I have to say, the temptation to join the chorus of both laughter and horror over Donald Trump's cabinet picks is pretty tempting today, but I think I'll save my comments on that clown parade for tomorrow. Instead, I'm going to continue looking forward today, to extend my thoughts on the Democratic Party and what it should do moving forward. The last two days I devoted to possible presidential candidates in 2028, but today I'm going to concentrate on what Democrats should be emphasizing during both the 2026 (midterm) and 2028 campaigns.

Looking that far into the future in politics is impossible, I do realize that. A lot of any Democratic campaign is going to be commentary on what Trump has done as president, that much seems pretty certain. What I'm going to lay out is a very pro-family economic platform for Democrats to embrace next time around, which would compliment whatever Democrats are saying about Trump and the Republicans running Washington.

This isn't meant to be an autopsy of what went wrong in the 2028 campaign, but one common theme has emerged from such attempts I've read elsewhere. Democrats continue to lose working-class blue-collar workers -- of all identity groups. Blacks, Latinos, Whites -- it doesn't matter which, they all deeply care about the economy. If there is one easy way to explain the way the electorate was feeling this cycle, it is the anger that eggs got expensive (I've even heard the neologism "egg-flation" used to describe it), and Democrats didn't seem to care much or have an answer for it.

This is a vast oversimplification, of course. It wasn't just eggs, it was also milk, gasoline, rent, mortgages, car loans -- a whole lot of things that suddenly were making life unaffordable for millions. Those living paycheck-to-paycheck feel the brunt of what a bag of groceries costs more than anyone else, and Kamala Harris wasn't all that believable when she swore she was going to take on the big grocery companies to force prices down.

Taking a wider view, Democrats stand accused of not paying attention to working-class issues, at the expense of being "woke" and identity politics. These are really apples and oranges, but the accusation that Democrats simply don't do a very good job of talking about the economy is certainly valid. Other than Bernie Sanders and the economic-populist wing, the rest of the party doesn't do a great job championing populism -- and an absolutely horrible job of taking credit for anything. Those are deep problems within the party, but I'm only going to mention them in passing here (that's a subject for another day, maybe).

What's most annoying (to me, at least) is the undeniable fact that Democrats are unquestionably the party that even dares to proposed things to make working-class families' lives better. Republicans always oppose such efforts, and have no real answers of their own (unless you want to count: "Let's give your corporation and your boss another big tax break!"). Meanwhile, Democrats fight to get a raise in the minimum wage and paid family leave and nobody gives them credit for it.

As I said, that's a problem for another day. I'm going to assume for the sake of argument here today that the Democratic Party does wake up and realize that economic populism is actually quite popular and people do want to hear about it, and thus it can easily become a winning campaign message for them. The question then becomes: What policies should they all get behind?

First of all, it should be a short list. Kamala Harris tried to vaguely promise a whole bunch of things on the economy, but at the expense of any sort of concentrated focus on any of them. She called it an "Opportunity Economy," but can anyone who followed the campaign this year remember three things that were included? That is a failure of messaging. And when you take a look at her campaign website's "Issues" page and start to dive down into it, it gets rather aspirational (as opposed to getting more concrete about specifics).

Democrats have to learn some message discipline, which means being able to rattle off two good ideas for any subject -- and then stopping. Over and over and over again. The same two ideas. And obviously, picking the most popular ones is the way to go.

Fortunately, for Democrats, a short list of very concrete new policy ideas already exists. They don't have to reinvent the wheel here. They just have to go back to what Joe Manchin singlehandedly killed (well, with help from his sidekick Kyrsten Sinema, to give ignominy where it is due). The "Build Back Better" plan that Joe Biden managed to get through the House would have, if it had passed the Senate, changed the dynamics of the presidential race. It would have given Harris (or Biden, or anyone else who had been the nominee) something very solid to point to, telling American families: "See? You like that, right? We did that for you. Democrats."

But because the bill was gutted (mostly by removing all the economic-populist agenda items), a bunch of good ideas didn't pass.

But they're still all good ideas. In fact, they are sitting there on the shelf just waiting for Democrats to pick them back up and run with them.

So here is the list, for everyone who has forgotten it, of dandy pro-family campaign issues for Democrats to get behind. All of these would make life better for American families in very real, very profound, very immediate ways. Hammering home the message "Democrats want to do this for you!" can work wonders. Here is the basic list -- all the things Joe Manchin personally stripped out of the bill that eventually did make it to Biden's desk:

• No family will ever pay more than seven percent of their income on childcare. Period.
• Free pre-kindergarten for all American families.
• Free community college for all.
• Paid family and medical leave for all.
• Increase Obamacare insurance subsidies to make buying health insurance cheaper.
• Expanded in-home senior (and disability) care under Medicare and Medicaid.
• An expanded Child Tax Credit that gets mailed to parents as a check every month.

That last one actually happened, for one single year (which is all Manchin would agree to). But did any Democrat get out there and hammer it home on every television appearance? "Parents are now getting monthly checks as their Child Tax Credit, and it has reduced childhood poverty by half! That is what America is capable of under Democratic leadership!" Because Manchin hated it (he thought poor parents would spend the money on drugs), it was not continued after the first year, and child poverty rates shot back up.

Consider that whole list, though, from the point of view of a family trying to make ends meet. A cap on what they have to pay for childcare? That would been a huge benefit to millions of family budgets, right there. Knowing your own parents wouldn't go bankrupt paying for in-home care? That also would have been a huge relief. Free preschool and free community college? That would ease big worries on the costs of education at both ends of childhood. These programs all directly affect working-class families, in very concrete and measurable ways. They are all "kitchen-table" issues. And they were all proposed by Democrats and fought by Republicans. The only item on that list that Republicans have ever even partially supported was expanding the Child Tax Credit, and this support has been sporadic and only offered by a handful of Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, were all behind it -- with the exception of two in the Senate who killed the whole agenda. But both of them are gone now.

There are plenty of other good ideas out there. Raising the minimum wage, for instance. But Democrats have got to learn to keep it short and sweet, and make concrete promises. Harris didn't. Her "Issues" webpage has gauzy language such as: "Vice President Harris will fight to ensure parents can afford high-quality child care and preschool for their children." Um, OK... but what does that really mean for my family? Vague promises aren't the way to go, to be blunt. "You will not have to pay more than seven percent of your income on childcare -- plus, free pre-K, for three- and four-year-olds!" is so much better. And to the inevitable media complaints about the cost of such programs, there's also an easy answer: "We're going to pay for all of this by making sure billionaires and giant corporations finally pay their fair share in taxes!"

The complaint that Democrats are losing blue-collar voters to the Republicans is not a new one. It goes back to the so-called "Reagan Democrats." Ever since the 1980s, more and more working-class people have migrated to becoming solid Republican voters. The notion that "Democrats don't know how to talk to working-class voters" began a very long time ago. Every so often they manage to overcome this, but it's not like it's a brand-new thing in the age of Trump. Bernie Sanders has done what he could to yank the party back to its origins as the party of the working man, but the party has to follow through on some concrete promises to be really convincing.

And then -- the crucial part -- they have to remind people what they did, incessantly. And not go off into the weeds, but instead focus on a handful of bullet points -- in every interview, no matter what the question was. "Well, it's true the price of eggs has gone up, but we think the problem of affordable childcare is a much bigger problem -- make it so parents can afford quality childcare, and life will get a lot better for tens of millions of Americans right away."

This stuff ain't rocket science. It's actually pretty easy to understand. There are many things that pressure American families' budgets. There are many ideas out there for how to improve them (on all sorts of other issues -- the cost of housing, for instance). There are popular ideas that have nothing to do with economics, too (legalize marijuana at the federal level, for one). Putting together a populist agenda isn't all that tough to do, really. But to be effective, it's got to have a clear focus, it's got to have concrete goals, and it's got to involve issues which working families (Black, Latino, and White) all worry about around their kitchen tables. So enough with the vagueness! Enough with the lack of focus! Democrats need to buckle down and rededicate themselves to real solutions and then get out there are actually fight for them, instead of perpetually getting dragged down in details or (even worse) culture-war issues.

That's the way Democrats can start winning again, plain and simple.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant