By Jeff Zeleny, CNN
Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) — Sen. Elissa Slotkin knows how to win in Trump country. She’s trying to show her fellow Democrats the way.
“We don’t help ourselves by pretending we don’t have a problem, OK?” Slotkin told Democrats at a party dinner here Tuesday night. “Staying on defense only doesn’t win anything. You must go on offense to win.”
The Michigan senator brought a dose of tough medicine for Democrats as she visited Iowa, the latest stop on a tour of states that President Donald Trump won, which she believes can be the center of the party’s revival in the midterm elections and beyond.
“If we can figure out how to win in the middle of the country, we can work that out on the coast,” Slotkin said. “But what works on the coast does not necessarily work in the middle of the country.”
As she joins a long list of Democrats eyeing a potential presidential candidacy in 2028, Slotkin is positioning herself squarely in the middle – geographically and politically – as she tests her message in recent months to audiences in Missouri, Idaho, western Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio.
Her appearances are intended to bolster the party in its quest to win control of Congress this fall, an argument she delivered here at the Polk County Democratic Party’s annual fundraising dinner on Tuesday night, but her broader ambitions come alive with little coaxing.
“I just want to be part of the change that I think we need in this party,” Slotkin told CNN in an interview after her speech. “I’m not so arrogant as to think it has to be me, but I want to be part of that next generation, without a doubt.”
Slotkin, as a politician, is a product of the Trump era.
She won a seat in Congress in 2018 in a Trump-friendly district during his first midterm election. Two years later, she won reelection with Trump at the top of the ballot. She narrowly won a US Senate seat in 2024, even as Trump carried Michigan.
‘It’s fight or flight’
She downplays any ideological divisions among Democrats – a prospect that will surely be tested in the 2026 and 2028 campaigns – and said the party should find unity in turning the page from Trump. Yet with just 28% of Americans holding a favorable view of the Democratic Party, according to the latest CNN poll, the challenges facing Slotkin and other leaders is clear.
“We used to talk about, are you a progressive or are you a moderate? That’s not the debate anymore. It’s fight or flight,” Slotkin said, adding that despite a more moderate background, “I am on team fight – 100%!”
Slotkin drew the ire of the Trump administration last year for organizing a video that she and five other Democratic lawmakers recorded, urging members of the military to resist illegal orders. The Justice Department tried to charge the group, but failed to win an indictment.
As she introduces herself to new audiences, she ticks through her electoral history – race-by-race – making it clear that one of her biggest calling cards is winning in places that other Democrats have struggled to do so.
She delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last year, choosing to speak from the city of Wyandotte, Michigan, which she noted that both she and T