We’re sharing this commentary with all of Zeteo's subscribers without a paywall. If you believe in the work we do and want to see more of it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. And if you’re already a paid subscriber or want to support our work in another way, you can always send a donation.
Voters delivered a thorough repudiation of Donald Trump in last week’s midterms, with Americans making clear they are desperate for financial help.
After Democrats picked up (at least) seven red Senate seats and their biggest House majority in decades, the party believes it has a mandate for its “affordability” agenda. What is that agenda exactly? So far, the party’s pitch seems to be attempting a return to the pre-Trump economic status quo that saw him get elected for a second time – and don’t you dare demand structural changes.
Who knows what will be said, of course, at the “What’s Next 2026” conference put on later this week by Majority Democrats – part of the billionaire-funded network that backed some of the moderates who won Democrats’ most consequential midterm victories. But the Majority Democrats who went on TV on Sunday made clear the moderates are eager and ready to punch left, and don’t have big policies in mind.
Americans certainly delivered a message about affordability last Tuesday. In NBC exit polls, 75% of voters gave the economy a negative rating, with 59% saying they’re very concerned about the costs of gas and groceries and healthcare. Voters delivered a message about affordability when they elected Trump again, too – they were mad about the brutal economy before Trump’s disastrous Iran war, tariffs, and healthcare cuts.
It’s been less than a week since Democrats won the midterms so it is perhaps unfair to expect Democrats to have offered a full-fledged policy agenda by now – though they could have easily campaigned on one. There is obviously a large, Trump-sized impediment to what Democrats can expect to accomplish once they take full control of Congress next year. The president will surely attempt to set the agenda and steer the discourse each day, even if Americans despise him.
What we’re seeing already from liberal influencers and Democrats, well before they’re sworn in, feels sadly familiar: a half-hearted pledge to solve some problems part-way, buttressed with assertions that this is exactly what Americans voted for – indeed, the only politically responsible way.
As Neera Tanden, a former Joe Biden adviser who leads the Center for American Progress, put it in a speech on Monday, “The next two years should not be an opportunity for every organization or group in DC to dust off their wish list for the last decade… It is time to ensure, and relentlessly ensure, we deliver for the voters who just trusted us.”
The big question for Democrats – particularly those in its moderate flank – remains what it has been: What’s their plan to actually make life in America more affordable? And then how would they pass it?
‘Access to Basic Levels of Healthcare’
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the likely Democratic speaker come January, has spoken of prioritizing reversing several Trump administration policies: ending Trump’s gas-price-spiking war with Iran; ending his arbitrary tariffs and trade wars; eliminating his Medicaid cuts, which are about to make millions of people uninsured; reauthorizing the health insurance subsidies that Trump let expire, cutting off insurance for millions on Obamacare while spiking premiums for many more.
Enacting all of these changes is absolutely necessary. But if Democrats manage to force those changes through now with Trump as president, they ultimately would be delivering a return to the Biden-era economy that voters rejected.
What’s the plan to make life more affordable than it was under Joe Biden?
“The agenda that I’ve seen so far presented is not going to cut it,” progressive Colorado Rep.-elect Melat Kiros told Politico on Monday.
Take healthcare. Nearly six-in-ten voters said in midterm exit polls that they’re very concerned about the cost of healthcare when it comes to their own financial situation; 61% said the government should play a bigger role in helping Americans get healthcare; and 55% said the Trump administration’s policies have made their healthcare costs worse.
In 2024, before Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare, roughly 8% of Americans were uninsured. The U.S. was already spending far more than other wealthy countries on healthcare, only for Americans to see worse access, worse outcomes, and greater administrative inefficiency. It has been this way for many years. America’s healthcare system is an outlier globally, in terms of how expensive and bad it is.
Senator-elect and pastor Adam Hamilton ran one of the more satisfying Democratic campaigns this year in Kansas, flipping a seat Dems haven’t won since 1932. Anger with Trump played a big role, to be sure, and Hamilton is an outstanding speaker, but he also righteously dismantled GOP Senator Roger Marshall, an OBGYN, for suing hundreds of patients over medical debts.
“We’ve got to figure out a better way so that every person in America has access to basic levels of healthcare,” Hamilton said during a debate with Marshall, “so that they can afford to pay for their treatment – and they aren’t being sued by their doctors when they don’t get paid.”
Hamilton’s campaign platform includes several important healthcare proposals outside of reversing Trump’s healthcare cuts, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices on more drugs (including for private plans), and ending the scam that has the government provide massive overpayments each year to private Medicare Advantage insurers. He wants to “reform prior authorization so insurance paperwork cannot delay or deny care.”
But there’s a glaring omission among Hamilton’s healthcare proposals: There is no plan to guarantee healthcare for every American.
Speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday, Hamilton said again he wants to ensure “affordable healthcare for everyone,” while reiterating his opposition to Medicare for All – arguing that insurance-industry jobs are too important, and that the idea might sound frighteningly European to voters in Kansas.
“I think there are people who worry, what does that look like?” he said. “They have a sense of Europe and other places, where they’re not certain this is – I mean, there are places in Europe people love their healthcare, but there are other places where people complain about the length of time it takes to be able to get treatment. Who’s approving treatment, I think people are a bit antsy about that.”
Access to care is, of course, better in Europe. Per exit polls, 60% of voters in Kansas are very concerned about healthcare costs, and 56% believe the government should do more to help Americans get care.
‘We Cannot Make the Same Mistake’
So what reforms do other moderate Democrats propose to meaningfully lower costs and ensure every American has healthcare coverage?
When I tweeted something similar Sunday, Rohan Patel, executive director of Majority Democrats, replied with a video his organization released last month pitching a plan called “Medicare for Americans.”
This is their derivative name for their version of a public health insurance option – something Democrats have been advocating for since at least 2008.
You may remember Barack Obama pushed for a public option during the Affordable Care Act debate, before dropping it. Joe Biden called for a public option during the 2020 campaign, as a counter to Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-All proposal. Biden never once mentioned it as president.
There are benefits to Medicare for All from a policy perspective. Everyone would have coverage. Making the government the single payer (instead of having a patchwork of payers) would allow it to negotiate lower prices. It would eliminate a ton of administrative bloat. Medicare for All would save money, despite the heavy price tag its critics attach to it.
Moderates would tell you there are political benefits to supporting a public-option plan like “Medicare for Americans.” Their primary argument is that Americans don’t want to change their health insurance plans or lose the coverage they receive through their employers.
There are a few cons as well. A public option is unlikely to save as much money as Medicare for All – the plan would not have the same leverage over providers and drug companies as one, single government payer. It would not necessarily guarantee universal coverage.
Another problem: The insurance, drug, and hospital industries would work just as hard and spend as much money to kill a public option as they would Medicare for All, as past experience shows. And they’ll argue that a public option would be every bit as radical and destructive as Medicare for All.
Perhaps the biggest issue? Based on the history of the public option to date, does anyone believe moderate Democrats would actually try to pass it? Or is the public option just a useful talking point to try to shut down conversation around Medicare for All?
It’s hard not to notice the Majority Democrats’ video pitching “Medicare for Americans” spends much of its run-time dumping on Medicare for All.
When Majority Democrats adviser Lis Smith, formerly an aide to disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, appeared on ABC’s ‘This Week’ on Sunday, she did not bother touting her group’s public-option plan.
Smith – who helped lead Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign promoting “Medicare for All Who Want It” – instead laid into Medicare for All, complaining that some progressives hope Democrats will win even more seats in 2028 so that they can implement it.
“I support celebrating this election. I do not support this irrational exuberance,” she said, comparing it to how Trump and Republicans thought they had a “mandate” to unleash violent ICE agents on U.S. cities and communities.
“We cannot make the same mistake,” she said, continuing: “The majority of Democrats did not run on Medicare for All. You think Adam Hamilton… got elected in Kansas by saying: I want to kick everyone off their private insurance?”
“I support expanding healthcare, but let’s be real about that,” Smith added.
A Story We’ve Heard Before
Healthcare policy is just one critical component of any “affordability” agenda – but it tends to reveal a politician’s commitment to acknowledging big problems, and thus doing what’s necessary to solve them.
The same goes with Democrats’ position on the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. The filibuster can end with a simple majority vote; if Senate Democrats keep it in place, they would ensure they can’t pass much of an “affordability” agenda at all – beyond trying to reverse some of Trump’s damage, such as his Medicaid and Obamacare cuts.
Time and time again, moderate Democrats’ commitment to maintaining the Senate filibuster and other procedural norms has been used to curtail the party’s supposed core priorities – from killing the public option under Obama, to blocking a long-promised minimum wage hike under Biden, to snuffing out Dems’ effort to force drug companies to charge private insurance plans the same lower prices negotiated by Medicare.
And the current crop of moderate Dems doesn’t seem keen to remove their legislative block.
“I don’t think we should end the filibuster,” Hamilton said last month on Fox. “I’m not going to vote for that.”
Trump’s favorite Democratic senator, Israel fanatic John Fetterman, is pro-filibuster now. Maine Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has similarly changed his mind and wants to preserve the filibuster, too.
Senators-elect Chris Pappas of New Hampshire and Josh Turek of Iowa, two more incoming Senate moderates, have expressed support for modifying filibuster rules without getting rid of it.
The 2026 midterm results can only be seen as a massive win for democracy, as Americans rejected Trump and established a check on his authoritarian presidency, while once again pleading for financial help from Washington.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear that Democrats have a plan to make life more affordable for Americans than it was under Biden. And if they did, it’s not clear that they would allow themselves to pass it.
We all know how this story ends – and that’s why the real fight starts now.
Have a tip for Andrew? Reach out via Signal to aperez.03.
Check out more from Zeteo:
Listen, no matter what happens, moderates are going to blame us for it. I say the gloves come off and we go toe to toe to get things that actually work. They’re relying on us to blink like we always do because we historically engaged in harm reduction. We’re long past that now and it won’t work to stop the bleeding.
At this point, we have to take a stand and if that means they fight us until we all go down then that’s just what happens. We let centrists pull this stunt on all of us again, then that just means when the smart fascists come along it’s going to be much, much worse.