Dems workshop ‘punch harder’ strategy at DNC

CHICAGO (CN) — Democrats are showing their teeth this week at the Democratic National Convention, as they ramp up a more aggressive campaign strategy that has them not only touting their own policies but also taking aim at a Republican platform which they call “toxic” to most voters.

This new offensive posture from Democrats is a far cry from the party’s approach to campaigns in recent history — like the “When they go low, we go high” aphorism from Michelle Obama’s 2016 convention address.

The new philosophy has been on display all week at the convention, as prominent Democrats including the former first lady herself abandoned the party’s self-imposed high road and bashed Republicans and former President Donald Trump.

Democrats are “punching harder,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said Wednesday during a panel discussion on the sidelines of the DNC. He pointed out that the party is more willing to take on Republicans head-on because it’s in the midst of a political groundswell.

“[W]hen you do it in a room and a movement filled with joy, it’s a little bit easier to say and a little bit easier to hear,” Murphy said at the event hosted by progressive think tank the Center for American Progress. “It’s kind of an indication, frankly, to do more of it.”

And Democrats should take the opportunity to shine a light on what he referred to as “toxic” Republican policies, the senator said. He pointed in particular to the language in Project 2025, a policy roadmap authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation and designed as a framework for the first weeks of a potential second Trump administration.

That transition project, which suggests radical policy shifts such as restricting access to abortions and dramatically restructuring the federal workforce, has been a touchstone for Democrats looking to paint the Trump campaign as an avatar for radical right-wing extremism. They argue that the framework aims to alter the government in a way that ensures conservatives remain in power indefinitely.

The level of Democratic scrutiny on Project 2025 has been so intense that even former President Trump has distanced himself from the program.

The program is a “gift” to Democrats, Murphy said Wednesday.

“The Republican party’s positions have become, over time, wildly unpopular,” he said. “They need to break democracy and hold power forever, because once people see what they’re for, they’ll never win again.”

Democrats have an opportunity now to use Project 2025 and other policy issues to demonstrate where the Republican party’s policies actually lie, Murphy said.

“We just have to get a little more comfortable regularly talking about what Republicans are for,” he argued. “We also have to get a little more comfortable being on topics that we aren’t naturally comfortable with but that the voters have told us they care about.”

And while Democrats get more aggressive against Republicans, some are also doubling down on their party’s value proposition to voters.

“We must also provide people with a vision of the positive ways that our party and our candidates will deliver for them when we are in power,” said Peggy Flanagan, lieutenant governor of Minnesota and deputy to Governor Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.

Flanagan observed that Democrats have traditionally been worried about making voters uncomfortable by pushing progressive values. Americans support Democratic policies, she argued, pointing to the success of the movement in securing a governing trifecta in Minnesota.

The lieutenant governor pointed to this electoral success as a counter to claims that the Walz administration pursued too-progressive policies such as enshrining abortion access, implementing paid medical leave and providing universal school lunches.

“It’s a positive vision for how we can create a community where everyone just has what they need,” Flanagan said. “Perhaps that agenda was not too progressive, but we just lost sight of how far right Republicans have become.”

Claims that issues such as access to housing, food and clean water are not radical, she contended, slamming Walz’s GOP critics who have used such language to describe his politics.

“It’s the bare fucking minimum of what we should expect,” Flanagan said.

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