Calling Democrats ‘communists’ won’t win Gen Z — Republicans need a better offer
I’m sitting in the American Airlines Center as the first-ever Republican midterm convention gets underway in Dallas, and the energy is real. The room is loud. The crowd is locked in. People came here because they know November is not a drill.
That’s the good news.
The less comfortable news is this: just calling Democrats communists is not a strategy. Yes, they are. The agenda is collectivist. The instincts are coercive. The destination is bigger government, weaker families, and a generation trained to look to the state for everything.
But their lies, empty promises, and dangling "free" things in front of my generation are working. Emotions work. Subsidized housing talking points work. Student-debt theater works. Climate panic works. Identity sermons work. They do not need to be honest. They need to be first, loud, and simple.
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If our answer is just "they’re communists," we lose the people who never took a political theory class and never will. They hear the word, shrug, and go back to the pitch that sounds like relief.
We cannot keep crying about it from the sidelines. We have to offer something better, something that a 20-year-old like me can actually picture: work that pays, housing that is not a fantasy, energy that is cheap, schools that teach instead of lecture, streets that are safe, and a government that stops treating ambition like a moral defect.
This convention is the first time I have heard some of that from our side in a concentrated way. Not just contrast. Not just diagnosis. Actual counteroffers—tax relief that hits paychecks, border enforcement that is measurable, energy abundance instead of rationing, and candidates who talk about building things instead of merely condemning the other tribe.
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That is the part that matters.
Name-calling is catharsis. Solutions are politics. Democrats have spent years selling feelings and subsidies. If Republicans spend the next eight weeks only selling outrage, we will walk into November with high energy and a losing argument.
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Dallas should be the start of something, not a two-night pep rally. I hope this is not the last time before the midterms that our side talks like people who intend to govern, not just people who intend to be right.
The other side is not winning because they are smarter. They are winning parts of my generation because they showed up with a story. We finally started answering with one. Don’t stop.
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The last year and a half gave us more than talking points. The no-tax-on-tips-and-overtime policy is showing up in real returns. Seniors got the promised Social Security tax relief. The Working Families Tax Cuts put money back in paychecks. The border is no longer a slogan: catch-and-release ended, interior releases went to zero for months, and the wall and agents finally got funded. Trump Accounts give kids a start on savings instead of debt mythology. Energy leasing came back. That is a record. Stop whispering it to donors and start saying it to 20-year-olds.
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After Dallas, President Trump should take this same arena energy on the road. Tour campuses. Pack college arenas the way this hall is filled. Do not wait for young voters to find a clip. Take our message to them. Put two slides behind him. First: promises kept, with checkmarks. Tips. Overtime. Senior relief. Tax cuts that hit filings. A closed border. Accounts for kids. American energy. Make them look at the list instead of a Democrat’s poster about "free."
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Then put up the second slide: what Gen Z is still owed in the last two years of this term. Housing you can actually buy, not another voucher speech. Power bills that stop eating the paycheck. Trades and apprenticeships with the same dignity as a four-year degree. Colleges that compete on price and speech instead of ideology. First jobs that hire for work, not politics. Cities that feel safe enough to stay in. Ownership, not a new subscription to the state.
That is how you beat the other side’s offer. They sell cancellation, panic, and belonging. We should sell keys, hours, watts, and a wage. Dallas cannot be a two-night pep rally with a better diagnosis. Take the checkmarks on tour. Take the unfinished list with them.
My generation has already heard the word communist. What we have not heard enough is a deal.