Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D) said during a recent interview that President Trump is “very effectively flooding the zone” and that Democratic Party lawmakers have not done enough to counter the president’s agenda, so far.
“I think that Trump is very effectively flooding the zone. I think that he has people on their heels. People don’t know where to look first on any given day. I think that we have a general approach of legislation, litigation, communication, and elections, focusing on those four buckets. But I think the moment demands more than that,” Slotkin said in an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday.
“As a Midwesterner who won on the same ballot as Trump, I’m going to be banging pots and pans about the economic message over and over and over again, because I think in general, as a party, we’ve drifted away from a central focus on the economy and on families, and that to me is an essential center of gravity,” she told the magazine.
Slotkin was referring to the current administration’s approach to flooding the zone with statements and actions that spark outrage from critics and opposition, making it more difficult for the news media, the public and Democrats to focus on a given topic.
The pace of developments has made it difficult for Democratic Party lawmakers to keep up and respond effectively. The strategy has been welcomed in MAGA World.
“Essentially they flood the zone, and the chaos causes a lot of journalists to be all over the place, and the Democrats have no idea what to say,” one Trump ally told The Hill in late January.
Slotkin, who was chosen to deliver the response for Democrats following Trump’s address to Congress in early March, argued that for Democrats to have a better chance of winning in battleground districts and states in the next election cycle, they need to “get back to the fundamentals.”
“The middle class is an absolutely essential part of American life. We need to grow and expand it. And we need to focus on the three big things that most Americans can agree on, which is strong economic security, strong national security, and strong democracy,” Slotkin, who won a hotly contested Senate race last year, said during the interview.
“I come from a world of war planning, a world of constant, prudent planning. I come from a world where you can’t just play defense only,” Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, added. “There’s no such thing as winning, in any operation or in any war, by just playing defense. What we owe the country is a strategy that does more than play defense.”