Former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison suggested Sunday that President Trump’s tax and spending legislation will make red states more competitive in the next election cycle, as the consequences of the GOP megabill continue to take effect.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” with Jonathan Capehart, Harrison pointed to the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the higher income brackets, and the cuts to health care, including in his home state of South Carolina.
“You’re going to see so many people, 17 million people in this country, suffer because they lose health care coverage,” Harrison said, noting, “Here in South Carolina, six out of eight residents in nursing homes are on Medicaid [and] … 14 of our counties have no OB-GYNs. Five of them only have one, right.”
“So it’s only going to get worse for the American people,” he added.
Harrison noted the legislation affects people across parties and said those effects will trickle down into the midterm elections.
“And it’s not just Democrats; it’s Democrats, Republicans, it’s Black folks, it’s white folks — all the people who are going to suffer as a result of this. And we’ll see more rural hospitals close as well,” Harrison said.
Harrison said the legislation has “really reset the game table.”
“I think you’re going to see states like Iowa and Texas — where maybe it wasn’t going to be so competitive in 2026 — but now it’s going to be,” he said.
“And so you’ll see Colin Allred and some of these other, Chris Jones, some of these other folks running for office in seats that were probably not as competitive two or four years ago that are ultra-competitive now because Republicans have reshifted the game table with this awful, awful bill,” he added.
