Democrats are increasingly convinced that “double haters” — voters disappointed with both President Donald Trump and the Democratic Party — will make or break their chance at winning a House majority in November.
All it’ll take to win this voting group over, Democrats think, is one very normal trick.
In battleground districts across the country, Democratic candidates are attempting to prove that they are just like the average, everyday Americans they hope to represent. Their bet is that the promise of normalcy is enough to win over skeptical voters. It’s an effort that sits at the center of the party’s planned communication effort in the coming months, especially in the right-leaning seats its candidates need to win for a majority next year.
“What this really means is, are you putting your head down and working?” said Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan. “Are you talking about things that really matter and using language that normal people use, not something from inside the beltway?”
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McDonald Rivet, who won her Trump-supporting district with relative ease in 2024, is considered the template for the kind of candidate Democrats hope they recruited this year, a list that includes Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey, Zach Dembo in Kentucky and Chaz Molder in Tennessee.
In interviews, they described a formula for coming across as normal that included focusing on economic pressures instead of Trump’s actions and avoiding statements and positions more aligned with liberal activists than the larger body politic.
“The most important communication aspect of this is, ‘Hey, I’m a normal human being who’s going to focus on the economy,’” said one Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about party strategy. “‘I’m not a crazy Democrat.’”
The Democrats’ focus on normality in part reflects a party that believes that the first two years of Trump’s second term have generated such an electoral backlash that they need to do only the bare minimum to take advantage. The president has seen his approval rating sink to new lows in recent months, hindered by a growing sense his administration hasn’t delivered on the promises he made during the 2024 campaign.
But the strategy might also reflect a party tacitly acknowledging that — to some degree — it had lost sight of the political basics, running candidates so overstuffed with poll-tested soundbites and activist-driven demands that they were unable to connect with average voters.
“If we have a political strategy of coming across as normal, we might have bigger problems,” said Dembo, the party’s nominee in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District. “Hopefully, you’re just a normal dude and don’t have to use it as a political ploy.”
Dembo, a former Navy JAG and federal prosecutor, talks about his career in public service and rejects comparisons to national Democrats, saying he prefers to emulate Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. (Beshear won the 6th District when he ran for re-election in 2023.)
Republicans fiercely dispute that Democrats have recruited candidates who come across as normal and argue that even if they had, the larger party’s lurch to the left in this year’s primaries has convinced most moderate voters that the party is now controlled by extremists.
Indeed, much of the GOP’s messaging this year has focused on labeling Democrats as extremists, “perverts” or “communists,” efforts they say are aimed at broadly disqualifying Democratic candidates for all but the most liberal of voters.
“If Democrats wanted to run ‘normal’ candidates, they probably should’ve nominated some,” said Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Some Democratic candidates have helped Republicans make the case that the broader party still holds fringe views, comments that GOP strategists say they’ll use against the larger Democratic Party. Democratic candidates like Manny Rutinel in Colorado’s 8th District, Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd District, William Lawrence in Michigan’s 7th District and Colin Dunlap in Maine’s 2nd District also advanced in the primaries of key races over the opposition of some Democrats in Washington.
The backdrop for Democrats’ normalcy push is a spate of polls showing that many voters who disapprove of Trump aren’t yet ready to vote for a Democrat.
That slim but significant group is captured in generic ballot surveys, which show Democrats leading Republicans by about 6.5 percentage points, according to an average of polls compiled by the Silver Bulletin. That’s a much smaller gap than the difference between voters who approve and disapprove of the president: The Silver Bulletin’s polling average finds about 58% of voters disapprove of Trump, compared to about 38% who approve.
If Democratic candidates can win over more of the Trump disapprovers, party strategists say, it could turn a good midterm election into a great one, in which the party wins majorities in Congress by comfortable margins.
Democratic candidates interviewed by NOTUS said they meet voters who fit this category all the time.
“I mean, they’re kind of the name of the game,” said Bobby Pulido, a Democrat running for a House seat in Texas. “The people are not happy right now.”
Pulido, a famous Tejano musician, began playing quinceaneras in the state’s 15th District this year after responding to a criticism from his Republican opponent, Monica de la Cruz. It’s part of an effort to “speak the same language” as this Hispanic-heavy, rural area while being himself.
“I’m not a city boy. I don’t dress in penny loafers,” he said, adding that he was just trying to “dispel the notion of what they think a Democrat is.”
“Hey, I just want you to have more affordable health care and try to make life better for you.”
Republicans have countered by pointing to Pulido’s own controversial history. But he’s one of many Democrats running for Congress emphasizing how their personal lives resemble those of the voters they’re trying to win.
Bennett, a onetime helicopter pilot in the Navy running in New Jersey’s 7th District, told NOTUS that she talks about the exorbitant cost of child care she faces for her children, or how she’s stopped eating beef because of rising prices.
“These are not talking points,” Bennett said. “This is my life.”
Dembo talks about how his family members are farmers. And Molder, a mayor in Tennessee’s 5th District, said he’s attended the same church since he was a child, proof that he’s a member of the community even if he’s also a member of a political party that most in the district don’t support.
“People I speak with aren’t necessarily looking for permission to become Democrats,” Molder said. “They’re looking for permission to vote for one.”
Democratic strategists think the strategy is already showing signs of paying off. They point to a series of internal party polls that show Democrats like Dembo and Pulido performing better than the generic ballot would suggest. The image of the average Democrat is so abysmally low in the minds of most voters, party operatives say privately, that it’s relatively easy to surpass their expectations with merely competent candidates.
No serious candidate has ever pledged to run an abnormal campaign that demonstrates how little in common he or she has with voters. And dating back to Trump’s first election in 2016, Democratic candidates have emphasized the need to prioritize “kitchen table” issues over other subjects. Joe Biden, in fact, premised his entire presidential campaign in 2020 in part on a return to normalcy.
But an approach that seems easy and commonsense in the abstract can suddenly become much harder in practice, say political veterans.
“When you’re in politics, there’s a lot of forces moving you,” said Max Rose, a former Democratic lawmaker from New York who lost his re-election bid in 2020. “There’s constituents, there’s family, there’s social media, there’s leadership, all types of things in your head. It’s a lot of input. It’s a lot of data.
“It’s hard to push all that aside and say, ‘Hey man, your shit costs too much, and I’m going to make it cheaper,’” he said.
The strongest force influencing Democrats might be Trump himself, thanks to relentless comments and actions that the party’s candidates can’t help but react to. But part of being normal, Democrats say, is focusing more on making life easier for people than opposing the president.
“If I’m spending time worrying about the ballroom and not the trade practices that are killing our farm economy, then I’m not representing,” McDonald Rivet said. “I’m just getting myself on social media.
“For the most part,” she said, “when I hear people talk about Democrats, they think we are more interested in damaging Donald Trump than bringing prices down.”
The congresswoman said members of her party don’t always keep the focus where it needs to be.
“Every once in a while, I talk to a member of the caucus who will say things to me, like, ‘As soon as we get the majority, we have to impeach the president,’” she said. “And I look at them and I say, ‘I won’t come back if they do that.’”
Republicans had considered McDonald Rivet’s seat in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District as a clear opportunity, though their hopes appeared to suffer a setback last week after a candidate who dropped out of the race, Thomas Smith, unexpectedly won the party’s primary over a Trump-endorsed candidate.
Democrats consider the plainspoken McDonald Rivet one of their most entrenched incumbents, thanks in part to her normalcy and message discipline. But even she can occasionally stray from her own advice in the face of Trump’s actions: In an interview, she called Trump an “idiot” because of the way he posted on social media.
“Please don’t use that I just called the president an ‘idiot,’” she said. “So sorry for doing that.”
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