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.
Jim:
I honestly don’t think anybody’s dancing in the end zone right now. The current cautious optimism about Obama’s prospects is a nice antidote to the panic and despair that were so evident among Democrats a month ago, when McCain was up in many polls, and there was even evidence that Republican congressional candidates were suddenly doing a lot better.
Looking at objective evidence, positive or negative, is what we try to do here at TDS, though obviously our own partisan feelings come into play. Today is one of those days when there’s a lot of good news to report. But I doubt anyone fails to understand that there’s a lot of work still to be done, and risks to confront, particularly now that the McCain campaign may be getting desparate enough to conduct the nastiest negative campaign in memory.
Thanks for the comment.
I hate to be a downer this morning, but on many blogs, and the precious few liberal talk shows, there’s a lot of celebrating going on. This is NOT over. We have a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of evidence out there that the GOP is going to tamper with the vote like no other time. They’re desperate, resembling a cornered animal.
PLEASE think for a moment what they’re going to lose IF they lose this election. They will lose the Supreme Court for decades, one of the biggest goals of the last 50 years. They will likely have to endure (if there’s ANY justice in this Universe) many, many probes into illegal activities born from this administration and Cheney’s reign of error (this could result in prison for some and a minority status for 20 years).
Do you actually believe that THIS regime of Neo-Con-backed politicos will simply roll over and accept the will of the people wielding simple votes?
They detest US. They’ll stop at nothing. We have work to do. Be realistic. Make calls. Talk to everyone. Volunteer. Anticipate the OCTOBER surprise.
Only THEN celebrate on Nov. 5 after a win and there are no challenges in the courts.