The Democrats have a new mantra: “affordability.” It played a starring role in Democratic gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia and in the surprising mayoral victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City. By all accounts, this was an effective message even controlling for other factors like the light blue to deep blue nature of these states and municipalities, the overrepresentation of Democratic-friendly educated, engaged voters in these elections, and the general unpopularity of President Trump.
Affordability is an area of deep vulnerability for Trump and his party since they promised to fix Biden and the Democrats’ mismanagement of the economy and are not viewed as having done so. According to Silver Bulletin’s polling aggregates, Trump’s handling of the economy is 18 points underwater (approval minus disapproval) and an astonishing 28 points underwater on handling inflation (34 percent approval vs. 62 percent disapproval). Other data show that general views of the economy have not improved since Trump took office, that most believe Trump’s policies are actually making the economy worse and that more see the economy getting worse rather than better in the coming year.
In such a situation, it would be political malpractice not to focus on this vulnerability, neatly encapsulated in the term “affordability.” Everything just costs too damn much! Democrats have taken to this approach delightedly, whether moderate or fire-breathing progressive. It provides a convenient way of changing the subject when other issues, particularly cultural ones, come up where their views are decidedly less popular. Pay no attention to those other issues: we Democrats are affordability people!
Will this work? Well, it did in 2025. Indeed, it worked so well that one Democratic commentator declared it a new “theory of everything” for the Democrats and there has been general euphoria that—finally!—a way has been found to neutralize the toxic image the party has developed over time. In short, Democrats hope to affordability-wash their party brand and be reborn as a party that cares for little beyond making ordinary citizens’ lives easier and better. But can the Democrats really wash away their political sins so easily?
There are reasons to be skeptical that affordability, despite its utility as a campaign trope, has such magical powers. Start with the ongoing struggle between moderates and progressives within the party. Their differences were temporarily suppressed during the 2025 campaigns, where everyone latched onto the affordability message, but in the aftermath these differences are coming to the fore. Mamdani’s victory in New York City has put wind in the sails of the good ship Progressive; now is not the time they say to bow “at the altar of caution.” Such candidates are running hard to the left in many Democratic primaries and Democrats could well find themselves with their own version of Republicans’ Tea Party problem from the early 2010’s where insurgents undermined GOP electoral fortunes.
Case in point: progressive darling Graham Platner is running strong against Janet Mills for the Maine Senate Democratic nomination. In past social media posts, Platner referred to himself as a communist, disparaged the police, and criticized Maine’s rural white people for being “stupid” and “racist.” And then there’s his “Totenkopf” tattoo historically associated with the Nazis. Not ideal; recent polling indicates that with this baggage Republican Susan Collins would easily vanquish him in a general election.
After balanced information about Platner, he trails Collins significantly. After a positive paragraph reflective of Platner’s bio and current campaign messaging, and a negative paragraph summarizing the recent news about him and reflecting likely Republican messaging in a general election, Collins gets above 50 percent and Platner trails her by 9 (42 percent Platner / 51 percent Collins)—the same margin by which Democrats lost the 2020 Maine Senate race.
Without flipping Collins’ seat, Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate are extremely small. In general, Democrats are in desperate need of moderate candidates who can overcome, rather than reinforce, the negative weight of the party’s image—an image which cannot be magically affordability-washed away in purple-to-red states. This imperative is underscored by this chart from Lakshya Jain on how Democrats would do in Senate contests outside of Maine and North Carolina even if 2026 is a 2018-type blue wave (D+7.3) election.
The starkness of this challenge is underscored by the difficulties of being truly moderate in today’s Democratic Party. As liberal Ezra Klein admitted, apropos of the 2025 results:
If Democrats want power in the Senate in any significant numbers ever again, they’re going to need to be competitive in places where they used to be able to win elections. Places like Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Alaska. But they’ve not really been competitive there for some time.
So I don’t know how much I think this was a positive test of that...Abigail Spanberger is a moderate in Virginia and Zohran Mamdani is a democratic socialist in New York City…But also by any historical measure of politics, they’re actually just not that far apart. Abigail Spanberger is a moderate within the current Democratic Party, but she is not a moderate from the perspective of 1998.
The thing about all three of these figures is that none of them challenge Democrats in any significant way, except maybe Mamdani, from the left…I don’t think the question of what you would need to do to win an election in Ohio, Florida and Iowa is answered yet.
Indeed not. The fact of the matter is that Democrats can’t just sprinkle affordability pixie dust over their candidates—they actually need to move their left-trending party to the right in important ways. As noted in the big New York Times feature on “Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win”:
The success of candidates like [Democrat Marcy Kaptur, who successfully defended her House seat in a district that Trump won easily] demonstrates that America still has a political center. Polls show that most voters prefer capitalism to socialism and worry that the government is too big—and also think that corporations and the wealthy have too much power. Most voters oppose both the cruel immigration enforcement of the Trump administration and the lax Biden policies that led to a record immigration surge. Most favor robust policing to combat crime and recoil at police brutality. Most favor widespread abortion access and some restrictions late in pregnancy. Most oppose race-based affirmative action and support class-based affirmative action. Most support job protections for trans people and believe that trans girls should not play girls’ sports. Most want strong public schools and the flexibility to choose which school their children attend…
[Trump’s] extremism offers an opportunity to the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is governing in ways that put the Republican Party out of step with public opinion on taxes, health insurance, abortion, immigration, executive power and more. If Democrats were willing to be less ideological—less beholden to views that many liberal activists, intellectuals and donors genuinely hold but that most Americans do not—they would have the opportunity to build the country’s next governing majority.
And without that, they won’t. In many ways, Democrats just don’t realize what time it is. The eras of racial preferences and adjacent DEI policies, of “no human being is illegal,” of gender ideology and treating biological sex as a mere technicality, of tolerance for social disorder in the name of kindness, of climate hawks and net-zero maximalism, of spending that doesn’t produce commensurate results, of shoddy but “progressive” governance—they are all coming to their ends. The Democrats must find their way in this strange new world for which their most ideological supporters—those “liberal activists, intellectuals and donors”—are unprepared. They cannot just affordability-wash their political sins away. Their problems are embedded too deeply and the skepticism of ordinary voters too entrenched for such a superficial fix to work.
Affordability has the benefit of appealing to everyone. Manhattan 3 bedrooms are too expensive, houses in the Hamptons are beyond the reach of the 10%!
A sneaky hidden piece of good news of late is that nationwide rents are down. I'm not sure if that's a good thing as almost my entire roofing crew has been deported, but locally, in my state, rent's are down 8% in the metro area. We lead the nation in one thing anyway.
Platner in Maine is sounding a little extreme in the present tense, forget the past. Your push poll by Emily's List is kind of sus though. Emily's supports his opponent, and Platner is the kind of a manly man cat ladies hate. If Collins wins again it might not be good for winning the senate but it sure would be funny.