On Oct. 6, the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy hosted Democratic strategist Lis Smith ’05 and The Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller and managing editor Sam Stein ’04 for a conversation about the Democratic Party’s strategy in the 2026 midterm elections.
At the event, Smith — who was the senior advisor for Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign — warned that Democrats are “really good at taking the wrong lessons away from elections.”
“There has been a really dangerous myth that has been peddled in the Democratic Party for the last 20 years,” she said. “It’s that mobilization alone matters.”
About 200 people attended the talk in Spaulding Auditorium, which was moderated by government professor Russell Muirhead. An additional 241 people viewed the YouTube livestream, according to Rockefeller Center associate director of public programs and special events Dvora Greenberg Koelling.
The speakers focused on Democrats’ strategy in the midterms. Miller said that Democrats would win majorities in the House and Senate during the midterms only if “Trump stepped on his dick.”
“They [Democrats] are not very well-represented in the plurality group in the country,” Miller said. “Non-college, white working class people is still the plurality.”
Democrats need to tap into voters’ sentiments that “the system is broken,” Smith said, pointing to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, for his “really impressive primary campaign.”
“He is starting to work to build a broader coalition,” Smith said.
Miller said that he believes there are two distinct groups of swing voters: “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” voters and “socially conservative but very anti-war” voters.
Miller, who left the Republican Party in 2020, said that the identity of the Republican Party is now a “blood and soil,” “nationalist and religious” party, rather than the “classical liberalism” of the party prior to Trump.
“Eighty percent of the party is mostly aligned,” he said. “Republican voters want nationalism.”
Stein agreed, saying that “identity politics was toxic for a lot of people.”
“It becomes more unifying for Democrats to think about structuring everything around corruption, the elites and weirdos in Silicon Valley absolutely profiteering around the price of gas,” Stein said.
Smith expressed her hope in lesser-known candidates in the 2026 midterms outside of the “six-to-eight lackluster people in national politics.”
“There are all of these really good people who want to step up for whatever reason and run for office,” she said. “Our politics is so much better than the leaders in our politics often are.”
Cait Conley, the Democratic nominee for representative of New York’s 17th District, is an example of the “different types of candidates” who she describes as being “more relatable.” Conley previously served as an officer in the U.S. Army.
“You’re not going to say that this [Conley] is AOC Junior,” she said. “A lot of the attacks don’t work on people like this.”
Stein said that the candidates who resonate with voters are those that “scan as authentic.” He also explained that politics “draws interesting characters.”
“You have to have incredibly thick skin to get into politics,” he said. “You have to believe that you are the solution to peoples’ problems.”
The panelists also discussed the future of the Republican Party. Stein predicted that Trump’s “corruption will be more in your face” towards the end of his second term.
“Pardons for everybody,” Stein said. “Trying to lay the groundwork for prosecuting his political opponents in a way that’s much more vicious than now.”
Miller predicted that Vice President JD Vance will be the Republican nominee for the presidential election in 2028, saying that Vance is “better than people think.”
“People on the left underrate JD Vance,” he said. “The physical revulsion that comes with JD makes it hard to assess him but he has been very deft at navigating Republican internal issues.”
Smith concluded by saying that Dartmouth students have an “opportunity” to meet primary candidates because New Hampshire has historically held the first presidential primary in the nation.
“The amazing thing about being here in New Hampshire that I saw up close at Dartmouth is that you can go up to them and literally touch them,” she said. “Take the opportunity, go and see everyone.”
In August, the Democratic National Convention decided that New Hampshire wouldn’t have the first primary slot in the 2028 election, moving it behind South Carolina and Nevada. New Hampshire’s state law, though, requires that its primary occurs seven days or more before primaries in other states, forcing New Hampshire Democrats to make a choice between following the DNC’s rules and New Hampshire law.
Charlie Kahn ’30 said that he liked hearing “different viewpoints” at the event.
“I liked that it was both sides of a Democratic strategist and a more conservative slash traditional Republican,” he said. “I liked the contrasting sides of learning about the different arguments.”
