From “Johnson shifts strategy on Epstein files vote – as GOP leaders brace for mass defections” by Annie Grayer, Manu Raju and Kristen Holmes at CNN Politics:

House Speaker Mike Johnson decided to quickly schedule a House vote on an effort to force the release of all of the Jeffrey Epstein case files once the calculation was made that it couldn’t be stopped.

The decision marked a shift in strategy for Johnson and the White House, who had long sought to delay the process, ​three sources told CNN.

House GOP leaders are bracing for a significant number of Republicans to break from President Donald Trump and support the bipartisan bill led by GOP Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna calling for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files — as supporters push for a veto-proof majority.

Republican sources say there’s a broad cross-section of the conference willing to support the plan — and it will be hard to limit defections.

“No point in waiting,” one House GOP leadership source familiar with the strategy shift told CNN.

A House GOP lawmaker said of the speaker’s decision: “If you got to do it, might as well do it quickly.”

Massie told CNN on Wednesday that his hope is that a veto-proof majority will pressure the Senate to act over Trump’s opposition. It would require two-thirds of the House — or 290 votes if all members are present — for a veto-proof majority.

“If we get less than two-thirds vote when it comes up for a vote, I think it’s an uphill battle,” Massie said. “But if we are somehow able to get two thirds vote here in the House, [that] puts a lot of pressure on the Senate, and also, if the Senate does pass it, that’s a very serious step for the president.”

A Senior White House official told CNN that Trump was made aware ahead of time that Johnson was going to expedite the vote, and that the two had spoken about it.

“It was made clear to President Trump, and he understands that this is an inevitable reality,” the official said.

More here.

The CW has it that the government shutdown, at least the way it ended, was a setback for Democrats. I suggested otherwise at New York.

There’s a lot of ill-suppressed glee among Republicans right now, along with recriminations among Democrats, about the end of the longest government shutdown ever. Eight Democratic senators were able to undercut a few hundred of their colleagues by ending a filibuster against a bill to reopen government, exhibiting both weakness and disunity. (Though there’s no telling how many holdouts privately agreed with the “cave.”) Worse, Democrats failed to secure an extension of Obamacare premium subsidies they repeatedly demanded.

So were Republicans the “winners” and Democrats the “losers” in the shutdown saga? Maybe now, but maybe not later. As the New York Times’ Annie Karni observes, the short-term stakes of the shutdown fight may soon be overshadowed by more enduring public perceptions of what the two parties displayed:

“[Some Democrats] assert that in hammering away at the extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of next month, they managed to thrust Mr. Trump and Republicans onto the defensive, elevating a political issue that has long been a major weakness for them.

“And in holding out for weeks while Republicans refused to extend the health tax credits and Mr. Trump went to court to deny low-income Americans SNAP food benefits, Democrats also honed their main message going into 2026: that Republicans who control all of government have done nothing to address voters’ concerns that the cost of living is too high”.

Trump’s clumsy and insensitive handling of the SNAP benefit cutoff was an unforced error and a gift to Democrats. But just as importantly, by “losing” the Obamacare subsidy–extension fight, Democrats may have dodged a bullet. A deal on that issue would have cushioned or even eliminated an Obamacare premium price hike that will now be a real problem for Trump and the GOP. Republicans appear to have no health-care plan other than the same tired panaceas involving individual savings plans that allow health insurers to discriminate against poorer and sicker Americans — precisely the problem that led to passage of the Affordable Care Act and has made Obamacare popular.

The big takeaway from Democrats’ election sweep this month is that “affordability” is a message that accommodates candidates ranging from democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to centrist Abigail Spanberger and that plays on tangible public unhappiness with Trump’s broken promises to reduce the cost of living. That Republicans emerged from the government shutdown having abundantly displayed their lack of interest in soaring health-care costs and persistently high grocery costs positions Democrats exactly where they hope to be next November.

In addition, the election wins showed that rank-and-file Democratic voters and the activists who helped turn them out were not particularly bothered by the year’s many ideological and generational collisions over anti-Trump strategy and tactics. The Democratic “struggle for the soul of the party” that Republicans and Beltway pundits love more than life itself may manifest itself more visibly during 2026 primaries. But when general-election season arrives, there’s every reason to believe Democrats will stop fighting each other and focus on flipping the House — and in a big-wave election, maybe even the Senate — and destroying the governing trifecta that has enabled so many Trump outrages this year. It’s one thing to debate endlessly how to “fight” and “stop” Trump. It’s another thing to be given a clear opportunity to do just that at the ballot box.

The expiration of the shutdown deal on January 30 could in theory produce another government shutdown and another set of expectations to be met or missed. But “winning” the current shutdown won’t in itself improve Trump’s lagging job-approval ratings, or the incoherence of his economic policies, or the fears his authoritarian conduct instills. That’s the GOP’s problem and Democrats’ opportunity.

 

In “Here Is How an Obamacare Deal Might Actually Work,” Jonathan Cohn writes at The Bulwark: “THE FIGHT OVER THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN appears to be over. But the fight over what to do about those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies hasn’t stopped—and the chance to do something about them hasn’t run out, either…Yes, the House is about to vote to reopen the government, thanks to a short-term funding bill that got through the Senate with the support of all Republicans and eight Democrats. But precisely because that legislation does nothing to extend those expiring “Obamacare” subsidies, the problem at the heart of the fight hasn’t gotten better…If anything, it’s about to get worse…More than 20 million Americans are in the process of discovering their health insurance is going to be a lot more expensive next year. They disproportionately live in places like Florida, Arizona, and Kansas that voted for Trump in the last election. That’s going to keep the political pressure on Republicans—and it could create an opportunity for action at one of two coming inflection points…The first will be in December, when Democrats get to hold a vote on extending the Obamacare subsidies. That vote was one of the few concessions the eight Democrats wrung from Senate GOP leaders as a part of the deal to reopen the government. It will force yet another high-profile debate over the subsidy policy, at a time when even some GOP lawmakers say they want to do something. And that might just be enough to sway House Speaker Mike Johnson, who so far has refused to say whether he’d allow a vote in his chamber.” More here.

From “Top House Democrats vow to oppose shutdown bill over healthcare funding: Democrats are demanding an extension of tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans set to expire at end of year” by Chris Stein at The Guardian: “As House Republican leaders move to hold a vote on legislation to reopen the US government, top Democrats vowed on Tuesday to oppose the bill for not addressing their demand for more healthcare funding…The House rules committee will consider the bill on Tuesday evening, setting the stage for it to come to the House floor on Wednesday. Top House Democrats oppose it, with the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling it a “partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people…The House’s largest ideological caucus, the centrist New Democrat Coalition, has announced its opposition to the measure…“While New Dems always seek common ground, our coalition remains united in opposition to legislation that sacrifices the wellbeing of the constituents we’re sworn to serve,” chair Brad Schneider said…“Unfortunately, the Senate-passed bill fails to address our constituents’ top priorities, doing nothing to protect their access to healthcare, lower their costs or curb the administration’s extreme agenda.”…The sentiment appears much the same in the Congressional Progressive caucus, where chair Greg Casar called the measure “a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them.”

Alan I. Abramowitz, author of “The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump,“ explains why “The 2025 Elections and Future of the Democratic Party: Why Spanberger and Sherrill Provide a More Plausible Model for Success than Mamdani” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2024 presidential election set off a wave of soul-searching among liberal pundits and Democratic Party leaders. Perhaps the central question that Democratic leaders and their political allies have been debating since last November has been whether Democrats should respond to their 2024 defeat by moving closer to the center of the ideological spectrum in order to appeal to swing voters or by adopting populist positions on economic issues in order to win back white and nonwhite working-class voters who stayed home or voted for Trump in 2024…One year after Donald Trump’s victory, the 2025 off-year elections produced dramatic victories for Democratic candidates across the country. Perhaps the three highest-profile wins for Democrats were in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests as well as the New York City mayoral race. In this article, I examine the results of exit polls in these three elections to try to understand what implications these results have for the ongoing debate over the future direction of the Democratic Party…Two common themes emerge from the results of all three of these Democratic victories—growing concern with inflation and rising disapproval of Donald Trump’s conduct in the White House. Beyond these common elements, however, we see that the Democratic victors in these elections took very different approaches in appealing to their electorates. The two gubernatorial candidates, Spanberger and Sherrill, while highly critical of President Trump, campaigned as pragmatic moderates with records of working across party lines. In contrast, Zohran Mamdani ran for Mayor of New York as a Democratic Socialist, proposing drastic reforms aimed at expanding city services while raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations.”

Abramowitz continues, “Democrats won decisive victories in all three marquee races that were decided last Tuesday. However, the coalitions that the two moderate gubernatorial candidates assembled were quite different from the one that the Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate assembled and are much more likely to provide a path to success for future Democratic candidates who are not running in Democratic strongholds like New York City. Zohran Mamdani won his election fairly easily because the New York City electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic and tilts decidedly to the left ideologically. The coalition he assembled was disproportionately made up of white liberals. That’s a group that makes up a much larger share of the electorate in New York City than in Virginia, New Jersey, or most of the rest of the country…Some of the differences between Mamdani’s results and those for Spanberger and Sherrill undoubtedly reflected the different types of opposing candidates that they faced. While Spanberger and Sherrill each had only a single significant opponent (the Republican nominee), Mamdani had two—a Republican and a former Democrat. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, was extraordinarily weak and ended up receiving only 7% of the vote. Mamdani’s main rival was former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. However, Cuomo was no electoral powerhouse. His reputation had been badly damaged by allegations of inappropriate sexual advances by several former female staffers that eventually led to his resignation from office. After losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, Cuomo ran as an independent in the general election and openly appealed to Republican voters. Cuomo was actually endorsed by President Trump. The fact that a substantial minority of Democrats and a majority of independents were willing to vote for Cuomo was less a reflection of his strength as a candidate than of Mamdani’s weakness among moderate voters—a group that will be much more crucial to Democratic success in swing states and House districts in the 2026 midterm elections.”

Abramowitz shares this chart:

David Dayen explains “The Most Frustrating Thing About the Shutdown Cave” at The American Prospect:

My colleague Bob Kuttner has ably explained the particulars and the political dynamics of the sudden surrender on the government shutdown from eight Senate Democrats (with Chuck Schumer’s tacit support), what I’m calling the Cave Caucus. Senators dissatisfied with this deal are going to deny unanimous consent to draw out the conclusion, in part to let the situation sink in for the House, where the reaction has been sharply negative. But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) only needs his own party members to get the bill passed, and he has delivered tough votes throughout the year. I don’t think House Republicans will rescue the Cave Caucus.

I share a lot of the frustrations expressed all over social media. But the biggest one for me comes on page 12 of the continuing resolution that advanced in the Senate last night. There, the drafters demonstrated that they have every ability to constrain Donald Trump and OMB director Russ Vought’s desires and stop the consolidation of executive power. But they only did it in one area, to grab one necessary vote for passage, not because they care about Congress’s relevance as an institution. That this Senate knows how to restore the power imbalance in Washington and chose not to is almost worse than completely ignoring it.

On the details, I do agree that the existing dynamics, particularly with air travel chaos and the Trump administration losing ruling after ruling on food assistance (including one just last night), were actually pushing Senate Republicans to bow to their president and eliminate the Senate filibuster, or at least create some semantic carve-out for government spending that would end the filibuster in all but name. The Cave Caucus was likely mindful that their power to dictate events is tied to the rule by minority in the Senate, and they stepped in front of that process like human shields.

I also agree that for Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Dick Durbin (D-IL)—the two Cave Caucus members who are retiring next year—the real goal was to preserve their three-bill “minibus” appropriations package, which is objectively better than the usual work product and preserves some funding Trump wanted out. It in no way makes up for the cave, but it speaks to how parochial interests and turf wars in Congress often play an outsized role in outcomes. Shaheen and Durbin weren’t thinking about the national Democratic position of giving up on health care improvements right after a big electoral victory and Republican chaos; they wanted their little bill to pass.

But I have been arguing consistently throughout the shutdown that Democrats were running into problems by saying one thing in public and another in private. The public argument of the shutdown was about Affordable Care Act subsidies, and Democrats didn’t have much of a policy plan for what to do if Republicans just said no. Politically, they reset the conversation to friendly turf; getting Republicans to express their bonkers health care ideas out loud is where Democrats want to be. But it was easy to see where this impasse would lead. In fact, on October 6 I wrote that the endgame would look something like Republicans offering an “assurance” of negotiations or a vote as long as short-term funding passes, and Democrats deciding that was a real rather than a dubious offer. Of course, that’s what happened.

But there was a behind-the-scenes factor in the shutdown too, namely, that Trump was making a mockery of the appropriations process by withholding funds and dismantling agencies and rescinding programs. The Democratic counteroffer had provisions for a “No Kings” budget, to stop the withholding and rescinding of funds. But because that was largely in private, without any momentum behind it politically, that was destined to flounder.

Yet Senate Democrats needed Tim Kaine’s vote, and Kaine represents a large number of federal workers in Virginia. So after the rest of the Democratic caucus balked on a straightforward cave, the Cave Caucus decided to reverse Trump’s firings of federal workers, in a way that reveals their options to use the power of the purse.

More here.

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.