The following is a lightly edited transcript of a forty-minute phone call with a veteran party operative who asked to be identified only as “a senior Democratic strategist,” which is what he has been calling himself since 2004. He took the call from a Peloton.
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FRIED OCEAN: Trump’s approval rating just hit a record low of 33%. Reaction?
SENIOR DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Devastating. For him. Historically bad. A president underwater by thirty points does not survive that. Normally.
FO: Normally.
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SDS: Right. So our internals have us at 31.
FO: Thirty-one what?
SDS: Same thing. Approval. Favorability. Whatever you want to call the number where a person hears your name and makes a face.
FO: So a record low Trump approval rating still beats you.
SDS: By two. And that’s before we spend a dollar. Once we start spending, we typically see movement.
FO: Upward?
SDS: Movement.
FO: What’s the 2028 plan?
SDS: Meet voters where they are. We’re doing listening sessions in a decommissioned Sears in Bucks County. Folding chairs. No podium. The candidate wears a quarter-zip and says the word “kitchen table” until someone claps.
FO: Does someone clap?
SDS: A staffer. But organically.
FO: You tested new messaging, I hear.
SDS: “Democrats: We Hear You.” Polled beautifully among respondents who had not yet heard it. The second they heard it, it cratered. So the strategy is a message no one is exposed to.
FO: How do you run a campaign nobody sees?
SDS: Podcasts.
FO: Explain.
SDS: We’re putting a sixty-eight-year-old senator on a four-hour show hosted by a man who lifts. He’ll be asked about aliens. He’ll say he can’t comment on aliens. That clip does eleven million views and every single one of them is hostile.
FO: Eleven million.
SDS: Reach is reach.
FO: Any use of AI?
SDS: We built a model trained on every winning Democratic campaign since 1992 and asked it to output the exact ideological center of the party. It returned a blank document. We ran it again. Blank document, but this time it apologized.
FO: And the bench?
SDS: Deep. Three governors nobody outside their state can pick out of a lineup, a former defense-tech CEO who does cold plunges on camera, and a congresswoman who is genuinely great but keeps saying true things out loud.
FO: Is that a problem?
SDS: It’s a workshop item.
FO: Last question. Thirty-three percent. Historic low. Can you lose to that?
SDS: Look, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I want to be very clear with you about something.
FO: Please.
SDS: We’re going to find a way.