Plain English with Derek Thompson
Trump Is Doubling Down on Iran. How Should Democrats Respond?
06 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What are the implications of Trump's polling on the Democratic Party?
With an unjustified, unexplained war spreading in the Middle East, with ICE rampaging through various American cities, with tariffs going up and down and up and down depending on the day, Donald Trump's polling has continued to edge downward every week. And yet the approval rating of the Democratic Party is still stuck near its all-time low, according to Gallup and other surveys.
One interpretation of these polls, one obvious interpretation, is that the deep unpopularity of that letter D at the end of a candidate's name is a huge albatross around Democratic candidates nationwide. But there's another interpretation that I think is more interesting and perhaps more true.
The fact that the party has no clearly defined leader, no clearly defined brand, to use the dreaded B word, is an opportunity for young Democrats to define it for themselves. Rather than act like a congregation all singing from the same hymnal, they can experiment, disagree, adapt their message to the electorate. Today's guest is Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego.
Chapter 2: How can young Democrats redefine their party's brand?
I think Gallego is interesting because he's hard to pin down. He's deeply critical of the Trump administration on immigration, obviously, but he was also deeply critical of the Biden administration on immigration.
While the concept of abundance, ideas from the book that I co-wrote with Ezra Klein, are often held up in direct opposition to economic populism, Gallego is a proponent of abundance principles who also isn't afraid to talk about taking on corporate power and even breaking up companies.
He's someone who could be plausibly accused of being a moderate, but he questions the very concept of moderation. Today, we talk about the latest in the Iran war before talking a bit about why the Democratic Party is still so unpopular and why that unpopularity might be a sneaky opportunity for Democrats. And we end up in an interesting place that I didn't quite anticipate.
Democrats, I think, are very good at talking about affordability at the moment. They're good at talking about redistribution, too, how to bring people up to an income level that is decent and dignified.
Chapter 3: What are Senator Gallego's views on the Iran war?
And I agree that Americans need to feel, want to feel like they can get through the day. But I also believe, as Gallego does, that good politics has to offer something a bit more than problem solving that brings people up to a minimum viable level of comfort. I think good politics, maybe especially now, has to offer a vision of success in America, a message of aspiration, not just affordability.
And so we end up talking about how Democrats can pull that off, how the party that at times might sound like they mostly want to tax success might also be a party that celebrates it. I'm Derek Thompson. This is Planned English. This episode of Plain English is presented by Audi.
Chapter 4: How does Senator Gallego assess the current immigration policies?
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Chapter 5: What does Gallego mean by 'affordability vs. aspiration' in politics?
Senator Ruben Gallego, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
The war against Iran. I don't know why we're doing this. Sometimes the White House calls it a war. Sometimes they insist it's not a war. Marco Rubio, I think, said we had to do this because Israel was going to attack anyway. And then he said we had to do this because Iran posed a direct threat to the United States.
Chapter 6: How can Democrats effectively communicate their message?
Sometimes I feel like Trump calls a reporter and says Iran's about to get on the phone and beg for peace. And sometimes he says, get prepared to fight for weeks or months. I'm confused. You're a senator. Based on what you've been told,
Why are we doing this? That is a good question that they don't have an answer to, and scarier for our troops.
Chapter 7: What role does the Democratic Party play in addressing economic issues?
You know, I unfortunately had to experience this deja vu 21 years ago as a Marine in Al-Anbar, where I, two years into the Iraq War, I was, you know, going town to town searching for insurgents, But there was no clear direction what victory looked like, what the end goal was, what was going to be the after action report on Iraq. And right now, we don't know what actually brought us into this war.
There's been a lot of testing of messages, which scares me, the fact they didn't actually have a real reason, except for the real situation is probably because we could, and that they don't know what victory looks like.
They don't know what happens after they destroy every launcher that Iranians have, what happens if we're able to destroy every boat possible, every vehicle that moves as owned by the Iranian military. But yet what happens if the Ayatollah's successor is still in power? Is that a victory? I don't know.
Chapter 8: How can the Democratic Party balance aspiration and affordability?
It may not be a victory. What was the end goal besides trying to destroy their military capability? And then that only means they were just putting off having to come back and do it. This is a very scary situation. I think that's why the American public is against this. None of this seems right. None of this seems good.
And it's also totally off focus of where the American public wants us to be, which is on domestic issues because people are really hurting right now.
I want to get to where I think you were headed, which is making the war a domestic issue. But I want to be clear about what I think you're telling me. You're saying you haven't seen evidence that an attack was imminent. Absolutely not. You haven't heard a case for war, and you haven't heard an end goal articulated. All three? No evidence.
The only reason I heard, which is also not a reason, a rational reason or and or a reason to go around Congress, was that there was an imminent attack that was going to happen because Israel was going to attack Iran with or without us. And by that happening, that would mean that we were going to get attacked in retaliation for. Therefore, we had to join in a preeminent attack on Israel, which is.
Absolute BS. Why are we subordinating our war-making decisions to any country? Mind you, we are the superpower of the world. In what world would we allow the UK to decide to go to war with us or any NATO partner or anybody else? And so that first excuse or the first reasoning, which I actually think is probably pretty close to the truth, felt like, you know, a lead weight in MAGA world.
And that's why you're seeing a big retreat because MAGA world does not like the messaging of we went to war because Israel forced our hand.
Mm-hmm. One of the things I want to talk to you about is democratic messaging. And I think a key part of that is focus. With Trump, there's always an oversupply of things that Democrats can criticize. But I think good messaging isn't about saying everything about everything. It's about being deliberate about what you ignore and what you say.
Exactly.
So take the case of Iran. I feel like you could criticize this on several grounds. You could criticize this war on constitutional grounds. The president started a war. Process, yeah. Right, that's Article I. That's the role of Congress. You can prosecute it on moral grounds. The Iranian children, the American lives lost. You can also focus on economic grounds. Look at oil prices.
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