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In a wide-ranging interview, the junior senator from Michigan took stock of her party’s deep-seated woes, warning Democrats not to be “so damn scared.”
July 17, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET
As Democrats battle over age, ideology and how to wrest back power, they increasingly agree on one idea: Their party needs an affirmative vision.
That is where the consensus ends.
So Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, is trying to help her party fill in those details.
Ms. Slotkin, who gave the Democratic response to President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in March, is delivering a series of speeches that are part candid diagnosis of her party’s problems, part policy prescription and part political pep talk, sometimes irritating more left-wing Democrats in the process.
Last month, she laid out what she called her “economic war plan,” focused on rebuilding the middle class and slaughtering “some sacred cows” in the process.
She is planning to give speeches about security and democracy later this year.
“You cannot win a game, a war, anything, just by playing defense,” Ms. Slotkin said in an interview this week. “You can’t just point at Donald Trump every day and point out the bad things that he’s doing. You have to show a positive, affirmative vision of what you’re going to do if you’re in power.”
In the half-hour interview, Ms. Slotkin discussed her party’s messaging problems, the new fault lines defining Democratic debates and the 2028 presidential race.
