Sargent: Yeah. You brought up these numbers—Gallup numbers—showing that Democrats in some ways have an economic advantage over Republicans that we've never seen before.
And as you note, there is sort of a through line with all of these candidates, and it does cross ideological lines in many ways. There's Zoran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, and there's Miki Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, who are both fairly centrist Democrats – certainly not democratic socialists – but they all speak the same language.
And all of this is aimed precisely at the issue of costs, just at the moment when Trump is really fixated on spending. I think it's down 31 points in the recent survey on spending and inflation.
Is there really a prospect of a change in the Democrats' fortunes here? I mean, frankly, it's still pretty tough for Democrats. Can they actually seize the cost mantle and take it away from Trump or not?
Pancotti: I hope so. I hope they understand that there is a task and there is a way forward.
I will say, I think we've done a lot of work on this issue to try to say – we find in all of our message audits and all of our research when we talk to voters, this is the number one thing they talk about. We talked to Trump supporters. We talked to people who switched from Biden to Trump. We talked to people who supported Trump in all three elections where his name was on the ballot for president.
And in general, all voters just want to be able to feed their family and have some breathing room – that if your child falls on the playground, it won't bankrupt you. And it seems like a real malpractice for politicians on both sides to fail to address this issue directly.
And I think the Democrats really get the point. And the best part is that Trump isn't doing himself any favors between his tariffs and the rest of his policies, where he just keeps raising prices on both essentials and little extras, right? It's just more expensive to take a child to Disneyland these days.
Sargent: And Democrats can associate it with the ballroom because it's such a powerful symbol, right? What might this look like? What might Democratic discourse look like if they did this? Just to close this.
Pancotti: Yeah, I think whether it's the ballroom or Argentina, that's really what we've done successfully with Elon Musk. I think during the DOGE case, the Democrats were actually able to immediately – and this is, you know, here at Groundwork – we did a poll very early in January and got the results to try to attack Elon Musk to show people that Elon Musk had the endorsement of the Trump administration very early on.
And I think giving Democrats those opportunities – showing them where they can benefit from it, whether it's the ballroom or Argentina – let's say, look, Trump campaigned on day one to lower prices, that's what he vowed to do. And when he came to the office, he handed Elon Musk the keys to the car – and crashed it.
While you were waiting in line at the food bank, he was focused on building a gold-trimmed ballroom or sending your taxpayer dollars to Argentina, instead of making sure you could afford health care.
So really, no matter what the opportunities are, the fact is that this guy is going to screw up every single day. And so I think capitalizing on that and getting back to the issue of affordability is the way forward for Democrats.
Sargent: Yeah. As long as Democrats start with the basic premise that Trump is in a weak position right now, things kind of unfold from there. Elizabeth PancottiThank you very much for talking to us. It was fantastic.
Pancotti: Thank you.
