The Washington Post has reported that House Democrats have launched a new effort to “redefine” what their party stands for. They are working on a new agenda for the 2026 midterm elections following the party’s devastating losses in 2024, when they lost the White House, the House, and the Senate.
According to the article, a Democratic pollster who worked for the Biden campaign in 2024 is advising the House Democrats on their rebrand. But instead of poll testing failed policies of the past, Democrats should look at how the Republicans rebranded after one of their greatest electoral disasters.
In 1976, Republicans hit rock bottom. Democrats won the White House, 191 seats in the House, and 61 seats in the Senate. They had complete control of Washington. Republican economic policy was in disarray. President Ford had proposed a tax increase, vetoed a tax cut, and issued WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons to fight inflation. Ford was the first incumbent since Hoover in 1932 to lose the White House.
Over the next four years, Republicans took a page out of the Democrats’ playbook and began pushing tax cuts modeled after the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s, across the board tax cuts for every American. In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran on these tax cuts and defeated Democratic incumbent President Carter in a landslide, winning 489 electoral votes and 44 states.
Republicans won 12 Senate seats and control of the Senate for the first time since 1955. They won 35 seats in the House, cutting into the huge Democratic majority and giving them 191 seats, enough to form a working majority with southern Democrats on many issues. The Reagan tax cuts were enacted, and the economy boomed, with rising wages, employment, investment, and growth. Reagan won 525 electoral votes and 49 states n 1984, one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history. Since becoming the party of tax cuts, Republicans have won seven of twelve presidential elections, after winning only four of the previous twelve elections.
Since 1980, a series of failed Democratic candidates have lost elections running on a platform of higher taxes on the American people. In Congress, Democrats have consistently voted against Republican tax cuts and for major tax increases on individual taxpayers and American companies large and small. Again this year, every single Democrat in the House and Senate voted to allow a $4.5 trillion tax increase to go into effect.
If Democrats are serious about “redefining” their party, they also should look to what President Kennedy did in the 1960s. Kennedy had run on getting the economy moving again, and instead of proposing big spending programs, he proposed an across the board top to bottom cut in personal and corporate tax rates. The tax cuts passed, and economic growth surged in one of the largest economic expansions ever. Business investment increased, wages rose, and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.4%.
Back then, Democrats ran on tax cuts, and won elections. Today, they are the party of tax increases, and they are polling at the lowest level in years. Last November, Vice President Harris called for $4 trillion in tax increases, proposing to raise corporate and individual tax rates to among the highest levels in the world. She lost 31 states, including working class voters in all seven swing states.
If Democrats cannot support tax cuts, at the very least they should stop trying to raise people’s taxes all the time. Their support of higher individual and corporate tax rates would result in lower investment, wages, and jobs, and damage our ability to compete abroad. President Kennedy said that lower tax rates are the surest path to a “prosperous expanding economy.” Working class people know this. Democrats should give it a try.
