Despite Donald Trump’s promises, America has not been Made Affordable Again. This has created an immense political opportunity for his opponents. But Democratic lawmakers are failing just as badly to articulate an alternative vision. Instead, some of them seem to be trying to out-Trump the president with their own brand of “slopulism”—half-baked policy proposals that sound good only if you don’t think too hard about them, and that would, if enacted, hurt the people they’re supposed to help. Others are simply reheating the leftovers of Joe Biden’s agenda. Few are reckoning with the fundamental problem that led to the party’s defeat in 2024: an inability to prioritize the most important parts of its agenda and make the case that they’re worth paying for.
These shortcomings might not prevent Democrats from riding an anti-Trump backlash to success in the midterms, but they could doom the chances of any future Democratic administration governing successfully.
Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen recently unveiled bills that would exempt most middle-class households from paying any federal income taxes. Booker’s plan would more than double the standard deduction, to $75,000 per couple, and increase the child tax credit to be even more generous than it was under Biden’s COVID-era expansion. Van Hollen’s would essentially create a parallel income-tax system under which a couple’s first $92,000 of income is exempt. His bill in particular appears to have broad support within the party, rolling out with 18 Senate co-sponsors and a slew of endorsements from major labor unions and activist groups.
