Elissa Slotkin is testing whether winning in Trump country is a winning message for Democrats

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) — Sen. Elissa Slotkin knows how to win in Trump country. She’s trying to show her fellow Democrats the way.

“We don’t help ourselves by pretending we don’t have a problem, OK?” Slotkin told Democrats at a party dinner here Tuesday night. “Staying on defense only doesn’t win anything. You must go on offense to win.”

The Michigan senator brought a dose of tough medicine for Democrats as she visited Iowa, the latest stop on a tour of states that President Donald Trump won, which she believes can be the center of the party’s revival in the midterm elections and beyond.

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

As she joins a long list of Democrats eyeing a potential presidential candidacy in 2028, Slotkin is positioning herself squarely in the middle – geographically and politically – as she tests her message in recent months to audiences in Missouri, Idaho, western Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio.

Her appearances are intended to bolster the party in its quest to win control of Congress this fall, an argument she delivered here at the Polk County Democratic Party’s annual fundraising dinner on Tuesday night, but her broader ambitions come alive with little coaxing.

“I just want to be part of the change that I think we need in this party,” Slotkin told CNN in an interview after her speech. “I’m not so arrogant as to think it has to be me, but I want to be part of that next generation, without a doubt.”

Slotkin, as a politician, is a product of the Trump era.

She won a seat in Congress in 2018 in a Trump-friendly district during his first midterm election. Two years later, she won reelection with Trump at the top of the ballot. She narrowly won a US Senate seat in 2024, even as Trump carried Michigan.

‘It’s fight or flight’

She downplays any ideological divisions among Democrats – a prospect that will surely be tested in the 2026 and 2028 campaigns – and said the party should find unity in turning the page from Trump. Yet with just 28% of Americans holding a favorable view of the Democratic Party, according to the latest CNN poll, the challenges facing Slotkin and other leaders is clear.

“We used to talk about, are you a progressive or are you a moderate? That’s not the debate anymore. It’s fight or flight,” Slotkin said, adding that despite a more moderate background, “I am on team fight – 100%!”

Slotkin drew the ire of the Trump administration last year for organizing a video that she and five other Democratic lawmakers recorded, urging members of the military to resist illegal orders. The Justice Department tried to charge the group, but failed to win an indictment.

As she introduces herself to new audiences, she ticks through her electoral history – race-by-race – making it clear that one of her biggest calling cards is winning in places that other Democrats have struggled to do so.

She delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last year, choosing to speak from the city of Wyandotte, Michigan, which she noted that both she and Trump won in 2024. She offered a message for anyone feeling down-and-out by his return.

“First, don’t tune out. It’s easy to be exhausted, but America needs you now more than ever,” Slotkin said in that speech, a message that she reprises in her campaign trail stops today. “If previous generations had not fought for democracy, where would we be today?”

Now, even as she talks about being friendly with Trump-voting neighbors from her town of Holly, Michigan, she also delivers a searing critique of the president’s foreign policy, domestic agenda and the enrichment she believes he’s made from office.

The spark for a political turnaround for Democrats, she said, must be rooted in economic fairness.

“Under no ledger can you say that people are doing better today than we were two years ago,” Slotkin said. “You can’t say it.”

‘The most dangerous thing we face’

Slotkin, 49, was a CIA analyst long before she ran for office. She signed up for the intelligence service after attending graduate school in New York during the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. She served three tours of duty in Iraq and worked on the national security staffs of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Even with global threats rising, she said, her biggest worries are closer to home.

“I believe to my bones that the most important and dangerous national security threat to the United States is not coming from abroad,” Slotkin said. “It is the threat to the middle class in America and the threat to the American dream. That is the most dangerous thing we face.”

On her visit to Iowa, Slotkin sat down for lunch with five Trump voters in Indianola, a town just south of Des Moines, to hear concerns across the political spectrum. The session was organized by Majority Democrats, a group of younger elected officials who are trying to rebrand and rebuild the party.

She appeared at a health care town hall meeting for Sarah Trone Garriott, an Iowa state senator who is running for Congress against Republican Rep. Zach Nunn in one of the most competitive races in the country.

Slotkin offered instructions for how to speak about politics to their conservative neighbors, saying: “Fear is contagious, but so is courage.” She urged Democrats to “call balls and strikes” and point out undisputable facts about the economy.

“You can’t argue with the price of gas at the pump right now. It’s not negotiable to be like, everything’s great, prices are going down,” Slotkin said. “You can tweet that as much as you want. Everyone knows how much the damn tank was to fill up.”

A Democratic Project 2029

Gone are the days when a visit to Iowa by an ambitious Democrat automatically signaled the exploration of a presidential campaign. The state lost its long-held position at the front of the party’s nominating calendar after the 2020 Iowa caucuses, but it is still competing for an early-slot along with Michigan and a handful of states.

Yet it remains a place where presidential aspirations can blossom, with activists still pointing to Obama’s 2008 victory as a critical launching pad to the White House. He won the state in two general elections, too, the last Democratic presidential candidate to do so.

Mindful that she is one of many Democrats eyeing a potential run – governors, senators and almost certainly others – she implored party activists to press candidates for their plans, not merely listen to their criticisms of Trump.

“You’re going to see every Tom, Dick, and Harry candidate come through here, right?” Slotkin said. “I want you to ask what their offensive plan is – their Project 2029 – and the value proposition they’re going to offer as an alternative to what Trump is doing, rather than just pointing at him and saying, ‘He’s bad. He’s bad. He’s bad. He’s bad.’”

“We know that,” Slotkin said. “OK?”

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