Capturing Thermostatic Voters in 2028

by Stone Steinert

Thermostatic politics is the idea that that public opinion reacts to government policy like a thermostat. When a government pushes too far in one political direction, the public "adjusts the temperature" by voting for the opposite party to restore balance. The nature of thermostatic politics has never been more clearly demonstrated than by the results of the November 2025 elections. The correction was so severe that seats thought unwinnable for half a century were flipped. As we move deeper into the second Trump administration, it has become increasingly obvious that the president has no intention of slowing down, even as popular opinion rebukes his every move. Without an extreme moderating event, it would be a safe assumption that the margin of undecided voters in 2028 will be significantly larger than 2024. One issue frequently voiced after the last presidential election was a lack of a clear and consistent policy platform, so creating a widely appealing policy agenda ahead of time is a good way to keep the party on message. Here, I’ll lay out policy proposals on an expanding scale with the goal of appealing to formerly conservative voter bases without abandoning the values of the Democratic Party. Some of these will require more democratic power than just the White House, but would still be effective if pitched on the campaign trail.

Budget hawks and small business

The simplest adjustment to messaging should be increasing the Democratic Party’s stated concern over the national debt. The Trump administration is practically serving this issue to us on a silver platter with their utterly reckless spending practices—no amount of government service cutting will be able to keep up with their pace. The easiest policy to address this problem is a strategy initiated (but poorly explained) by the Biden administration: increasing the IRS enforcement budget. According to a 2021 CBO report, every dollar invested in the IRS for enforcement returns $5-$9 in tax revenue. Addressing this requires a more aggressive messaging strategy combined with direction to the IRS to silently redirect focus away from filers in the bottom 3 tax brackets. A complementary policy to accompany this program is finishing and strengthening the free E-file online service, with a goal of an average filing time of under 20 minutes. If we can communicate to the average person that filing taxes is a quick and painless process that you can do online then more people will be likely to file their taxes. Part of the goal in this strategy is to reduce the distrust in the IRS and a relatively simple example of this would be taking a portion of additional tax revenue and loudly redirecting it into infrastructure projects so that voters see a more direct impact of the increased enforcement budget. We need to take a note from Trump signing the stimulus checks, any time a bridge is built using the enforcement revenue increase we need to put a plaque on that bridge explaining how the funding for its construction was acquired. Aggressive tax reform can be thoroughly considered after these policies gain popularity, ideally by the back half of the first term.

The majority of the democratic party are capitalists and we can't be afraid to own that in our messaging. A capitalist market can be extremely fruitful for all participants when properly tended, but if you don't properly regulate then weeds like rent seekers and monopolies can quickly overtake the market and kill competition or artificially boost prices. With such concepts in mind, we need a strong FTC ready to bust anything that even smells like a monopoly and be prepared to pair these actions with messaging that explains how breaking apart these companies will help small businesses and lower prices in the long-term by increasing market competition. This strategy has a dual benefit of appealing to strong capitalist fiscal conservatives as well as immigrant voters who are more likely than American born citizens to own a business(cite immigrant small business). After bolstering our finances, we can begin to expand our view and address our withering relationships with our neighbors both north and south.

Neighbor relations and fixing the border

Following the Trump administration’s hostile stances toward Canada and Mexico, it will be important for us to take active measures to rebuild trust. In the case of Canada especially, we should begin by granting them overly favorable trade terms on a temporary basis not only as a sign of good faith, but also as an effort to reduce their reliance on China. We can also propose expanding the number of US/Canada and US/Mexico collaborative research grants to stimulate international university cooperation. This will improve our relationship with our neighbors by offering funds they might not otherwise have, as well as benefit our own students by giving them opportunities to gain experience working internationally. Universities participating in these programs also improve their global reputation as an organization willing to collaborate outside their country to solve problems— a fact which increases their appeal as candidates for international grants in the future. 

Increasing the number of work visas we issue will increase our international standing and expand our workforce. This will boost productivity and output, but also increase demand as all workers are also consumers in our system. This leads to boons in local industries through opportunities to expand their workforce beyond the pool of applicants in their immediate vicinity. If flatly expanding the number of visas offered is too unpopular of a policy to implement, then identifying industries suffering from worker shortages and offering specific visas for those fields works as a compromise.

While the “threat” of undocumented immigrants is overstated, our immigration programs have been intentionally impaired by cynical actors seeking to use the border as an issue to run election campaigns on. This needs to be addressed. A safer and easier immigration process will lead to less illegal immigration. The current backlog of immigration cases is over 3 million with a wait time of multiple years due to a massive shortage of immigration judges and associated staff. Offering government incentives to those willing to work in this fields assists in reducing this burden. It would be simple to redirect the excessive funding from ICE to hiring judges.

Another aspect of the border problem is the need for increased scrutiny of asylum claims, which could warrant the establishment of a panel of human rights experts to identify specific problem countries whose asylum seekers would temporarily merit lower barriers to claims. The second theater of this problem will require a significantly more direct approach but for this reason might be the most appealing to voters who have large concerns about immigration. This strategy would aim to make it harder to be smuggled into the US by organized groups such as the Mexican cartel. Currently we have an arrangement between the FBI and Mexican law enforcement to exchange intel regarding the cartel but we should be able to create a force to work more directly with the Mexican government, bolstering their infrastructure with the goal of rooting out and removing the cartel to the largest extent possible. Enabling our allies to address crime on their own soil increases our international standing and strengthens our relationships. This operation would serve multiple purposes including addressing human trafficking over the border, dampening the drug trade, and ultimately would serve to make our neighbor a safer and more prosperous ally, benefitting us long-term, internationally and economically. An aspect of this project would include a group of mutual aid and governmental structure experts to assist Mexico in expanding the reach of their government programs so that rural towns don't feel the need to rely on the cartel to support their communities. With this more direct approach in mind we can expand the aperture again into an altered strategy in foreign policy.

Strong Resolve Overseas and NATO Reform

Before more complex global policy can be addressed, the next administration will have to rebuild voter trust in our foreign policy competence. The most direct method for this is to take a comprehensive stance at the outset of foreign involvement and clearly communicate this to the American people. We can see a lack of transparency manifesting distrust following the conflicts addressed during the Biden administration.

The initial degree of support shown to Ukraine was appropriate, but partisan bickering and bad actors sowing distrust resulted in a lack of follow through. Whether there was reasonable justification or not, the lack of transparency on the weapon use restrictions led to bipartisan criticism and a kneecapping of Ukrainian defense capabilities. Because understanding of how aid money is spent in Ukraine is generally quite poor amongst the general population, fundamental clarity regarding aid use could have significantly prolonged voter support in the funding. Voters skeptical of the amount allocated to Ukraine would likely be more amenable to the decision if informed that around 70% of that money was spent within the United States supporting our companies and creating American jobs. In order to ease concerns on this conflict in a future election, we can rebuild a program like USAID or provide an expert group to be stationed within Ukraine to oversee use of US assistance to address lingering corruption concerns, now reignited over the recent New York Times reporting. One thing is certain: the Trump administration’s insistence on Russian appeasement is a surefire way to arrive at an unjust conclusion and does nothing to show voters strength in leadership. Once Democrats are able to begin restoring faith in their leadership on international relations, we can bring larger scale alliance reforms into the public eye.

The reality of the global climate is that war will occur whether we involve ourselves or not. Keeping allies requires that we not seclude ourselves as liberal democracy and post-world war order are demolished by our enemies. In order to court these more isolationist voters, it’s worth floating new and loftier global policies that prevent us being drawn into foreign conflicts in the long-term. One of the most reliable indicators that a country’s sovereignty will be respected is whether they are a member state of NATO; for the sake of future global peace, our moral prerogative is to create a means by which as many countries can join as possible. Enforcing Article 5 becomes harder the more members join. One option for this could be to create a tiered membership system where lower tiers can petition NATO leadership for varying levels of assistance. There might also be value in adding more extensive economic perks like favorable trade relations to member states to entice countries that wouldn't otherwise be interested in the value of NATO membership. Hostile countries like Russia have stated that NATO expansion is a red line for them, but they clearly intend to invade countries that aren't members even if we don't expand. With this in mind, these threats should be loosely monitored moving forward. We need to show bully nations that their bad behavior will not be rewarded. Organizing envoy groups to be sent to prospective member states to help get their government structure up to standard in terms of corruption and democratic rights would also be an important element of this policy. Domestically messaging this policy as a means to reduce the need for American involvement in foreign conflict long-term could be appealing to voters who are off-put by our need to send aid to warring countries, but it would be important to emphasize that the fruit of these efforts wouldn't be borne overnight.

In conclusion, the underlying rule for choosing to highlight these ideas is that they don't generally conflict with existing Democratic Party policies so that a candidate can bring them up while code switching in conservative areas without coming across as disingenuous. The expanding population of unaligned voters is likely to be the make-or-break element of the 2028 election so it's paramount that the Democratic party formulate a plan to address their interests in advance.

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Contact the author at sstonewrite@gmail.com