Republicans are about to try something no midterm cycle has seen before, and Democrats handed them the ammunition to pull it off. Next month in Dallas, the GOP will use its first-ever midterm party convention to put the Democrat Party's socialist wing on trial in front of the whole country. Organizers have spent months building a case against them.
And that’s what’s so brilliant about it.
The event runs September 9-10 at the American Airlines Center. Convention organizers have a key strategy to make this event effective: make the election about who actually controls the Democrat Party now. For months, they've been compiling video of far-left figures in the party, building a library meant to show just how extreme the party's base has become. "Our video trove is endless," one convention source told Axios.
Remember when I said that nominating Abdul El-Sayed might be the Democrats' biggest mistake this year? Well, he is shaping up to be the convention's prime target. He supports Medicare for All, has criticized Israel, and is tied to the Democratic Socialists of America, no matter how hard he tries to convince voters otherwise. President Donald Trump hasn't waited for the convention to start swinging. Trump has already called El-Sayed a "communist" and a "man of hate" who "hates Israel." El-Sayed, meanwhile, is busy insisting he's actually a capitalist. Good luck selling that after the DSA connection follows him into every ad Republicans cut this fall.
Of course, attacking your opponents only gets you so far. You have to give voters a reason to vote for you. This convention will also make the case for voting Republican, and it will be a rather easy case to make. Months of internal polling shaped a message built around tax cuts, lower prescription drug prices, and border security, the same formula organizers credit for their success at the 2024 convention.
The plan is to fill the stage with everyday Americans praising those wins, framing Republicans as the party focused on kitchen-table concerns while Democrats drift further left.
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Other themes will round out the two-day event. Trump's no-tax-on-tips policy will be highlighted, along with tougher policies on urban crime, new child investment accounts, and Vice President JD Vance's anti-fraud task force. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is getting stage time too, a move Trump aides see as a way to widen the coalition beyond the usual base. On Iran, the message will be simple: Trump acted to keep Americans safe.
Democrats, notably, chose not to hold a midterm convention of their own this cycle. DNC spokesperson Kendall Witmer tried to punch back anyway, telling Axios, "While everyday Americans struggle to pay their bills, fill up their tanks, or put food on the table, Republicans are hosting a multimillion-dollar celebration to satisfy Donald Trump's massive ego and tie vulnerable Republican candidates closer to his failed agenda."
None of this should surprise anyone. Republicans have been signaling for months that they'd tie vulnerable Democrats to the socialist wing of their own party, and Democrats let it happen by allowing that wing to take over. Socialism polls terribly outside of the Democrat Party, and the GOP knows it. Make no mistake about it, Dallas represents more than a pep rally. Democrats built this trap themselves, and Republicans are simply walking them into it in front of the cameras.
