{"id":17339,"date":"2026-01-06T12:31:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/dems-use-venezuela-to-hammer-affordability-issues-at-home\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T12:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:31:57","slug":"dems-use-venezuela-to-hammer-affordability-issues-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/dems-use-venezuela-to-hammer-affordability-issues-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Dems use Venezuela to hammer affordability issues at home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democrats hoping to win higher office this year are seizing on President Donald Trump\u2019s intervention in Venezuela to push a twist on one of his campaign promises: America first.<\/p>\n

Across the country, candidates and lawmakers are slamming Trump\u2019s decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and are using the moment to hammer their domestic affordability message.<\/p>\n

\u201cOhioans are facing higher costs across the board and are desperate for leadership that will help deliver relief,\u201d former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running to reclaim his seat, said on X<\/u><\/a>. \u201cWe should be more focused on improving the lives of Ohioans \u2013 not Caracas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The frame from Democrats shows how potent the party views affordability as an issue<\/u><\/a> in the midterms, one that Trump and his team have grown increasingly<\/u> preoccupied by<\/a> after across-the-board losses in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem Trump was already having was that he looked like he was focused on everything other than what matters in people’s daily life,\u201d said longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, a former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign. \u201cAnd now he\u2019s just supercharged that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump won in 2024 largely by running on affordability, and his less interventionist \u201cAmerica First\u201d approach helped him win over more isolationist voters who had been alienated by the neoconservative approach of the Republican Party in the Iraq War era. But continuing economic uncertainty and persistent inflation, combined with his second-term shift towards a more aggressive foreign policy approach, threaten to hurt the president and his party at the ballot box.<\/p>\n

Polling shows<\/u><\/a> that cost of living will remain top of voters\u2019 minds before November, something that Ferguson said \u201ctranscends every subgroup.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some of the party\u2019s most competitive 2026 midterm primaries, Democrats are coalescing around messaging on Venezuela.<\/p>\n

In Michigan, where the war in Gaza drew clear fissures between Democratic opponents, all three candidates sang the same domestically-focused tune.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans have made themselves crystal clear: they don\u2019t want to risk sliding into another costly war abroad. Families are struggling to buy groceries. People are skipping doctor’s visits because they can’t pay for healthcare,\u201d state Sen. Mallory McMorrow said in a statement<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake no mistake, this is about enriching his oil executive donors who want access to Venezuela\u2019s oil \u2014 not about democracy or Maduro or narcotics. Meanwhile, they tell us we can\u2019t afford healthcare at home,\u201d Abdul El Sayed, the former head of the Wayne County Department of Health, wrote on X<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking over another country while Americans can’t afford their rent and groceries is unacceptable,\u201d said Rep. Haley Stevens<\/u><\/a> (D-Mich.).<\/p>\n

The issue isn\u2019t just being used by midterm hopefuls. Potential Democratic 2028 candidates<\/u><\/a> are bringing affordability to the forefront of their Venezuela messaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of this week, millions of Americans are now paying thousands more for health insurance,\u201d former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday<\/u><\/a>. \u201cIf the President and Congressional GOP think Washington has the capacity to \u2018run\u2019 Venezuela right now, why won’t they fix the insurance cost crisis they’ve created here at home?\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime Miami-based Democratic strategist Christian Ulvert thinks his party is right to remind voters of what they see as failures in Trump\u2019s domestic agenda as he sets his sights abroad, including on cost of living issues \u2014 as long as that messaging doesn\u2019t overshadow a cogent perspective on how they would approach relations with Venezuela. South Florida is home to one of the biggest Venezuelan communities in the country, which has been shaken by Trump\u2019s recent revocation of Temporary Protected Status for those fleeing Maduro\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats need to also appreciate that many things can be true. It’s not a single issue, especially in this moment, and we have to talk about it in a way where you can join Venezuelans in speaking up that Maduro being gone is a victory for Venezuelans,\u201d Ulvert said.<\/p>\n

Some Democrats who served in foreign wars have also chosen to center a critique of American interventionism in addition to joining in on the party\u2019s pivot back to cost of living.<\/p>\n

Graham Platner, a veteran of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan who is now running to unseat Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, has seized on Trump\u2019s vague suggestions that the U.S. will run Venezuela following Maduro\u2019s forced ouster.<\/p>\n

\u201cBullshit. This has never worked,\u201d Platner posted in response to a clip of the president\u2019s Saturday morning remarks<\/u><\/a>. \u201cI watched my friends die in Iraq in the wake of speeches like this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego \u2014 an Iraq War veteran \u2014 has been outspoken on the American military action in Venezuela, flooding social media and cable news with broadsides aimed at Trump. He expressed a similar frustration<\/u><\/a>: \u201cI fought in some of the hardest battles of the Iraq War. Saw my brothers die, saw civilians being caught in the crossfire all for an unjustified war. No matter the outcome we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans, however, are backing Trump and praising the action he took against Maduro.<\/p>\n

\u201cNicolas Maduro is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans after years of trafficking illegal drugs and violent cartel members into our country \u2014 crimes for which he\u2019s been properly indicted in U.S. courts and an arrest warrant duly issued \u2014 and today he learned what accountability looks like,\u201d House Speaker Mike Johnson said on X<\/u><\/a> the day the operation became public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats hoping to win higher office this year are seizing on President Donald Trump\u2019s intervention in Venezuela to push a twist on one of his campaign promises: America first. Across the country, candidates and lawmakers are slamming Trump\u2019s decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and are using the moment to hammer their domestic affordability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}