice-chair of the Democrats’ messaging arm, told reporters at the retreat.  Beneath the umbrella of affordability, Democrats are focusing on five different areas where they see Americans being hit hardest by rising costs — and think Republicans are most vulnerable. Those are: Health care; housing; groceries; electricity and other utilities; and caregiving, including childcare and eldercare. What specific proposals they tack into their final messaging package remains a work in progress. But Democrats of all stripes made clear that they’re taking pains to be proactive and aggressive in proposing economic reforms that tackle kitchen-table concerns, rather than merely attacking Trump. “We’ve got to make sure we build out the policies and programs that we’ve talked about this week, and make sure we roll those out for the American people so they see that we’ve got,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.). “Not just the opposition to Trump and what he’s doing, but we’ve got an affirmative agenda.” By coincidence, this year’s conference came directly on the heels of Trump’s State of the Union address, which he delivered to Congress on Tuesday night. If the back-to-back events created some logistical hassles for the conferencing Democrats, it also lent them plenty of fodder for challenging the president’s policy record during his first year back in office. More than a few Democrats highlighted Trump’s domestic message during the speech, which painted a glowing picture of a booming economy under his watch and claimed cost reductions on consumer staples even for items, like beef and electricity, that have seen costs soar. His one mention of “affordability” was made to blame Democrats for sending inflation through the roof under former President Biden, thereby creating the cost-of-living crisis. “The same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word affordability — a word, they just used it because somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure,” he said. “You caused that problem.” The finger pointing drew a fierce response from the Democrats in Leesburg, who accused the wealthy president of being out of touch with working-class people.  “We have a cost-of-living emergency in America. The affordability crisis is crushing the hopes and dreams of the American people, and what was Donald Trump’s response? He mocked Americans in the term ‘affordability,’” Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), the vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said on the first day of the conference. “He was mocking people who are experiencing monthly bills that were far too high.” It’s not that Democrats think Trump will be a non-factor in the midterms. To the contrary, they see his low approval ratings as a boon to their party. And they went out of their way this week to highlight polls indicating that the president’s support among minority voters — which had risen dramatically in 2024 — was now cratering a year into his second term. That includes Asian, Black and Hispanic voters, who seem to be shifting away from the president.  A  CNN poll  released this week found that his support among Hispani