When I first heard that 8 Senate Democrats “caved” to the Republicans to help end the shutdown, I was disappointed. After reading more about it, it looks like Democratic leadership played their hand as best they could. Their cards were good through the election and Dems had an almost unified front against cutting a bad deal with Republicans, and they won everywhere. After the election, however, some of the eight senators believed the the utility of their shutdown cards went south. Many would disagree, and argue that Dems could leverage more concessions from Republicans. But consider what Democrats gained by the deal to end the shutdown this week: There won’t be 42 million people losing their SNAP benefits or going hungry at Thanksgiving, unless the Trump Administration succeeds in blocking SNAP; Government workers will finally get paid for their labors and Thanksgiving travelers will not be blaming Democrats in airport interviews about canceled flights and safety concerns; Rep. Grijalva will be sworn in, and the Epstein mess will finally be addressed in a big way; There will be no Filibuster reform, as threatened by Trump. (It probably wasn’t going to happen anyway, but who knows?); None of the Democratic senators who ‘caved’ are up for re-election next year, so there won’t be any loss of Democratic senate seats because of their voting to end the shutdown; The government will be re-opened because of Democratic initiative; The Republicans will totally own the huge increase in health care expenses forced on consumers, or they will have to lower those costs. There will be a vote on this, unless Republicans dishonor their agreement, which would be a really bad look, and voters would notice. Republicans have working majorities of the House and Senate, occupy the White House and have a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices. They were going to eventually get their way. But at least Democrats were able to stomp Republicans in the ’25 elections.  For those who like their history raw and real, last night on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell explained how a conscious and co-ordinated switch among five Democratic senators, under the creative leadership of Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted against the compromise, forced 271 Republicans to support an increase in the budget for SNAP and make other concessions, which benefitted the public. Watch a video of O’Donnell’s lucid explanation for a clear understanding of what actually happened.

Since the devil is always in the details, read “What’s in the legislation to end the federal government shutdown” by AP’s Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro, who writes at Chron: “What’s in and out of the bipartisan deal drew sharp criticism and leaves few senators fully satisfied. The legislation provides funding to reopen the government, including for SNAP food aid and other programs, while also ensuring backpay for furloughed federal workers the Trump administration had left in doubt…But notably lacking is any clear resolution to expiring health care subsidies that Democrats have been fighting for as millions of Americans stare down rising insurance premiums. That debate was pushed off for a vote next month, weeks before the subsidies are set to expire…It would next go to the House, where lawmakers have been away since September but were being told to prepare to return to Washington this week. Then, it’s to Trump’s desk for his signature…Yet in a breakthrough for what’s considered a more normal appropriations process, the package also includes several bills to fully fund other government operations including agricultural programs and military construction along with veterans’ affairs for the full fiscal year, through September 2026…Additionally, the package ensures states would be reimbursed for money they spent to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, and the Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, running during the shutdown…The Democrats failed to secure their main demand during the shutdown, which was an extension of the health care subsidies that many of the 24 million people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act rely on to help defray costs…Instead, the package guarantees a vote on the issue in December — which was not enough for most of the Democrats, who rejected the deal and voted against it…The stopgap measure reinstates federal workers who had received reductions in force, or layoff, notices and protects against such future actions. It also would provide back pay for federal workers who were furloughed or working without pay during the shutdown — something that’s traditionally provided but that the Trump administration had threatened was not guaranteed.”

Here’s what some Democratic leaders said about the deal, as reported by Miranda Jeyaretnam at Time magazine: “The seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats who sided with Senate Republicans on the bill were Jeanne Shaheen (D, N.H.), John Fetterman (D, Pa.), Tim Kaine (D, Va.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D, Nev.), Dick Durbin (D, Ill.),  Maggie Hassan (D, N.H.), Angus King (I, Maine), and Jacky Rosen (D, Nev.)…Rand Paul (R, Ky.) was the sole Republican to vote against the bill…Kaine defended his vote, saying the deal “guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do,” and he expressed confidence that that vote would ultimately result in an extension of those subsidies…“Lawmakers know their constituents expect them to vote for it, and if they don’t, they could very well be replaced at the ballot box by someone who will,” Kaine said in a statement…Shaheen said in a statement that the deal “gives Democrats control of the Senate floor—at a time when Republicans control every level of power—on one of our top legislative priorities.”…“This is a major step that was not predetermined,” Shaheen said. “But weeks of negotiations with Republicans have made clear that they will not address health care as part of shutdown talks—and that waiting longer will only prolong the pain Americans are feeling because of the shutdown.”…But several Democrats criticized the promised future vote as far from a guarantee…“I am unwilling to accept a vague promise of a vote at some indeterminate time, on some undefined measure that extends the healthcare tax credits,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D, Conn.), told reporters before the vote. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) called it a “policy and political disaster for the Democrats to cave.”…California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office posted on X, “Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!”…Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D, Mich.), who had been part of earlier talks around a funding deal, ended up voting no, as did Sens. Jon Ossoff (D, Ga.), Tammy Baldwin (D, Wis.), and Peter Welch (D, Vt.)…“I was involved for many weeks then over the last couple weeks, it changed,” Slotkin told reporters on Sunday evening, adding that she was not involved in final negotiations. “I always said it’s got to do something concrete on health care and it’s hard to see how that happened.”…Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, N.Y.) said in a post that the average monthly ACA benefit per person of $550 outweighs that of SNAP at $177. “People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives,” she wrote.”

Aaron Blake shares “6 Takeaways from the Governmentent Shutdown Deal” at CNN Politics. A teaser from the fifth takeaway: “5. Republicans still have an Obamacare problem — and this could exacerbate it…The best case for Democrats’ strategy is this: They were never going to get Trump and GOP leaders to commit to extending the Obamacare tax credits as part of a shutdown deal. But they could force an issue that’s a significant GOP liability, cast a spotlight on it and even force Republicans to take some tough votes and squirm a little…Regardless of whether that was actually the best Democrats could do, the pressure being applied on the GOP on health care isn’t insignificant…With around three-quarters of Americans supporting the tax credits, this issue poses very real political problems for Republicans. A recent Pew Research Center poll also showed health care was the GOP’s worst issue among a dozen tested, with 42% favoring the Democratic Party’s approach, compared with just 29% for Republicans’…Look at none other than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pleading with her party to renew these tax credits. Or the July memo authored by Trump’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, making the case that letting the subsidies lapse could spell political disaster for the GOP in the midterms…If nothing else, this record-long shutdown could spotlight the choice Republicans are about to make. By voting for a deal that does not extend the subsidies and therefore allows premiums to skyrocket for millions of Americans, Republicans will have made it clearer that this is what they fought hard for. They’ll be put on the record on the issue in an even starker way when the Senate takes a separate vote on the subsidies…If that measure were somehow to pass, it could pressure Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote in the House too…While Democrats want these tax credits extended from a policy standpoint, you could argue that the best thing for them from a raw-politics standpoint is for Republicans to reject them — and for voters to remember it come 2026…Republicans are already having to deal with explaining the major Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big agenda bill over the summer. And unlike those cuts, which are delayed until after the 2026 midterms, these premium increases will go into effect quickly…At the very least, Democrats have continued to fertilize a potent political argument on bad issue for the GOP.” Check out the rest of Blake’s takeaways right here.

The following article, “The Big Tent Is Overrated” by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Democrats are famously in very poor shape these days. Despite the unpopularity of many of Donald Trump’s specific moves, Democrats’ popularity has not been rising. Indeed, in many polls it is mired at historic lows. Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot for 2026 is alarmingly modest and the situation in the Senate is dire. And no, the Democrats’ strong showing in the idiosyncratic 2025 elections, boosted by favorable terrain, disapproval of the incumbent Trump administration, and their now-traditional advantage in lower turnout elections where their educated, engaged supporters flock to the polls, does not change these fundamental problems.

The Democrats’ current woes come on top of their decisive defeat in the 2024 election and the restoration of their nemesis, Trump, to power. Democrats as a result are at their wits’ end. They know they need to do something…but what? Many in the party want to fight, fight, fight. Hence the government shutdown and the unending stream of denunciations of each and every move Trump makes. But logically such truculence will do—and has done—nothing to change the party’s toxic image among wide sectors of working class and red-state voters the party desperately needs to turn around their electoral fortunes.

For such voters, the Democrats are out-of-step with their preferences on everything from crime and immigration to trans issues to patriotism and even the economy. They neither like nor trust the Democrats and, not without reason, feel Democrats view anyone who doesn’t share their priorities and blanket opposition to Trump as a hopeless reactionary if not an enabler of fascism. In short, they believe Democrats look down on them as the “deplorables” who must be “educated” by their betters to see the world correctly.

This doesn’t play well with these voters and why should it? Even if they are dissatisfied with Trump in some ways, they will naturally be reluctant to sign up with a party they perceive as denigrating them and their values. This reality has not escaped the notice of all Democrats; electorally realistic centrists and even some liberals have realized that the Democrats’ cause is fatally undermined in many areas of the country by this perception. The solution they seem to be gravitating toward is “the big tent.”

The theory here is that the Democrats’ problems stem not from the overall or dominant views within the party but rather from a lack of tolerance for those who dissent from party orthodoxy. To run successfully in more conservative districts and states, Democratic candidates must be able to adopt positions that fit these areas better without being read the riot act by their fellow Democrats.

At the margin, that would certainly be helpful. But would that really solve the fundamental image problem that bedevils the Democrats? We live in an era where politics is highly nationalized and voters’ views of local candidates are heavily influenced by these voters’ views of the party those candidates are affiliated with. Hence the decline of split ticket voting and the very high correlation between the partisan vote for president in a state/district and that for every other federal office. Candidates have a very hard time escaping the gravitational pull of their own national party.

This dramatically undercuts the payoff from a “big tent” approach. A Democrat in a conservative area can deviate from the party orthodoxy on, say, trans issues but—even if local Democratic activists and progressive commentators grit their teeth and don’t attack that candidate (difficult!)—voters in that area still see the D by the candidate’s name. They know the candidate’s party still thinks that transwomen are women, that biological boys should be able to play girls sports, that “gender-affirming” medical treatments for children are a great idea and should be easily available and that to question these ideas is to be on the wrong side of history itself.

In other words, voters will still know who’s running the tent even if Democrats let a few of the heterodox inside. This is especially the case since the welcoming mat for dissenters in the party has been mostly rolled out for progressive left heroes like Zohran Mamdani, the newly-elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City, whose unorthodox positions on economic issues are forgiven, even as his profile on social and cultural issues simply deepens the problems with the party’s national image. The tent opens on the left, much less so on the right.

There’s a nice illustration of this in the recent Ezra Klein interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Klein has been beating the drums for the big tent approach. He ventures the following to Coates, in the process of trying to desperately convince him of the political necessity of Democratic big tent politics:

[A] huge amount of the country, a majority of the country, believes things about trans people, about what policy should be toward trans people, about what language is acceptable to trans people, that we would see as fundamentally and morally wrong…what politically…should our relationship with those people be?

Unsurprisingly, Coates doesn’t take this and the many other hints dropped by Klein about reaching those who dissent from liberal orthodoxy. As far as Coates is concerned all these people are on the other side of a line that must be drawn between those with the correct views and those who lack them: “If you think it is OK to dehumanize people, then conversation between you and me is probably not possible,” he remarks.

But even more interesting is how Klein frames the question: those who don’t share his (and Coates’ and the general Democratic) view on trans issues are “fundamentally and morally wrong”. This language by Klein makes it clear that his idea of the big tent is that some Democrats, especially candidates running in more conservative areas, should be permitted to have wrong, immoral positions on various issues so as to entice the benighted voters in those areas to vote for Democrats—or, as Matt Yglesias has put it, to allow “bigots in the tent.” But the positions of the party on those issues will and should remain the same. You can come into the tent but the left will still be running the show.

This won’t work and, no, talking about the affordability crisis and the cost-of-living will not induce these voters to forget what the party actually stands for. Instead, advocates for a big tent need to face the facts: the party’s many unpopular and unworkable positions have to genuinely change to reach the voters they want to reach. Otherwise, holding their nose and letting a few candidates deviate from party orthodoxy will have little effect.

Another example: immigration. Democrats have had little to say about Trump’s successful efforts to close the southern border but much to say about his deportation efforts which are viewed as, well, wrong and immoral. That doesn’t add up to a change in party position, as Josh Barro points out:

To start to win back voters’ trust, the party must acknowledge that the Biden administration’s policy of laxity was a failure, and commit credibly to better enforcement—not only by preventing illegal border crossings and closing the loopholes in the asylum system, but also by enforcing immigration law in the interior of the country, by deporting people who weren’t supposed to come here during Biden’s term…If Democrats are only seen talking about how the government is doing too much enforcement, we’ll be seen as the anti-enforcement party, and that’s politically deadly.

And of course that’s exactly what’s happening. The Democrats do indeed seem like the anti-enforcement party that doesn’t want to deport anybody. That image means that a Democrat running in a conservative area can try to carve out a tough-on-illegal-immigration profile but—even assuming the activists leave him or her alone—the party’s overall stance on immigration enforcement will mostly negate any benefit from the candidate’s heterodox position.

One more example: climate. Trump has blown up the Democrats’ climate program by canceling or cutting back much of the IRA with remarkably little public protest. Democrats are starting to realize their net-zero, Green New Deal-type plans are out of step with both the physical realities of America’s thirst for energy in the age of AI andwhat American voters actually want from their energy system—chiefly low costs and high reliability. Their grand plans just didn’t and don’t have much support, outside of professional class liberals and climate NGOs. A recent Politico article reported on the vibe shift:

“There’s no way around it: The left strategy on climate needs to be rethought,” said Jody Freeman, who served as counselor for energy and climate change in President Barack Obama’s White House. “We’ve lost the culture war on climate, and we have to figure out a way for it to not be a niche leftist movement.”

It’s a strategy Freeman admitted she was “struggling” to articulate, but one that included using natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to more renewable power—an approach Democrats embraced during the Obama administration—finding “a new approach” for easing permits for energy infrastructure and building broad-based political support.

But if a Democratic candidate running in a conservative area responded to this vibe shift by saying that climate change is a problem, not an immediate crisis, that net zero is not practical as a near-term goal, and that fossil fuels will be in the energy mix for a very long time that would run smack dab into the overarching Democratic commitment to large-scale action on climate change. So even if the climate NGOs and activists left such a candidate alone, the candidate would still be linked to a party that sees his or her views as fundamentally wrong and immoral, fit only to be retailed among the rubes in flyover country.

There’s no way around it. The big tent is less important than who’s running the tent. Until and unless overall Democratic positions change and voters are convinced sensible people are in charge of the tent, a few more heterodox Democrats running in conservative areas will do little to change the party’s trajectory.

In his article, “Republicans didn’t have a chance Tuesday against the wave of voters’ anger” Paul Waldman shares his take on Tuesday’s election, and writes at MSNBC.com: “The most important takeaway from Tuesday night’s elections — the one that has real implications for 2026 and 2028 — is that Democrats won everywhere, in many cases improving their 2024 performance by striking margins.”

Waldman adds, “Democratic candidates didn’t just win the highest-profile races in Virginia, New Jersey and New York, but they also won judicial retention elections in Pennsylvania and a variety of down-ballot races. They even picked up seats in the Mississippi Legislature — which cost Republicans their supermajority — and ousted two Republican incumbents on the Georgia commission that regulates utilities.

“More moderate Democrats, more progressive Democrats, Democrats who were well-known and Democrats who weren’t, Democrats who ran explicitly against Donald Trump and those who barely mentioned him — they all did great…When we see a string of wins like the one Democrats put together Tuesday, we can’t attribute it to clever strategy, blistering attack ads or even attribute it to the skills of the candidates they nominated — but to widespread opposition to the party in charge of the country.”

Further, “When Trump is in office, the anger gets cranked up as far as it can go. The first year of his second term has been chaos, with his army of thugs terrorizing people in cities, erratic tariffs dragging down the economy, brutal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP and the evisceration of the federal government. Every Democrat benefited from the displeasure Trump produced, whether they campaigned on opposing him or not.”

Click on the link above for more of Waldman’s analysis. Also check out Wldman’s “The Real Reason Reporters Won’t Talk About Trump’s Mental Decline” at his blog site, The Cross Section.

Kyle Kondik shares his thoughts on Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger’s win at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Loudoun County, Virginia, whose early reporting suggested Donald Trump was on the way to a significant national win in 2024, pointed the way to Abigail Spanberger’s (D) big gubernatorial win and Jay Jones’s (D) attorney general victory…A year ago, the near-complete vote from early-reporting Loudoun County, Virginia was the first major signal that Donald Trump was on the way to victory in the 2024 presidential election. Last night, Loudoun was the signal that the 2025 election, both in Virginia and elsewhere, was becoming a rout in favor of Democrats…Wealthy, highly-educated, and diverse, Loudoun had zoomed toward Democrats throughout the 2010s, punctuated by Ralph Northam (D) winning the county by 20 points in his 2017 gubernatorial victory and Joe Biden winning it by 25 in 2020…But by 2021, the Democratic margin in the county had contracted to 11 points, helping Glenn Youngkin (R) win the governorship. Three years later, Kamala Harris only won it by 16 points, another 9-point Democratic contraction from four years prior. The shift in Loudoun was emblematic of the overall results, in which Trump improved to varying degrees in all 50 states…But the pendulum has swung again. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) won Loudoun by an eye-opening 29 points. And Attorney General-elect Jay Jones (D) won it by 19 points—nearly matching Northam in the county and running ahead of Harris, and giving the clearest indication that he was on the way to winning. Despite the bombshell revelation of violent, outrageous text messages from Jones that rocked the race a month ago, Jones ended up winning easily, riding Spanberger’s coattails to a 6.5-point statewide win over state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R). Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi (D) won by 10.5 in what was the sleepiest of the three statewide races, and Spanberger won by 15. Polls were correct in the sense that there would be variation in the three races, but they all ended up just being different shades of blue. Democrats also made a massive gain in the state House of Delegates, pushing their majority to 64 seats, a massive 13-seat gain in which they flipped all 8 Harris-won Republican districts and an additional 5 that Trump had carried by small margins last year.”

Some insights from “A Big Night for Democrats,” in which Ruy Teixeira notes at The Liberal Patriot: “It was a good night for Democrats, which confirmed that their coalition, now tilted toward educated, engaged voters, is likely to overperform in non-presidential elections where their coalition’s turnout advantage has the most effect. Granted that the marquee 2025 elections in Virginia and New Jersey were in blue states and President Trump is not popular, Spanberger’s and Sherrill’s easy victories show that their coalition can be mobilized in off-year elections to deliver strong victories given competent, well-run campaigns…Beyond that, one should not read too much into the Democrats’ performance given the historically poor power of these elections to predict future ones. The 2026 and 2028 elections will be fought on a much, much wider playing field with different electorates and a political terrain that is difficult to predict. Still, Democrats can take heart that their coalition has passed an initial test that, had they not done well, would have further demoralized an already demoralized party. Of course, now they’ll have the reverse problem: clearing this low bar will make many Democrats too confident that their problems have been solved when such optimism is not merited…One such problem is the class gap in support. Democrats now do far better among college-educated voters than among the working-class (noncollege) voters. This election was no exception. Indeed, comparing the 2024 and 2025 elections in Virginia and New Jersey using the preliminary AP/NORC VoteCast results indicates you can account for almost all of Democrats’ overperformance in 2025 relative to 2024 (both Spanberger and Sherrill ran ahead of Harris) by (1) a larger class gap (college vs. working class) in both states primarily because both candidates did way better among college-educated voters than Harris did in 2024, and (2) a greater share of college voters in both states (especially VA) relative to 2024.” Teixeira adds, “Moderates will point to the triumphs of Spanberger and Sherrill as giving the party a mandate for moderation; progressives will point to democratic socialist Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral election, where he exceeded pre-election polling and broke 50 percent of the vote, as a clear signal the party needs to be more robustly progressive and exciting…I think the moderates have a better case and more persuasive evidence on their side. But the debate will continue. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. In truth, neither side has really cracked the case of how Democrats can rebuild their working-class support in a populist age, and these election results just do not provide a clear answer. Democrats would be well-advised to approach them with humility as they attempt to chart a course forward.”

Alicia Civita writes at The Latin Times that “Democrats celebrated a clean sweep in Tuesday’s elections across Virginia, New Jersey, New York City and Cincinnati, powered by a dramatic shift among Latino voters who have turned sharply against Donald Trump’s economic results and his immigration and deportation agenda…Early AP VoteCast exit polling cited by The Atlantic‘s Ronald Brownstein shows Hispanic support for Republican candidates collapsing to about one-third in states that Trump carried nearly two-fifths of just a year ago, a sign that the political pendulum among Latinos is swinging back toward the Democrats…In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, while in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill secured a second term as governor. Both victories came with notable margins among Hispanic voters…According to the AP VoteCast data shared by Brownstein, each Democrat held her GOP opponent to roughly one-third of the Hispanic vote, compared with the two-fifths or more Trump won in both states during the 2024 presidential race. Even more striking, about three-fifths of Hispanic voters in New Jersey and three-quarters in Virginia said Trump has gone too far with deportations, highlighting a deep disapproval of his enforcement policies…The numbers suggest that the administration’s recent mass-deportation initiatives and rhetoric about “removal quotas” are eroding what had been a rare area of growth for the GOP in 2024. Latino voters in both states cited fears of family separation, economic disruption, and anti-immigrant sentiment as motivating factors for their Democratic votes…In New Jersey, 64% and 81% of the Hispanic and Black vote (respectively) went for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate…According to the first numbers from exit polls, majority of Hispanics say that Trump “has gone too far on deportations.”

Harold Meyerson explains at The American Prospect that “Democrats connected with broad public discontent over Trump and the Republicans’ mishandling of the economy and ignoring the public’s resulting discontent. Compare, for instance, the difference between the salience in the public’s mind of Trump’s signature issues and the issues that actually mattered to them. When Virginia voters were asked what issue mattered most to them, 47 percent said the economy, 21 percent said health care, 12 percent said immigration, 10 percent said education, and 6 percent said crime. In New Jersey, 36 percent said taxes, 32 percent said the economy, 16 percent said health care, 7 percent said immigration, and 3 percent said crime. In New York City, 55 percent said the cost of living, 24 percent said crime, 9 percent said immigration, and 6 percent said health care. (And Mamdani voters ranked immigration much higher than the other voters; clearly, they were referring to ICE sweeps against law-abiding immigrants.).” Meyerson adds, “Newsom has managed to win, for now, the pole position in the party’s 2028 presidential contest in a way that has uniquely enabled him to avoid being boxed into the moderate or leftist camps.)..If every Democrat on the ballot yesterday was in touch with the public’s anxiety about the economy, a number of them—Newsom and Mamdani loudly, Spanberger and Sherrill quietly—were also in touch with the Democrats’ fury at the ICE sweeps and Trump’s attempted assumption of monarchial power. Those two themes powered the Democrats to victory yesterday; they should power them to victory next year as well.” More here.

After a long evening of election watching on November 4, I offered this happy take at New York:

Last November, Donald Trump recaptured the presidency and helped his party gain control of both chambers of Congress. He and his MAGA backers heralded it as the beginning of a realignment that would give the GOP a long-standing majority and give the president a popular mandate to do many unprecedented and unspeakable things. Democrats largely believed this spin and fell into mutual recriminations and despair.

Just a year later, everything’s looking different.

Democrats swept the 2025 elections in almost every competitive venue. They flipped the governorship of Virginia and held onto the governorship of New Jersey, in each instance crushing their Republican opponents. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won easily on a wave of high turnout and voter excitement. At the same time, Democrats stopped efforts to purge their judges in Pennsylvania and rig voting rules in Maine. One of their most vulnerable candidates, Virginia attorney-general nominee Jay Jones, beset by a text-message scandal involving violent fantasies about Republicans, won anyway. Everywhere you look, the allegedly unbeatable Trump legacy is, well, taking a beating. The tide even flowed down to Georgia, where Democrats won two statewide special elections, flipping two seats on the utility-rate-setting Public Service Commission.

Exit polls show that those elements of the electorate where Trump made startling gains in 2024 are now running away from him and from the GOP. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is winning 67 percent of under-30 voters, 64 percent of Latino voters, 61 percent of Asian American voters, and 90 percent of Black voters. Up in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is winning under-30 voters by better than 2-1, Latinos by exactly 2-1, Black voters by better than 10-1, and Asian American voters by better than 4-1. She’s also winning 90 percent of Black men and 57 percent of Latino men. These are also demographic groups that have begun turning their back on Trump in job-approval polls. And Trump got another very direct spanking as Californians overwhelmingly approved Prop 50, a measure to gerrymander the state to give Democrats more seats, meant to retaliate against Trump’s earlier power grabs. There, too, the issue became entirely a referendum on the turbulent president.

Some MAGA folk will argue Trump can’t be blamed because he wasn’t on any ballot. But Republicans everywhere embraced him fiercely and counted on his assistance to win the day. And no major party has ever so completely turned itself into a cult of personality for its leader, or been so eager to give him total power. Trump’s domination of political discourse throughout 2025 — right up until this week, when he’s rejected any compromises with Democrats in a gridlocked Washington, D.C. — means the election is inescapably a setback that bids ill for his efforts to maintain total control of the federal government in the midterms next year. Democrats may finally turn to the future rather than the past, the struggles for the party’s soul forgotten for a while.

We’ll soon see if Mamdani can redeem the hope he has instilled in so many discouraged and marginalized voters, and if the women chosen to lead New Jersey and Virginia can cope with rising living costs and terrible treatment from Trump’s administration. The GOP gerrymandering offensive isn’t done, and the Trump-enabling chambers of the Supreme Court could provide new setbacks for those resisting Trump’s creeping authoritarianism. And yes, in 2026 Democrats must more clearly articulate their own agenda while providing running room for different candidates in different parts of the country.

But for now, Trump and his party look far less invincible than before and far more likely to harvest anger and disappointment for his second-term agenda than to build anything like a permanent majority. The opposition can now emerge from the shadow of an especially cursed year and fight back.

Not to gloat, but Democrats cleaned their clocks. We ran the table. We swept all of the big races. Cleaned, ran, swept. We gave them a major ass-whuppin’. (Insert your favorite sports victory gloat cliche right here). It may take a while before the top analysts weigh in with serious cross-tabs. Until then, however, we do have exit polls, be they flawed or otherwise unworthy of your attention due to oft-repeated caveats. Yet, it can’t hurt to take a peek at them, now can it?

A couple of days ago, Jennifer Agiesta wrote at CNN Politics, “This year, for the first time since 2016, CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News, NBC and the Associated Press are working together to produce this critical research, in collaboration with SSRS, a nonpartisan research company that also conducts CNN’s polling. On behalf of the six media organizations, SSRS will conduct The Voter Poll in California, New Jersey, New York City and Virginia to cover the marquee contests on this November’s slate. You’ll see the results here as CNN’s Exit Poll.”

Agiesta noted, further, “Traditionally, exit polling has leaned heavily on in-person interviews of a randomly selected sample of voters at different Election Day polling locations. That remains a key part of the polling this time around. But to include people who vote early or vote by mail, those in-person interviews will be combined with survey results gathered before Election Day to ensure that exit polls reflect the views of the full electorate, regardless of when they vote or how they cast their ballot.” She has more details about the process at the  first-noted link.

Flash forward to this morning, which brings us the actual exit poll results in a handy tool you can tweak for specific results. As regards the Virginia Governorship, for example, the report indicates that: Governor-elect Spanberger got 48 percent of the men; 65 percent of women; 47 percent of White voters; 92 percent of Black voters; 67 percent of Latino voters; and 79 percent of Asian voters. And yes she did substantially better with women in this racial categories, the largest gap being a 23-point edge with Latina women.

Spanberger crushed it with the younguns (18-29) with 70 percent. She got 61 percent of the 30-44 age group; 55 percent of the 45-64 cohort; and 52 percent of the over 65s. She got 50 percent of those with no college degree and 63 percent of those who have a degree. In terms of party i.d., Spanberger won with 7 percent of Republican supporting her; 59 percent of Independents and 99 percent of Democrats. She got 65 percent of moderates, 15 percent of “somewhat conservative” voters and 5 percent of “very conservative” voters. Interestingly, she got 21 percent of “born again” or “evangelical Christians.” She got 50 percent of “military veteran household” voters and 64 percent of “federal worker/contractors this year.”

The data takes deeper dives into gender by race; income; trans rights; abortion; the Jay Jones factor; feeling about the way things are going; opinions of Trump (she got 6 percent of Trump approvers and 7 percent of those who voted for him in ’24). Tellingly she got 54 percent of those who took a “somewhat unfavorable view” of the Democratic Party. She got 81 percent of those who said “health care” is the “most important issue facing Virginia.”

Check out the exit poll tool for other candidates and issues right here.

The following stub for the article, “The Working Class Project: 2025 Report,” is cross-posted from the Executive Summary and the Summary of Research of the report:

Executive Summary

Working-class voters perceive Democrats to be woke, weak, and out-of-touch, too focused on social issues and not nearly focused enough on the economic issues that impact everyone, every day. But Democrats can win back these working-class voters, in 2026 and beyond.

Nearly one year since Trump was reelected, a solid majority of working-class voters remain frustrated, anxious, or struggling with their financial realities – and they aren’t optimistic any of that will change. They are worried about inflation, and about their paychecks keeping pace; about the price and attainability of both housing and health care; about the job market, Trump’s chaotic tariff policies, and their sense of stability. These Americans define themselves by their hard work and self-sufficiency, but feel like neither trait is rewarded in our economy. They’re angry – not necessarily at the wealthy, but at an unfair and rigged system where politicians give the rich and powerful all the breaks. And they’re disappointed Trump and Republicans aren’t helping them, viewing them as more focused on picking fights and looking out for themselves than on reducing how much everything costs.

This provides Democrats with an opening. To earn back the votes of working-class Americans, our Party needs to make clear it values people who work hard. Instead of denigrating or contrasting ourselves with Republicans, Democrats need to advocate for our own policy agenda, one that first-and-foremost rewards hard-working, fair-playing people – an agenda that helps them get ahead, not just get by; an agenda that ensures health care is affordable, homeownership is obtainable, and retirement is possible. And because the status quo feels broken, Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to acknowledge we need big, bold, aggressive changes, across the board.

There’s no one perfect model for Democrats to follow as we try to earn back working-class votes and work our way out of the political wilderness. But Democrats who are authentically relatable, clear, and respectful in how they communicate connect most with the working class.

Finally, when and where we reach these voters also matters. They still increasingly get their information from, and form their opinions on, non-traditional platforms – particularly YouTube and TikTok – and Democrats need to build up their presence on these channels.

Summary of Research

The Working Class Project conducted:

• 39 focus group discussions with nearly 400 collective working-class voters across 21 states, from February to August.
• A two-phase media consumption study among working-class voters across 21 states in the spring. This included an online survey of 7,555 voters, of whom 2,179 self-identified as working class, and media-usage diary research, in which survey respondents were asked to complete a detailed diary of their media usage over 24 hours. A total of 474 working-class voters participated in this diary research.
• Weekly longitudinal qualitative research over 13 weeks from March to June, among a fixed group of 28 self-identified working-class swing voters across battleground states who voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Participants responded to and discussed new questions each week, focused on Trump’s actions in office, party brands, and current events.
• Monthly longitudinal quantitative research in April, May, and June. Each wave included 1,000 interviews via an online panel among self-identified working-class voters, who were asked a series of tracking questions to measure movement, and new questions to capture reactions to unfolding national events.
• A benchmark messaging survey of more than 3,000 working-class voters across 21 states. This survey consolidated the most resonant message frames borne from focus group discussions and longitudinal qualitative boards to assess how they moved voters on a generic ballot and congressional vote. Messages covered issue areas focused on the economy and rising costs, tariffs, health care, corruption, immigration and LGBTQ+ issues, specifically focused on trans issues that continued to arise in each focus group.
• Ad testing in September and October that assessed messages that performed well in the benchmark survey, integrated into various ad treatments, and tested in Virginia as well as the remaining 20 states in which we conducted research.

More here.

Some takeaways from “Working-class voters think Dems are ‘woke’ and ‘weak,’ new research finds: The extensive research project shows the challenges and openings for the party in winning back working-class voters” by Elena Schneider ate Politico: “Working-class voters see Democrats as “woke, weak and out-of-touch” and six in 10 have a negative view of the party, concluded a frank internal assessment of the hole the party finds itself in…The nine-month, 21-state research project is the latest in a wave of post-mortems and data dives aimed at solving the Democratic Party’s electoral challenges after their sweeping losses in 2024. It was funded by Democracy Matters, a nonprofit aligned with flagship Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, and backed by months of polling, dozens of focus groups and message testing…American Bridge’s project focused exclusively on working-class voters, shedding light on a once-core constituency for Democrats that’s drifted away from the party over the last decade…The Democratic brand “is suffering,” as working-class voters see the party as “too focused on social issues and not nearly focused enough on the economic issues that impact every one, every day,” the report said…Other center-left groups’ post-mortems drew similar conclusions about the depths of the problem Democrats face in repairing their brand, as well as urging their party to side-step social issues and prioritize economic concerns. But even as the report calls for a proactive policy agenda, it’s not clear what that detailed policy agenda might be…The report argues Democrats still have a path to regain the support of blue-collar voters they have been losing to Republicans, from resetting their perceived priorities to leaning into issues that voters trust them on, including health care and housing. They point to Trump’s failure to bring down costssince resuming office this year as proof that “this group is very much up for grabs,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster who worked on the project…The report acknowledged that “Republicans start off on stronger ground on these issues, but Democrats can reclaim them when they vividly illustrate how their plans differ from Republicans’, particularly on health care.” Read on here.

From “Healthcare for All: The Democratic Promise That Could Heal a Broken Nation” by thomhartmann at Daily Kos: “Every election cycle, candidates talk about “freedom,” “security,” and “opportunity,” yet ignore the most basic measure of all three: whether ordinary Americans can afford to stay alive.In the richest nation in the history of planet Earth, millions of Americans are dying from treatable illnesses, rationing insulin, and running GoFundMe campaigns for chemotherapy. This isn’t just a policy failure, it’s a moral collapse…And it’s the one issue that could unite the country, reshape the Democratic Party, and finally prove that compassion is not weakness, but strength…Dilbert creator Scott Adams is begging Donald Trump for help forcing Kaiser to provide him with a possibly life-saving infusion for his cancer. That’s how f*cked-up healthcare is in today’s America…They’ve voted over 100 times to date on bills that would end, gut, or severely disfigure the ACA and finally got a good chunk of it done with their so-called “Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill” that handed Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, et alover  four trillion dollars in tax cuts, while making up for it by eviscerating ACA subsidies and Medicaid eligibility…But now that November 1st is in the past and we’re atop the actual enrollment period, 24.2 million people on the ACA plans are discovering their insurance rates, co-pays, and deductibles are exploding…And they’re pissed. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene is pissed!…we spend more on “healthcare” than any other country in the world: about 17% of GDP…Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden and Japan all average around 11%, and Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia all come in between 9.3% and 10.5%…Health insurance premiums right now make up about 22% of all taxable payroll, whereas Medicare For All would run an estimated 10%…Medicare For All, like Canada has, would save American families thousands every year immediately and do away with the 500,000+ annual bankruptcies in this country that happen because somebody in the family got sick.”

If you’ve been following the fuss about Maine’s Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, read “You’re Being Lied to About Graham Platner” by Branco Marcetic at Jacobin. Marcetic takes the time and trouble to comb all of Platner’s Reddit posts to see what he is really about, and ends up painting a nuanced portrait of a solid, upright guy, with an admirable sense of decency. Marcetic sheds light on Platner’s political views expressed over the years and concludes, “Platner’s Reddit archive contains thousands of comments over more than a decade, and it is possible to single out many of them to accuse him of any number of unflattering things. This is, in fact, exactly what seems to be happening in the media coverage of his posts, in which Platner is simultaneously portrayed as both a bigoted, far-right reactionary, and a dangerous left-wing radical…But read in their totality, Platner’s posts paint a different picture of the candidate: someone who, far from a secret fascist, was openly and passionately opposed to fascism; who held a variety of typical progressive views even as he expressed himself in ways many liberals would regard as crass and offensive; who sympathizes with rural Americans despite being vehemently opposed to many of the candidates they vote for; and who was disillusioned with and radicalized against the system by US wars…Platner, in other words, comes off as a flawed, complicated, and sometimes contradictory human being whose political views don’t always fit neatly into a box. In that, he resembles millions of Americans — including some of the exact voter demographics that American liberals say they want to win back, yet seemingly can’t help but vilify.” Read more here.

“A number of progressive groups close to the Democratic Party and the labor movement are trying to recruit working-class candidates,” Robert Kuttner writes in “Working-Class Heroes: Today on TAP: Would democracy work better if more working-class people ran for public office?” Kuttner explains:  “The Working Families Party recruits working-class candidates up and down the ballot,” says Joe Dinkin, the party’s national deputy director. “We run trainings for hundreds of working-class people to run for every year.”…It’s far from easy. Running for office is time-consuming and expensive. Working-class people tend to be working. Few can just take time off to run for office. The most important pipeline that launches working-class people into politics, the labor movement, is far weaker than it once was…“The experience of having to work hard for a living is familiar to most Americans but not to most elected officials,” Dinkin adds. “There are more millionaires in Congress than working-class people.” Too true. And the more the party is dominated by millionaires, the less hospitable it is to either working-class candidates or working-class causes…That said, getting the right candidate matters as least as much as the candidate’s class background. Occasionally, an authentic working-class candidate who is also a superb politician breaks through…Some of the greatest working-class champions, beginning with FDR, were well-to-do class traitors. And some people rose up from the working class, such as Vice President JD Vance, who was saved from destitution by New Dealer grandparents and grew up to be a plutocrat whose famous book blamed poverty on low character rather than disparities of power…when Ted Kennedy, one of the great champions of legislation to help working people, first ran for the Senate in 1962, he was 30 years old and was inheriting a seat from his brother Jack that had been kept warm for him by a family retainer until he was old enough to run. Campaigning at a factory gate, Teddy encountered a burly worker coming off the graveyard shift…Worker: “You’re a rich kid. You’ve probably never worked a day in your life.”…Kennedy: “Ye-es, I guess you could say that.”…Worker: “You ain’t missed a thing.”

The following article, “Forecast for Democratic Party Renewal: Cloudy with a chance of rain” by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

There seems to be general agreement that Democrats need to radically transform their party image. The second election of Donald Trump and the subsequent failure of the party to gain favor in voters’ eyes even as many of Trump’s actions are notably unpopular suggests that Democrats have a “yuck” factor that just isn’t going away.

Can the Democrats accomplish such a renewal of their party’s brand? On the plus side there are a number of Democratic-aligned organizations focusing on the party change imperative and promulgating useful analyses and suggestions. These include the new Searchlight Institute, the new Majority Democrats group of Democratic officeholders, the Welcome Party (whose terrific new data-driven report, “Deciding to Win,” is cited below) and the more venerable Progressive Policy Institute and Third Way. Their ideas are not without support in significant sectors of the Democratic party, including House moderates, some Senators, and some who appear to be intent on contending for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

This is promising, but of course the pushback has been fierce from those in the party who believe the party’s image merely needs a few strategic tweaks to become enticing to voters. This includes a huge contingent of Democrats who are not really interested in anything that distracts from the party line that Trump-is-a-fascist-and-everything-he-does-is-wrong. And there are those who, astoundingly, believe the solution lies in the Democrats becoming even more progressive! It’s just a fact that energy in the Democratic Party seems to be coming preponderantly from these quarters, not from the reformers.

Moreover, it’s not even clear that the reformers are offering stern enough medicine to cure what ails the party or, even if they were, that sympathetic politicians would actually be willing to push for truly decisive breaks with party orthodoxy. This can be illustrated by referring to recent work that demonstrates just how steep a hill Democrats have to climb and how, therefore, half-measures will likely be inadequate.

1. The Democrats’ image isn’t as bad as you think—it’s worse! The treasure trove of data in the new “Deciding to Win” report clarifies just how bad things are. Here’s a chart on what voters think Democrats do prioritize versus what voters think they should prioritize. At the top are issues Democrats vastly underprioritize (securing the border, lowering everyday costs, lowering the rate of crime, creating jobs and economic growth); at the bottom are issue Democrats vastly overprioritize (protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants, protecting the rights of LGBT+ Americans, raising taxes to increase spending on social programs, promoting DEI). Ouch.

Further illustrating this problem, take a look at this chart of unpopular Democratic policies. Some have not had really serious support within the party but quite a few have—indeed, some have become closely associated with what it means today to be a Democrat.

Read more here.

I’ve been getting steadily more exasperated at Democratic opinion-leaders telling Democratic pols not to talk about Trump’s threats to democracy, and wrote about it at New York:

There’s a disconnect in the Democratic Party strategy for combating Donald Trump this year and in the 2026 midterms. Democratic elites and many activists (not to mention millions of No Kings protesters!) are convinced the 47th president is engaged in an authoritarian power grab that could entrench his kind of politics for a long time to come. But again and again, party strategists keep telling Democrats not to talk much about it.

The spanking new “Deciding to Win” report from the Democratic Establishment group Welcome PAC makes this prescription repeatedly:

“Convince voters that we share their priorities by focusing more on issues voters do not think our party prioritizes highly enough (the economy, the cost of living, health care, border security, public safety), and focusing less on issues voters think we place too much emphasis on (climate change, democracy, abortion, identity and cultural issues).”

In a recent interview my colleague Benjamin Hart conducted with centrist Democratic super-strategist Lis Smith, she suggested the same thing with respect to what went wrong last year:

“[T]he biggest mistake we made in 2024 was not leading every single conversation by talking about the economy. When people feel like they are one accident, one incident, one layoff away from financial collapse, they do not want to hear us starting conversations by saying, ‘The most existential issue you should care about is democracy.’”

And despite the alarm often expressed by progressive activists about Trump’s authoritarian aspirations, progressive “populist” strategists almost invariably prefer appeals to voters’ material interests as opposed to such abstract matters as the U.S. Constitution or institutional barriers to a would-be tyrant like Trump. The standard leftist critique of Kamala Harris’s campaign held that all this pointy-headed talk about “democracy” was a donor-driven distraction from the class-warfare messaging that might have beaten Trump but also distressed rich Democratic elites.

To be clear, whatever you think of the credibility of Harris’s claims that Trump posed a “threat to democracy,” nine months into his second term we know for a fact that he does indeed represent a threat to democracy, and a near and present threat at that. Yet Democratic politicians are being told by their party’s wise heads to put a sock in it and instead focus public attention on Trump’s performance on kitchen-table issues. Apparently, Trump’s aggressive work toward creation of the most imperial presidency ever isn’t something discussed at kitchen tables, so it’s not worth a lot of attention.

You can see this disconnect in action right now during the government-shutdown crisis. In truth, Democrats chose to trigger the shutdown at the end of September because they were at a point of near-panic over Trump’s rapid construction of an imperial presidency. With both congressional Republicans and (so far) the U.S. Supreme Court offering zero resistance to Trump’s assertions of unlimited authority over national affairs, Democrats seized on their only leverage point: the need for Democratic votes to keep the government open. But to hear Democrats talk about it, all they really want is an an extension of Obamacare premium subsidies — a very worthy goal, but one they could have pursued without a government shutdown. And worse yet, if they succeed and (as his own pollster is advising him to do) Donald Trump imposes an Obamacare subsidy extension on his party, what Democrats will have accomplished is taking the issue right off the table for the 2026 midterms. In addition, the shutdown itself is making life miserable at many kitchen tables, including those of the members of public-employee unions that are now breaking solidarity with congressional Democrats.

Even as some Democrats pretend they aren’t that worried about threats to democracy, Trump is working overtime to thwart democracy in the midterms via a vast smorgasbord of measures to prevent and if necessary overturn adverse election results. Normally, given Trump’s persistent unpopularity, Democrats could be confident of breaking the GOP’s fragile governing trifecta next year. But instead the president has initiated an entirely unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering blitz that will become unstoppable if the Supreme Court responds to his demand to gut what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. He’s also effectively plotting another attempted insurrection with better tactics and a more united party behind him. If against all prior odds the GOP holds onto Congress in 2026 by such methods, America will have become what experts call a “competitive authoritarian” country, operating a hybrid system with elections but no real democracy. The consequences for those relying on a vibrant and viable opposition to represent their interests on kitchen-table issues against a powerful and corrupt oligarchy will be enormous.

You’d think this situation would be worth mentioning and perhaps emphasizing, unless Democrats truly believe swing voters are too stupid, selfish, or short-sighted to care. Are Americans committed to democracy only so long as it manifestly delivers more short-term economic benefits than an authoritarian alternative? If so, we have bigger problems than higher Obamacare health-insurance premiums, as we’ll discover when a future GOP regime wipes Obamacare, the Great Society, and the New Deal right off the books.