Building The 2026 Big Blue Wave— Trump, Vought And Musk Are The Chief Architects, Not The DCCC

One of the big dynamics happening in electoral politics right now isn’t some strange new paradox— it’s the same failed routine the Democratic establishment has followed since Rahm Emanuel's reign at the DCCC. Despite a country teetering between authoritarianism and democracy, the DCCC remains locked into a strategy of risk-aversion, corporate coziness and trying to win over mythical centrists while ignoring the populist rage that will actually deliver a wave. It’s not Suzan DelBene, Hakeem Jeffries or Pete Aguilar who are stirring that wave— it’s Señor Trumpanzyy, Russ Vought and Elon Musk. For one thing, their escalating attacks on Social Security, and the values it represents, are jolting millions of voters awake. These right-wing darlings are doing what the DCCC refuses to do: drawing stark lines in the sand. And in doing so, they’re lighting the fuse.

You’ve heard the term “the third rail of American politics,”— a famous metaphor referring to Social Security because touching it— harming it in any way— is considered political suicide. The phrase plays off the third rail in subway systems, which carries the high-voltage electric current— touch it, and you're toast. It’s most commonly credited to Tip O'Neill, who was battling the Reagan White House and the GOP over how to keep the program solvent. The broader political mythology around it grew because voters, especially older ones, fiercely defend Social Security, seeing it as something they earned, (rather than the handout conservatives try to claim it is). Efforts to “reform” — slash it— by fools like Bush and then Paul Ryan have consistently blown up in Republicans’ faces.

But Trump can’t help himself being a loose cannon pointing at the third rail. Despite consistently claiming in during his 2016, 2020 and 2024 campaigns that he would never touch Social Security, he’s recently gone off-script in classic Trumpian fashion— saying in March 2024 that he's “open to entitlement reform.” That one sentence sent political shockwaves. It’s a signal to his movement that Social Security is back on the chopping block, even if his campaign tried to walk it back. But this isn’t new. Trump's budgets have been president proposed cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance, and his re-appointment of Russ Vought as budget director made clear that the right’s war on Social Security is alive and well. Trump may try to disguise it with populist rhetoric, but his policies— and his people— say otherwise.

Let’s not forget that it’s Vought who’s the evil brain behind the chainsaw. He’s not just some wonky conservative bureaucrat. He’s the intellectual architect of the current far-right austerity agenda. Through Project 2025, he’s laid out a clear blueprint for a second Trump term— one that includes massive "entitlement" cuts, privatization schemes and a fundamental restructuring of the federal safety net. His goal— the GOP’s goal— is a government that no longer guarantees basic economic security, where Social Security is no longer a public right but a market product. He’s betting that the public won’t notice. But they are. Especially seniors. Especially in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Then there’s Elon Musk— the loudest rich guy in America. He’s not crafting policy like Vought, but he’s broadcasting the message: government is bad, billionaires know best, and anyone who depends on a social program is a parasite. He’s part of an actual parasitic billionaire class pushing libertarian narratives that devalue Social Security. He might not say it directly, but every anti-tax, anti-government tirade he posts lands like a subtweet at Social Security recipients. And when billionaires mock the poor and the elderly, it helps fuel a backlash they never see coming.

You would think the Democratic establishment would be hammering this every day. They’re finally starting to, though the DCCC has been too busy recruiting corporate-friendly centrists who poll-test their way into silence on bold economic issues. Many are still afraid of the word “entitlements,” still unsure whether to fight for what should be non-negotiable. The result is a vacuum. But nature— and politics— abhors a vacuum… and the energy is coming from below. Activists, grassroots candidates, progressive media and everyday voters are connecting the dots. They see Trump's attacks, Vought's blueprints, Musk's contempt— and they’re realizing that Social Security is under real threat. Not in some abstract, distant-future way— but now, under a second Trump administration.

Yesterday, Nafatali Bendavid reported that “after weeks of struggling to find a message that resonates with ordinary Americans while President Donald Trump dominates the news, [the DCCC is] beginning to settle on one: the allegation that Trump and his allies are crippling Social Security… Senate Democrats have set up a ‘war room’ to deliver the message.” I’m sure Hakeem Jeffries and Suzan DelBene will come up with a shiny and empty something too.

Meanwhile, though, Bendavid reported that “Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor who served as Social Security commissioner toward the end of Biden’s term, has drawn crowds to town halls in Florida and elsewhere. ‘For much of the country, Washington might as well be Mars for all the connection it has to them,’ Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), the top Democrat on the committee that oversees Social Security, said in an interview. ‘But Social Security is something where there is connective tissue between the government and the people.’ The elimination of 7,000 Social Security jobs— more than 12 percent of the workforce— and other cuts have led to long waits, dropped calls and other widespread service issues. Democrats say the worsening problems create a clear link between Trump’s chaotic style and Americans’ day-to-day well-being. Michael Astrue, who led the Social Security Administration under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama— and says he voted for Trump— sharply criticized cuts to the agency by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. ‘I think you have a group of very immature people coming out of Silicon Valley bro culture, and they have decided federal agencies are filled with bad people doing bad things, and if you go in and hack away, and you don’t have to know what you are doing, you can improve it because less is more,’ Astrue said.”

More than 73 million Americans receive Social Security benefits, spanning all states and districts. It is the government’s marquee program for elderly and disabled people, so beneficiaries are concentrated among older Americans, who vote in high proportions. Voters 65 and up narrowly backed Trump 50 percent to 49 percent in November.

That sets it apart from other vulnerable programs, O’Malley said. “Unlike some other things that our federal government does, however important, whether Medicare or Medicaid or USAID or Department of Education, each of those requires a lot more explanation for people than Social Security,” he said. “If you get Social Security, then you ‘get’ Social Security. Nobody has to explain to you that you have earned the benefit.”

Trump officials have a very different view, saying the cuts of thousands of staffers amount to a long-overdue attack on waste and fraud.

Musk has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” saying the money coming in is not enough to meet its future obligations. Both Musk and Trump have suggested that millions of Social Security checks are fraudulently going to people listed as 100 or older, although that claim has been widely debunked.

…Audits have found minimal fraud in Social Security, generally concluding that less than 1 percent of its payments are improper and many of those are easily fixed.

… In the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) has also made the issue a priority, speaking about it on Fox News and staging a “day of action” for Democrats across the country.

Some Republicans are signaling that they are sensitive to the issue. At a March 25 confirmation hearing on Trump’s pick for Social Security chief, Frank Bisignano, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana) said he had dispatched one of his staffers to call the agency’s help line to see how it was working.

The staffer was disconnected three times, he said. Daines even played the hold music for his colleagues, joking, “They should have at least had Olivia Newton-John or some mediocre ’70s music.” He added, “We’ve got a lot of work to do to serve the taxpayers in this country and improve their customer experience.”

…Trump and other Republicans now say they simply want to improve efficiency at Social Security and have no plan for far-reaching changes. But Musk’s disparagement of the program and the GOP’s history of embracing proposals to retool it has made that message more challenging, and some Democrats say the unsupported fraud claims are a prelude to dismantling it.

“Because the public program is so broadly supported by Americans across the political system, they can’t really rob it until they wreck it,” O’Malley said. “So all those patently false allegations about the agency being rife with fraud, about the agency itself being a fraud, about illegal immigrants milking it dry— they need to wreck its reputation.”

A Washington Post report yesterday from Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin about Trump’s collapsing support is, at least partially, rooted in voters’ wariness of the Trump regime’s proximity to the third rail. That wrote that Señor Trumpanzyy “is facing growing opposition to his ambitious and controversial agenda, with his approval rating in decline, majority opposition to major initiatives, and perceptions that his administration is seeking to avoid complying with federal court orders… No president in modern times has moved more swiftly than Trump to remake so many parts of government, as well as some outside institutions. The moves range from shrinking and reshaping the executive branch to upending the global economic order to cracking down on illegal immigration to challenging leading universities. The initiatives have caused significant disruption to individuals, institutions and financial markets. They have produced a flurry of lawsuits from opponents, which Trump is contesting. There are few bright spots in the survey for the president, and none of his policies tested in the poll enjoy majority support. Trump’s overall approval rating is lower than it was only two months ago. The poll shows that 39 percent of adult Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, including 44 percent who disapprove strongly. In February, those numbers were 45 percent positive and 53 percent negative. Among registered voters, the deterioration has been even larger. In February, 48 percent of registered voters gave him positive marks, compared with 51 percent negative. Today those numbers are 42 percent positive and 55 percent negative, a swing from net negative three percentage points to net negative 13 points. Trump’s approval rating is lower than for any past president at the 100-day mark in their first or second terms.”

They don’t discuss Social Security specifically but mention that “Trump has seen a decline of 10 points among White people without a college degree, a key part of his political coalition; he is also down 13 points among adults under age 30 and 11 points among those who say they did not vote in November… The findings suggest that the president has overinterpreted the meaning of his victory over former vice president Kamala Harris by pursuing policies that have generated dissatisfaction from the public. In broad strokes, the judgment of his presidency so far is that a majority think Trump has exceeded his authority, a majority say the economy is worse and about half say that U.S. leadership in the world has become weaker. The economy, once a clear attribute for Trump, has become one more source of public disapproval about his presidency.”

So why isn’t the DCCC already dancing on Trump’s grave? “For all the negative findings related to the president’s actions, the poll offers little comfort for Democrats. Americans trust Trump over congressional Democrats by 37 percent to 30 percent when it comes to dealing with the country’s major problems— another 30 percent trust ‘neither’— and see the Democratic Party as somewhat more out of touch ‘with the concerns of most people’ than either the president or the Republican Party.”

Maybe Hakeem Jeffries should have thought about that when he appointed a corporate-aligned conservative multimillionaire to head the DCCC and before she started recruiting shitty candidates who look and smell just like herself. Who could have imagined that would go wrong— even though it always does, as one crap New Dem after another fails (or gets rescued by a Blue Wave they have nothing to do with).

Again, nothing to do with the DCCC, “Looking ahead, more than 7 in 10 say they think Trump’s policies will result in an economic recession in the short term, including 51 percent of Republicans. Looking further into the future, barely 3 in 10 think Trump’s policies will put the U.S. on a stronger economic foundation. Americans see a president who is seeking to expand his authority and flouting the rule of law. A near majority (49 percent) say he is moving the country away from its founding principles, compared with about one-third who say he is moving the country closer to those principles. More than 6 in 10 say the Trump administration does not respect the rule of law, and more than half say the administration is not committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of Americans. Six in 10 say the president, since taking office, has gone beyond his authority, and 56 percent say those actions are not justified.”