Democrats have been overperforming in off-year and special elections in 2025 and may be poised for a huge win in the midterms in 2026, but they know they face a deeper problem: Their party isn’t particularly well liked, and voters don’t have a good sense of what Democrats stand for.
Worry not, because House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has the answer in a new slogan. Are you ready for it?
“Strong floor, no ceiling.”
Try to contain your excitement. Not only will nobody have any idea what that means unless it’s explained, it doesn’t even describe well what Democrats ought to want.
It doesn’t even describe well what Democrats ought to want.
Jeffries, who began road-testing the slogan a few months ago, has been using it with increasing frequency. “We believe in a country where you have a strong floor and no ceiling,” he said at a Nov. 20 news conference. “That’s what we believe in as Democrats.”
“When you work hard and play by the rules in the United States of America, there should be no ceiling to the success that you can achieve,” Jeffries said at that news conference. Fair enough. But is the problem facing most Americans that our society has put a ceiling on their success? Or is it something more fundamental, that we face shocking levels of inequality and a system that doesn’t allow people to have a basic level of security and dignity? Anyone who thinks the problem is that America isn’t properly nurturing everyone’s thirst for entrepreneurialism has been spending too much time talking to wealthy donors.
To that point, “Strong Floor, No Ceiling: Building a New Foundation for the American Dream” is the title of a November book by venture capitalist Oliver Libby, whose collection of centrist ideas is being billed not merely as a book but as a nascent revolution. “Read the plan. Join the movement,” trumpets the marketing material.
Thus, the slogan Jeffries adopted sounds like it was crafted to offend no one and communicate to the billionaire class: Don’t worry — we won’t tax you too much! No ceiling!
The slogan is emblematic of an approach the party’s leadership always seems to take. They’re so afraid they might offend someone they decline to call out genuine villains. While they’ll criticize Republican attempts to favor the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, it often sounds like they’re not that displeased with the status quo; they just don’t want to make things worse. Which, of course, says nothing about how they want to make things better.
“Strong floor, no ceiling” suggests Democrats are against things like the GOP’s savage cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, but it may also imply they’re against higher taxes on the ultrawealthy and against tougher regulations for corporations. How does “Strong floor, no ceiling” speak to, for instance, Americans’ increasing displeasure with an impossibly wealthy and powerful tech industry that subjects us to endless surveillance, poisons our culture with radicalizing social media and artificial intelligence slop, and has dreams of putting tens of millions of people out of work?
Nobody is going to proudly wear a “Strong floor, no ceiling” hat.
What does “Strong floor, no ceiling” have to say about corruption, which doubles as an issue Democrats have a moral obligation to address and an extraordinarily powerful political issue if they make it one? Is fighting corruption about the floor or the ceiling? Maybe it’s the walls, or the windows, or the HVAC system?
You can see how quickly the metaphor breaks down.
Nobody is going to proudly wear a “Strong floor, no ceiling” hat; it will never be the equivalent of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” one of the most effective slogans in American political history.
Why does that phrase still resonates so powerfully for Trump’s supporters? Because in four words it communicates the problem as conservatives see it (America isn’t great anymore) and the solution (a revival of greatness). The key word is “again,” meaning that its goal is a reversion to the past, a wiping away of whatever developments of recent decades you don’t like. That’s where the slogan’s power lies. You can project almost anything you’re mad about onto it: economic dislocation, increasing diversity, a decline in religious observance, swearing on TV, kids listening to music you don’t like and wearing clothes you think are weird, a Black man becoming president. Whatever it is that grinds your gears, “Make America Great Again” can be the answer. “Strong floor, no ceilings,” by contrast, doesn’t say anything about Americans’ anxieties or their hopes. The difficulty Democrats have boiling their identity down to a slogan is not new. Almost two decades ago I wrote a book that said Republicans were much better at communicating, in large part because they had a few simple ideas that they hammered home again and again. Every Republican running for anything from dogcatcher to president believed in small government, low taxes, a big military and “traditional values.” Those four items functioned like a name tag any Republican could slap on their chest, quickly communicating exactly who they were. Today, “Make America Great Again” does the job even more simply. Who are the Democrats, and how do they want voters to think of them? Their problem isn’t that they don’t know what they believe; they believe in lots of things, from expanding health care access to addressing climate change to safeguarding workers’ rights and a great deal more. The party struggles to come up with effective slogans in part because Democrats have too many ideas. Even so, voters don’t think they’ll fight for the things they do believe in. Despite that, voters have turned out in extraordinary numbers this year, delivering Democratic victories for offices at all levels. The “No Kings” rallies brought millions of people to thousands of protests around the country. None of that can be attributed to a great love for the Democratic Party; people are angry, and they want something different. Democrats need to speak to people’s hopes and their anger. They need to explain who they’re for and who they’re against. They need to identify heroes and villains. They need to show what they won’t compromise on, and why. If they can do all that, voters might start believing in them again. But if “strong floor, no ceiling” is the best slogan they can come up with, they’ll likely be better off without one.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
