Democrats need to change their approach to Trump's second term, top Kamala Harris pollster says

A pollster to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign told top Democratic Party officials on Friday that they must confront President-elect Donald Trump far differently than they did during his first term, urgently pressing them not to focus on every outrage but instead argue that he is hurting voters’ pocketbooks.

The speech by Molly Murphy, which was delivered during one of the Democratic National Committee’s first post-election meetings of its leadership, amounted to a quiet indictment of much of the party’s long-standing approach to Trump. It also marked one of the most candid conversations that top party officials have aired publicly since Trump won.

“The 2025 playbook cannot be the 2017 playbook,” she said.

Speaking at a Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington D.C. to the DNC’s executive committee, she said that most Americans support Trump’s transition and that voters “don't care about who he's putting in Cabinet positions.”

She said that Trump will take office more popular than he was when he started his first term, though not as well-liked as President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama were when inaugurated. She stressed that Trump’s strength for years has been that voters approve of his handling of the economy, and that Democrats should aim in his second term to change that.

“These voters are saying, ‘I will give him a pass on the outrageous if my costs come down,’” she said.

She pointed out that key parts of the party’s base, including young people, Latinos and Black voters, drifted away from Democrats this election. And while she said that was driven by high prices, Murphy argued that working-class voters have been steadily moving away from Democrats for several election cycles, suggesting it wasn't just inflation that was to blame.

She made the case that Democrats have been focused on the wrong issues. For young people and voters of color, she said, “institutions have failed them” and “they may not embrace Trump for wanting to dismantle these institutions, but they certainly don't hold it against him.”

She likewise warned Democrats to be “cautious” while attacking Trump for violating norms, arguing that though Democratic donors and the primary electorate care about those issues, the voters the party lost in November do not.

“Norms have not worked for them, and so we certainly shouldn’t ask them to clutch their pearls,” she said. “We risk sounding like the hall monitors.”

Murphy’s talk also underscored that Democrats are making a bet that Trump will not keep his promises to quickly get down costs and that this could help them regain power. She said Democrats should reorient their messaging around Trump’s plans to cut taxes for the wealthy, implement broad-based tariffs that could result in higher costs for consumers, and provide “giveaways” to big corporations.

Murphy’s presentation is the latest sign that many Democrats across the party, from strategists to elected officials, are planning a new approach to Trump than they used when he first took office and the “resistance” took bloom.