The road to four struggling rural hospitals now hosts a political message: “If this hospital closes, blame Trump.”This story is from The Guardian. It's illustrated with a photo of one of the other billboards, which is in Columbus, Indiana:
In a series of black-and-yellow billboards erected near the facilities, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) seeks to tell voters in deep red states “who is responsible for gutting rural healthcare”.
“UNDER TRUMP’S WATCH, STILWELL GENERAL HOSPITAL IS CLOSING ITS DOORS,” one sign screams. The billboards are outside hospitals in Silex, Missouri; Columbus, Indiana; Stilwell, Oklahoma; and Missoula, Montana.
A press release from the Democratic Party shows the billboard that's in Missoula, Montana:
I'm glad the party is going on offense -- but why attack Trump and only Trump? He won't be on any ballots in 2026 (or, we hope, 2028). I assume that all these billboards are in districts represented in the House by Republicans. Why not put those representatives' names on the billboards? Why not blame them for the cuts?
Does the party see this as just a preliminary ad campaign, with a plan to cite specific Republican members of Congress by name later? If so, it reminds me of the famous Al Franken aphorism I quoted recently: “Our bumper stickers always end with ‘continued on next bumper sticker.’” If this is simply the first set of billboards and Democrats intend to link specific GOP members of Congress to healthcare cutbacks in the future, that's literally "continued on next billboard."
And that's not because the message is complicated. The message is simple: Trump and [Congressperson X] voted to close your local hospital. So why not say that on these billboards?
There's another possibility here: that these billboards aren't intended to sway public opinion as much as they're meant to show up in news stories (like the Guardian story and the local news story cited in the party press release) so that Democratic donors nationwide will give more money to the party. Is that what's happening here?
Democrats should be identifying Republicans who are vulnerable in 2026 and attacking them by name, now. And maybe they should be attacking the Republican Party specifically -- I know that Democrats love to talk about working across the aisle and never want to say a discouraging word about the GOP as a whole, but maybe it's time to rethink that. Maybe it's time for the Democratic establishment to stop bad-mouthing the Democratic Party, as so many of them regularly do, and start bad-mouthing the Republican Party instead. The current strategy isn't working. It's leading to numbers like this:
New WSJ poll: The Democratic Party is 30 points under water with registered voters, considerably worse than the GOP (-11). www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) July 26, 2025 at 12:00 PM
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To be fair, Democrats are 3 points ahead of Republicans on the generic House ballot, according to the same Wall Street Journal poll (see question 10 here). But that number could be a lot better. As CNN's Harry Enten notes, Democrats were doing much better sixteen months before previous midterm cycles in which they made big gains:
Reality check: Dems are way behind their 2006 & 2018 pace on the generic ballot at this point in the cycle.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) July 16, 2025
Ahead by only 2 pt vs. 7 pt in 2006/2018 cycles.
Seat-by-seat analysis actually reveals more GOP pickup opportunities than Dems! Very much unlike 2006 & 2018 at this pt. pic.twitter.com/CRgXukTjz6
Attack the GOP by name. Attack individual Republicans by name. And keep attacking them.
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