Slotkin Fuels 2028 Speculation With Tough Love Speech to Iowa Democrats

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) spoke at the Polk County Democrats’ spring dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, this week and offered her party some tough love about winning elections.

“If we can figure out how to win in the middle of the country, we can work that out on the coast,” Slotkin said to the room, adding, “But what works on the coast does not necessarily work in the middle of the country.”

Slotkin’s speech raised eyebrows and fueled speculation that the first-term senator, elected in 2024 in a state President Donald Trump won, may be eyeing a 2028 presidential run.

“You know, I come from the CIA. I enjoy winning things. I want to win in November, in 2028. I wanna win. So that means being honest about where the Democratic Party needs to go. We don’t help ourselves by pretending we don’t have a problem, OK?” began the Michigan Democrat, who added:

So here is my humble suggestion on how to think about the Democratic Party.

First of all, as we were just alluding to, staying on defense only doesn’t win anything. You must go on offense to win. That’s any athletic team, as we saw yesterday with the University of Michigan winning the NCAA — sorry, I had to do that gratuitously. And thank you to all the legislators wearing blue today. We appreciate you, go blue.

But you cannot win by playing defense only. So what does offense look like? And I would argue that the differences in the Democratic Party today — you know, we used to talk about, are you a progressive or are you a moderate? Like, where are you on that scale? That’s not the debate anymore. The debate is not between progressive and moderate, it’s fight or flight. Are you here and do you believe that if we do not fight for the values of this country, they’re going to go away? Or do you believe that if we just wait, if we bide our time, you know, eventually what Trump does will piss people off and they will boomerang on him? And, “Alyssa, don’t worry, people will come back to the Democrats once they get frustrated enough.” No.

There are plenty of people that I serve with who are on team flight. And I will tell you that I am a good Midwestern Democrat. I fall more on the pragmatic and moderate side of the house, but I am on team fight — 100%. 100%.

You guys are Iowa. You’re gonna see every Tom, Dick, and Harry candidate come through here, right? And I want you to ask what their offensive plan is — their Project 2029 — what is their value proposition that they’re gonna offer to the American people that’s gonna offer an alternative to what Trump is doing, rather than just pointing at him and saying, “He’s bad.” We know that.

And here’s what I’d humbly offer as a good Midwestern Democrat. The things we’re fighting for are not that complicated. We need to get back to basics a little bit, okay? And that Midwestern pragmatism — basically we just need to show people that what we care about is an economy where if you work hard and play by the rules, you get ahead and your kids do better. We need one job that pays you well, where you have good benefits and you can save every month.

You have a home you can afford. You’re not waiting until you’re 50 years old to buy your first home. You can actually afford a home and raise your family in your own home and build equity. Your kids can go to a good public school and be educated for the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past. You can have health care that’s as good as anywhere in the world, that you don’t have to go bankrupt over, that isn’t a racket — and in my mind, I believe that’s a national insurance plan for anyone at any age.

We can have a common set of democratic rules that we all play by, so that no one man or no one team can abuse the system in the way that we’re seeing now. And we need a new generation of leaders that think differently and work harder and never forget who they work for.

There’s gonna be a million things that Democrats — you know, we’re the party of the Big Tent. We care about a lot of things. But what I would offer is that we have basically trained leaders over the last 30 years who believe in consensus and making everyone feel happy, right, and we want that. We want everyone to feel good, but we need to win in order to enact the things that we care about. So win first. Win first.

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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