Sarah Longwell’s Playbook for Defeating MAGA

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts Donald Trump continues to insist that he is popular on the eve of an important election, even though everyone else knows he is not.

“What I really want you to do is pretend, please , that I’m on the ballot.

Just come and vote.

It’s so important,” he said recently.

In the meantime, the GOP’s first-ever midterm convention this week—headlined, of course, by Trump—has several Republican candidates sitting it out, probably because they pay attention to polls.

The war in Iran, tariffs, and high gas prices have pushed his popularity rating down to about 35 percent, and even some of the MAGA faithful have been complaining.

House seats that had been solidly red in Texas, Colorado, South Carolina, and a handful of other states are starting to look “soft,” as pollsters say.

On paper, this presents an opportunity for Democrats to take back control of the House or Senate or both, and put forth some charismatic leaders of their own.

But to do that, they would have to start behaving and talking very differently, Sarah Longwell, the publisher of The Bulwark and author of the new book How to Eat an Elephant argues.

A longtime Republican, Longwell now says, “The Republican Party has to be defeated, and I think MAGA specifically, I want to defeat it and then salt the Earth with its ashes.” She’s spent the past few years conducting hundreds of focus groups with Trump supporters, and also swing voters, to try to understand better how Democrats can reach them.

What she’s discovered is that many Democrats are mostly using the wrong approach, and they are missing a chance to speak to voters’ fears and deepest concerns.

On this week’s Radio Atlantic , Longwell discusses how she thinks Democrats should talk about sensitive issues, such as immigration, and the words they should stop using.

She outlines which Democratic leaders are doing a good job communicating and how to achieve what she calls “narrative dominance.” And she shares why—despite the contradictions, misinformation, and conspiracy theories she hears in her focus groups—she is hopeful about the American voter.

The following is a transcript of the episode: Hanna Rosin: We’re less than 60 days away from the midterms, and in a rare moment of unity, the president and congressional Democrats have a shared goal: Make this election about Donald Trump.