WASHINGTON — Democrats need to hone their messaging on “full-throated economic populist ideas” as the party looks to regain ground in the 2026 midterms, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday. And she suggests the party take a page out of President Donald Trump’s playbook to do that.

“Donald Trump said every single day that he would lower costs for American families. He said it over and over and over, and people believed him. He said in his very first interview after he was elected, the reason he got elected was because he offered to lower costs on the first day. Democrats need to read the room,” Warren told reporters. “That’s what the American people want.”

The job for Democrats, Warren said, is to hold Trump accountable and to put out the party’s own proposals to lower costs.

The Massachusetts Democrat is firmly in the progressive wing of her party and is a member of the Senate leadership team. In a speech at the National Press Club, Warren pitched economic populism as the direction Democrats need to steer the party toward as the midterm elections loom.

“It is not enough to simply attack Trump,” Warren said. “Democrats need to earn trust — long-term, durable trust — across the electorate. Trust that we actually understand what’s broken and trust that we have courage to fix it, even when that means taking on the wealthy and well-connected.”

Warren applauded Democrats for pushing back on Trump during the partial government shutdown last fall, the longest in U.S. history.

Recent polling has shown Democrats with a growing advantage on a generic congressional ballot that asks respondents whether they plan to vote for the Republican or the Democratic candidate for Congress. As of Monday, a RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys put Democrats at 46.3 percent and Republicans at 41.7% on the generic ballot.

And the chance to regain some control in Washington in the midterms is within reach for Democrats. Currently, they need a net gain of three seats to take control of the House but face a more herculean challenge to win the majority in the Senate where they need to flip at least four seats in a map that currently favors the GOP.

“We must, must, must win up and down the ballot in these critical midterm elections,” Warren said. “Democrats cannot build a durable, governing majority that actually makes life better for people and rebuilds trust in the Democratic Party by watering down our economic vision.”

She pointed to the recent political success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who transformed himself from a little-known state lawmaker into a nationally recognized face of the Democratic Party’s left flank. Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, was sworn in on Jan. 1.

“He ran a campaign tightly focused on the cost of living with an easy to understand platform: free buses, freeze the rent and deliver no-cost child care,” she said.

Warren’s pitch comes as Trump will travel on Tuesday to Michigan, a crucial swing state where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring, leaving an open Senate seat that could help determine who controls the chamber next year. Trump won Michigan narrowly in 2016 and 2024 and lost the key state to former President Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump is slated to address the Detroit Economic Club in a speech that will likely tie his economic policies to voters there.

“I’m gonna be making a trip to Detroit to talk about our unbelievable amount of factories that are opening up all over the country, many of which are car factories and car plants,” he told reporters Sunday night on Air Force One.

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John. T Bennett and Victor Feldman contributed to this report.

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