Democrats are being urged to follow Donald Trump's lead when it comes to communicating with red state voters, according to Thomas Schaller, a political science professor and guest on "The Daily Blast" podcast from The New Republic.
Schaller discussed his book, "White Rural Rage," with host Greg Sargent on Monday.
Sargent asked how Democrats can "go into red America, into some of these swingy House districts, some of these red states, some of these red House districts, which I think are going to be in play in 2026, and...win over two, three, four points among those demographics? How do they talk about the tariffs? How do they talk about Trump? What do they say?"
"I think they try to talk in the same language that Trump talked about during the election," Schaller advised. "And maybe like Trump, they exaggerate a little bit about the prices of things."
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Schaller continued, "Trump has lied consistently. He said the unemployment rate under Obama was 42 percent in one tweet, and he says Biden created the worst economy in American history, even though The Economist magazine, no liberal rag, said our economy was 'the envy of the world' by the end of the Biden administration. It wasn’t perfect, but we did manage inflation better than any other Western European democracy...So go in there and frankly scare them with stories about the economic consequences."
One caveat, according to Schaller, is how to effectively reach rural voters.
"The problem... is where they get their information," Schaller said, adding that old-fashioned canvassing doesn't work anymore.
"It’s all digital and electronic and through people’s phones, not through people’s front doors. It’s really hard to get face-to-face with people anymore," Schaller said. "So Democrats got to get on these local radio shows. They have to create their own local radio shows. They have to get on these podcasts, because they’re living in an informational vacuum or a silo, so they’re not hearing these messages anyway."
He continued, "As we’ve seen on Bluesky today, Fox News and OANN are not even putting the market reports up there. They’re not even showing the Dow, the S&P, and the NASDAQ on their tickers because they know that their listeners and viewers cannot handle any negative news. They need to be constantly reinforced with nonstop pro-red, pro-Republican, pro-Trump, pro-MAGA news because they can’t handle the truth, as Jack Nicholson would say. We need to break through that and force them to listen to alternative messages, but that is a really, really difficult nut to crack."