Democrats need more than just Trump-bashing to win the midterm elections. They need a symbol of congressional corruption.

Jack Abramoff testifying before Congress. Citation: USA Today

Democrats have been searching for a political message that will animate their base for the 2018 midterm elections. The obvious target for much of their advertising will be, of course, Donald Trump. He remains historically unpopular for an economically successful president who has mostly avoided foreign policy blunders. In fact, some commentators believe that the president is all Democrats need for their midterm strategy. A strong reaction against the president always drives the opposition to vote in midterms, these pundits argue. “Trump’s numbers are worse than [congressional] Republicans … from a very high level, the strategy is probably just to talk about Trump,” one FiveThirtyEight writer asserted when asked what the Democrats’ midterm strategy should be. But in some areas, Trump retains a modicum of popularity. In recent polling, Trump’s favorable rating is +6 favorable over unfavorable in North Dakota, +8 in Indiana, +3 in Montana, and +20 in Tennessee, all critical races that Democrats have to win if they hope to take over the Senate in November. A Trump-bashing campaign would also not work in states like North Dakota where even Democratic senatorial candidates have openly advocated working with the president. North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp recently sought and received positive support from President Trump while he signed a banking deregulation bill, ruining her chances to later pivot to a strongly anti-Trump stance.

What message should Democrats campaign on where Trump is popular? Should Democrats run a positive campaign highlighting their policy proposals without mentioning the president? Or does the Democratic Party need something else?

Democrats have considered different historical models for their Trump-adjacent midterm campaigns. Along with an attack on Trump, Democrats and liberals have proposed a positive agenda similar to the 1994 Republican Contract with America. Democratic Senator Cory Booker has offered a raft of policy proposals and argued that Democrats should make those proposals their platform. “My party has got to focus on not being anti-Trump. It’s not about what you’re against in life. It’s what you’re for,” Booker said recently to CNN. According to Booker and others, running on a strong liberal agenda will show that Democrats stand for something, giving them an image that they can project to both wavering moderates and their own base.

But there is another alternative, one that the Democrats tried successfully in 2006. This alternative approach would still focus on negative partisanship but tie their partisan feelings to particular Republican congressional leaders and corrupt acts by those politicians. In 2006, Democrats were able to center this negative partisanship on one particular man: Jack Abramoff. The one-time leading lobbyist was arrested for perpetrating fraud against Native American casino owners and bribing federal officials. Abramoff’s transgressions implicated both members of the George W. Bush White House and the House of Representatives. House Representative Bob Ney went to jail, while House leaders had to spend valuable campaigning time distancing themselves from the lobbyist.

The Abramoff scandal was certainly not the only scandal that House Republicans faced between 2004 and 2006. It was not even the only scandal that led to specific charges against individual members of Congress; Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Mark Foley each had their own headline-grabbing scandals at almost the same time. Both DeLay and Foley, however, quickly resigned from Congress, and their scandals stemmed from personal or arcane political conduct (a sex scandal for Foley and a conviction over election law violations for DeLay). The Abramoff scandal, on the other hand, involved several members of Congress, numerous congressional aides, and a narrative of corruption that Democrats could apply to all members of Congress. Indeed, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi made just that connection. In a statement on January 4th, 2006, the day of Abramoff’s conviction, she said, “Today, Jack Abramoff admitted to conspiring to bribe members of Congress — a despicable action … Sadly, it is not a surprise because this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history and the American people are paying the price.” A Slate article from early January 2006 made the connection to the 2006 midterms more explicitly: “Democrats have been trying to overcome the fact that congressional races tend to be about local issues by labeling the GOP the party of corruption. Indictments of Republican lawmakers will help.”

Democrats are currently locked in an internal struggle for the future agenda of their party. It will be difficult for them to present a message as coherent and concise as Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994. Instead, Democrats need to find a target for their negative messaging specifically affiliated with Congress. They can already target unpopular leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, but Democrats also need to dig deep and be sensitive to any criminal behavior that emerges from members of Congress over the next four months, behavior that they can form a coherent narrative around and sell to voters. The next Jack Abramoff may not perpetuate as large or as consequential a scam as the original. But he or she could still cost Republicans control of the House.