Joey Garrison shares “Key takeaways as Democrats overperform in Tennessee special election” at USA Today: “Van Epps, a combat veteran and former state government official, defeated Behn, a liberal Democratic state representative by 9 percentage points, 54%-45%, in a Middle Tennessee district Trump carried by 22 points in the 2024 presidential election. He will replace retired Rep. Mark Green, R-Tennessee…That amounts to a sizable 13-point swing in Democrats’ direction, continuing a pattern of Democratic overperformance in special elections this year…In five other special elections to fill U.S. House vacancies this year, Democrats overperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris‘ 2024 election performance by 17 points (Arizona’s District 7), 23 points (Florida’s District 1), 16 points (Florida’s District 6), 28 points (Texas’s District 18), and 17 points (Virginia’s District 11)…Republicans have publicly downplayed the shift in Tennessee, arguing the outcome wasn’t as close as some polls suggested. But the larger trend is a troubling sign for Republicans as they look to hold on to their current 219-213 House majority in 2026…At the same time, Democrats are growing more convinced a double-digit swing in the electorate nationally can put into play a Democratic takeover of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 seat majority…Republican efforts to nationalize the race paid off in Tennessee’s deeply conservative District 7, but the same formula is unlikely to work in a swing district where Trump is less popular. Trump’s approval rating has dropped nationally to a second-term low 36%, according to a Gallup poll released Nov. 28.” More here.

“The share of Americans who say they follow the news all or most of the time has decreased since 2016, according to nearly a decade’s worth of Pew Research Center surveys,” Naomi Forman-Ketz reports at Pew Research. “This shift comes amid changes in the platforms people use for news and declining trust in news organizations,” … As of August 2025, 36% of U.S. adults say they follow the news all or most of the time. That is down from 51% in 2016, the first time we asked this question…In turn, growing shares of Americans say they follow the news less closely.

The following stub of “Trump’s Approval Rating Among Working Class Now Underwater by 28 Points” by Kate Plummer, is cross-posted from Newsweek:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval rating among the working class is underwater by 28 points, new polling shows.

According to The Economist/YouGov polling, the proportion of people earning less than $50,000 a year who approve of Trump’s job performance is 34 percent, while 62 percent of people disapprove.

Why It Matters

While lower-income voters traditionally lean toward the Democratic Party, Trump made significant gains with this group in the 2024 election. Exit polling from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research shows that he increased his share of the vote of those earning under $50,000 a year from 44 percent in 2020 to 50 percent in 2024.

If the president loses the support of these voters, it could prove damaging for the Republican Party more broadly, especially ahead of the November 2026 midterms as the GOP seeks to defend its slim majority in the House of Representatives.

Trump’s net approval rating of -28 points among those earning under $50,000 is lower than the survey’s findings among all salary groups. The pollsters found that, overall, 38 percent approved of Trump’s job performance, while 57 percent disapproved, leaving him with a net approval rating of -19 percentage points.

It also found that higher earners were more likely to report less negative opinions about Trump’s job performance, though his rating was still underwater among these groups. His net approval rating among people earning $50,000 to $100,000 was -12 percent, while it was -10 percent among those earning over $100,000.

Other polls have also suggested that Trump is losing the support of lower-income voters. According to YouGov/Economist polling conducted from October 4 to October 6, Trump’s approval rating among this group fell from September, when Trump’s net approval rating among voters earning under $50,000 a year was -15 percentage points, to -24 points in October.

While the polling did not offer reasons for lower-income voters’ disapproval of Trump, the economy is a key concern for American voters. The president pledged to bring down inflation on the campaign trail, but since taking office, the public has taken umbrage with some of Trump’s economic policies, including his implementation of tariffs on the U.S.’s trading partners.

More here.

In his article, “Signs Are Pointing to a Strong Midterm Environment for Democrats,” Michael Baharaeen writes at The Liberal Patriot:

As 2025 comes to a close, TLP will begin ramping up our coverage of next year’s midterm elections. With just over 11 months to go, all signs point to a favorable environment for Democrats. If the elections were held today, it’s a good bet that they would win back the House of Representatives, as they did the last time Trump was president. They may even flip one or two governor’s seats and a handful of state-legislative chambers.

Currently, however, it’s unclear just how strong a national environment they will enjoy next year, and whether it will be capable of lifting candidates in places that voted for Trump by significant margins in 2024. So today, we’ll take a look at where things stand across several key metrics and determine what we can glean from the data we have.

The 2025 Election Results

• In both contests, the Democratic candidates won by double digits;
• They outperformed the party’s past nominees in both places dating back to 1993 in New Jersey and 1965 in Virginia, and their approximately nine-point over-performance of Kamala Harris was a stronger showing than Democrats enjoyed in 2017 versus Hillary Clinton in these states;
• Turnout in each state also surpassed levels seen in the 2022 midterm election, a sign of very real enthusiasm among Democratic voters; and
• Especially important: there is evidence in both the exit polls and post-election polling that the Democratic gubernatorial candidates won back small but meaningful shares of 2024 Trump voters.

It’s difficult to extrapolate from these results as we look forward to 2026 to guess what the national House popular vote margin might look like. In 2017, Democrats won the Virginia governor race by nine points and the New Jersey race by 13.5, but the following year they won the House popular vote by a smaller 8.4 points. However, the fact that Democrats’ margins in this year’s contests were larger than they were in 2017 portends a national environment that may well be at least as favorable as the one they experienced in 2018.

Special Elections

As the above chart shows, Democrats in the Trump era have routinely had an edge in these off-year elections, and yet that has not always translated to success in the subsequent general election. However, the last time the party came close to their current 11-point median swing was a nine-point margin in 2018—when, like now, they were the out-party looking to bounce back in a midterm at a time when Trump was president. Coupled with this year’s election results, this is a signal that Democrats are likely heading into a “blue wave” type of environment next year.

The Generic Ballot

According to two different trackers, at the time of this year’s November elections the GCB was around three points in favor of Democrats (and their candidates in the most high-profile races far exceeded that). Since then, it has ticked up by a point or two. In another poll conducted by The Argument, likely voters were pushed to pick one party or the other and gave Democrats a 7.6-point edge (53.8 to 46.2).

By comparison, though, around the same time in the 2018 cycle, the GCB already showed an 8.9-point advantage for Democrats. Moreover, the final margin that cycle indeed ended up being an almost identical 8.6 points. So, currently, even in their best-case scenario, Democrats are underperforming relative to their last big midterm as the out-party.

All this also suggests that the GCB has been a better predictor of the midterm picture than the 2025 elections or special elections that precede it.1 One of these two metrics will have to give come next November. It’s possible the Democrats’ advantages in the GCB will improve before then to match their other performances. But there is a world of difference between a national environment that mirrors this year’s (~D+15) or even 2018’s (D+8.6) versus one that is only D+4.

Trump’s Approval Rating

[One] strong historical predictor of midterm results is the approval rating of the incumbent president, which correlates highly with their party’s seat loss in the House. The only presidents in the polling era whose parties experienced a net seat gain in a midterm election (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) enjoyed approval ratings north of 60 percent (66 percent and 63 percent, respectively). But even a strong approval rating doesn’t guarantee success for a president’s party. […]

In his first term, Trump’s Republicans lost 42 House seats. Given the more constricted House map this time around, it’s very unlikely his party’s losses will be that deep next year, no matter his personal standing. However, a low approval won’t do them any favors…

Indeed, one phenomenon that has remained consistent in politics for decades: a poor approval rating for the president virtually guarantees his party will lose seats.

After a relatively stable period stretching from the beginning of July to mid-October, President Trump’s net approval rating has taken a hit, dropping from -7.6 percent on October 20 to -14.7 as of last week (though it has ticked back up slightly to -13.1 this week). This trend is evident at the issue level as well. On his best issue, immigration, Trump had been holding steady for much of the July to October period, with a net approval rating of around -3 percent. Over the past month, however, that dropped to -8.1 percent, the worst standing of his second term. He is in even worse shape on the economy, as his approval ratings on trade (-17.8), the economy (-21), and especially inflation (-34.1) have all slid.

It is possible that Trump, who has defied political gravity time and again, is now being weighed down by the six-year itch.

Perceptions of the Economy

On the surface, the economy today looks somewhat similar to that of 2018. Inflation has come down from its recent surge to just three percent today, though this is still higher than it was seven years ago (2.5). The unemployment rate is around 4.4 percent, up a bit from seven years ago (3.8 percent) but not terribly alarming.

The problem for Republicans, however, is that many voters still do not feel as though things have gotten better under their leadership, and many are worried about the future. According to the University of Michigan, the current consumer sentiment index, which gauges how consumers feel about the state of the economy, is just 53.6. For comparison, that figure was 98.6 in the run-up to the 2018 midterms.

We can see a similar story in a recent (and brutal) Fox News poll. Among the results:

• Three-quarters (76 percent) of voters said that economic conditions today are either “only fair” (34 percent) or “poor” (42 percent, a plurality);
• A strong plurality (46 percent) said they had been “harmed” by the economic policies of the Trump administration (for context, no more than 43 percent ever said the same about President Biden’s policies in Fox’s polling);
• Sixty-two percent blamed Trump rather than Biden (32 percent) for current economic conditions;
• A majority (52 percent) said inflation is “not at all” under control;
• Majorities said their costs have gone up since one year ago for groceries (85 percent agreed), utilities (78 percent), healthcare (67 percent), housing (66 percent), and gas (54 percent); and
• Perhaps worst of all for Republicans: 53 percent of respondents in the poll said they think Democrats have a better plan for making things more affordable than does the GOP (43 percent).2

In a September CBS poll, the top words Americans gave to describe the country’s economy were “uncertain” (61 percent) and “struggling” (54 percent). Sixty-seven percent expected prices to go up in the coming months.

These poor economic perceptions have already hurt Republicans in one election. As we discussed in our post-election analysis last month, voters in places like Virginia who believed the economy was not in good shape voted overwhelmingly Democratic. And as we established above, many are souring on Trump’s handling of the economy. According to Nate Silver’s latest aggregates, the president’s net approval on inflation, specifically, is deeply underwater, with just 31.3 percent of Americans approving against fully 65.4 percent disapproving.

If things don’t improve between now and next November, Republicans will likely be in for a world of hurt.

Issue Trust

Fast-forward one year and that same indicator has now flipped. Whereas voters before the last election trusted Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 50 to 44 to handle the top issue, they now trust Democrats by four points, 47 to 43.

Polls from David Shor and The Argument have shown a similar reversal in the Democrats’ fortunes. According to the Argument’s Lakshya Jain:

We asked voters about their top two issues and, unsurprisingly, 60 percent of voters ranked “cost of living” as a top-two issue in our survey. But despite Trump’s tariff policy and the continuing frustration with high grocery and consumer-goods prices, Democrats won these cost-of-living voters by just under half a percentage point in our survey.

However, he adds:

Those numbers aren’t good for Republicans, but they’re a lot better than Trump’s nightmarish approvals on those issues are… This suggests that Democrats face real trust problems on the economy that haven’t really gone away yet, despite voters giving Trump exceptionally poor marks for his economic stewardship.

A year from now, Democrats may have a more robust trust advantage over the Republicans on handling the economy, but they still have work to do to restore that trust following four years in with which many voters were left feeling completely dissatisfied with the party’s leadership on this issue.

Overall, the picture looks promising for Democrats ahead of next year. However, we want to end with an obligatory note of caution, specifically, regarding the Senate. In a world in which the national environment mirrors 2018, Democrats can expect to successfully defend all of their Senate seats and likely flip two of Republicans’: Maine and North Carolina. But beyond those, they will be forced to win seats in states that voted for Trump by at least 11 points last year, such as Iowa, Ohio, and Texas. And that means the party will need an even stronger national environment than they had in 2018 to win back the majority.

Jain put together a helpful graphic showing what the outcomes in these types of Senate races would look like if Democrats merely repeat their last “wave” performance:

This is why we at TLP write so often about the need for Democrats to address their structural issues. Winning big in midterm and other off-year elections delivers real benefits for the party—namely, they gain power and subsequently get to wield it. But three of the most important institutions in American politics—the presidency, Senate, and Supreme Court—will become harder to capture over time if they can’t address their longstanding weaknesses and become more competitive in right-leaning places.

Ashley Lopez reports “Democrats plan a new investment in winning rural voters, who’ve fled the party” at npr.org: “Democrats are announcing a new investment to win over voters in rural areas — where the party has suffered deep losses in recent elections — in their effort to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year…This is the first time, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says, that it’s had a program specifically dedicated to engaging rural voters…Suzan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC and represents Washington’s 1st Congressional District, said Democrats see an opportunity to engage rural voters as President Trump’s economic agenda, particularly tariffs, becomes less popular…She said rural voters see the “damage” being done by GOP policies that have led to “costs going up, health care being gutted,” and Democrats can provide an alternative…”When we look at the swing districts across the country, the districts that are going to determine the majority in the House of Representatives, we know that rural voters are key in those districts,” DelBene said…Anthony Flaccavento, co-founder and executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, said economic frustration among most voters could provide an opening for Democrats, and that rural voters tend to align with economically populist policies…”It’s very clear to us that a progressive, populist economic stance is what is needed,” he said. “It’s what is needed in substance. Like we need the anti-monopolies, antitrust, pro-union-and-investment-in-infrastructure-type things that go with that.” More here.

At Jacobin.com, Meagan Day argues that “Medicare for All Disappeared. Its Popularity Didn’t,” and writes: “In early 2020, all roads in American politics led to Medicare for All. The policy demand, shorthand for a universal, tax-funded, single-payer health insurance plan, began its ascent four years prior when it was elevated by Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign. Over the intervening years, its popularity soared, and debate became intense. By the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, everyone had an opinion, and where you stood seemed to say everything about your core values and fundamental worldview…For the rising economic populist left, Medicare for All was the flagship demand — the purest expression of the Sanders movement’s ethos, promising to mobilize ordinary working-class people en masse, across lines of political and demographic difference, in a necessary challenge to capitalist domination and exploitation. The Medicare for All army came equipped with political arguments, economic projections, policy papers, physicians’ opinions, patient testimonies, and regiments of self-taught true believers ready to talk through the details with anyone who would listen. As the pressure mounted, centrists squirmed in their seats, conservatives clutched their pearls, and corporations benefiting from the private health insurance status quo commenced a lobbyist hiring spree, affirming with their dollars how seriously they took the threat…Then, in mid-2020, poof. The demand for Medicare for All evaporated. Sanders’s primary loss and Joe Biden’s presidential victory squashed the momentum. By 2021, with the policy’s main champion defeated and an avowed opponent in the White House, the proposal migrated almost overnight from the center of the primary debate to the margins of respectable Democratic Party discourse. Even a public option, which Biden had promised to champion as a compromise, disappeared from discussion without a trace. When the Republicans, under newly reelected Donald Trump, set out inevitably to destroy Biden’s health care legacy, they were reduced to ripping up enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies — a distant fourth cousin to the ambitious and once-mighty Medicare for All.”

Day continues, “Still, it’s important to decouple the demand’s short-term political prospects from its actual popularity among the electorate. And on this point, a new poll from Data for Progress offers some clarity. In a survey of 1,207 likely voters conducted November 14–17, 2025, Data for Progress found that 65 percent of voters support a Medicare for All system — described as a “national health insurance program . . . that would cover all Americans and replace most private health insurance plans.” That number includes 78 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of independents, and 49 percent of Republicans…Data for Progress also tested what happens when respondents are given more information about what Medicare for All entails. After being told the policy would “eliminate most private insurance plans and replace premiums with higher taxes, while guaranteeing health coverage for everyone and eliminating most out-of-pocket costs like copays and deductibles,” 63 percent of voters still expressed support, including 64 percent of independents and a slight plurality of Republicans…To further gauge the durability of Medicare for All’s political appeal, the pollsters presented respondents with arguments from both sides: supporters emphasizing that the policy would ensure everyone can receive the care they need and save families money, opponents countering that it would raise taxes and give the government too much control over health care. Even after hearing these competing messages, 58 percent of voters said they still support Medicare for All. That’s a seven-point drop from the initial question — a real drop but a modest one, suggesting that the support is resilient under rhetorical fire.”

Day concludes, “The cost of living is a dominant and pressing concern for American voters, and health care sits near the center of that anxiety. Health care costs keep climbing, vastly outpacing wage growth. Uninsurance and underinsurance are still rampant. Tens of millions of US adults carry medical debt, often considered the most common factor in personal bankruptcy. Millions of Americans continue to delay or forgocare because they cannot afford it. With enhanced ACA subsidies set to expire at the end of this year, enrollees are already facing sticker shock — some looking at premium increases of 50 percent or more for 2026. The dysfunction is chronic and worsening, and no amount of technocratic tinkering will make it go away…Health care costs remain a major source of hardship in American life and will therefore no doubt remain a source of tension in American politics. If Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s mayoral election is any indication, the Sanders-inspired economic left has plenty of runway, which means the fight over Medicare for All within the Democratic Party is likely to reignite at some point. Given that the party has been hemorrhaging working-class voters as it struggles to articulate a positive political vision that ordinary people can connect to, the Democratic establishment would do well not to undermine it so mercilessly next time.” If Day is right, ‘Medicare for All’ is a slogan that can give Democrats some added traction heading into the 2026 midterm elections, now less than a year away. If the proposal should falter in congress, however, Medicare for all catastrophic illnesses, based on the principle that no American will lose their home or retirement savings as a result of medical bills, could be a bridge reform that sets the stage for Medicare for All. More here.

Ruy Teixeira recommends the following article, “Can Either Party Crack the Code on the Economy?” by John Halpin, which is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

It’s easy to campaign on angry sentiments about the economy and affordability. It’s another matter entirely to produce policy that brings down prices—and is perceived to help voters cope with high costs in a timely fashion and reduce overall anxiety.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans seem capable of doing this in a sustained manner.

Since the global rise of inflation following the Covid pandemic, American politics has been stuck in an endless cycle of partisan blame and talk about “doing something” to address rising prices on everything from groceries and energy to housing and education. Trump returned to office in 2024 on the backs of voters justifiably mad at Biden and Harris for not doing enough on inflation after spending wildly as costs soared and touting the miracle cures of “Bidenomics.” Voters didn’t buy it, and Democrats were dumped.

Now, more than a year later, voters are still mad about inflation and the overall state of the economy, giving Trump and Republicans poor marks for promising to do something about prices but not delivering with either the “one, big, beautiful” tax cut bill passed on party lines or with the inexplicable tariffs that the administration is now reversing.

Trump’s job approval on inflation is 28 points underwater according to RCP’s running average—almost exactly the same (poor) position as Biden at the end of his term.

In the recent off-year elections, both populist Democrats like Zohran Mamdani in NYC and centrist ones like Mikie Sherrill in NJ and Abigail Spanberger in VA campaigned successfully on “affordability,” promising voters that they will tackle high housing and energy costs and expensive childcare. Democrats also shut down the government over expiring subsidies for exorbitant healthcare costs, which might eventually be reinstated in some form, and more likely than not will campaign on the issues of inflation and affordability next year to help retake the House and maybe even the Senate.

If things don’t improve in the minds of voters after the midterms, it is conceivable that Democrats could ride a wave of voter anger about the economy to yet another reversal of White House control in 2028.

Given modern communications, constant scrutiny of politicians, and online venting about all public matters, we’ve reached a point in American politics where the government cannot keep up with voter expectations, particularly on the economy. It’s far easier for political parties to stoke populist anger and anti-establishment sentiments about inflation and the economy than it is to produce economic policies that quell this anger—and measurably improve people’s lives.

Democrats and Republicans both overpromise on affordability and reducing costs to win elections. They then fail to bring down costs to a level that pleases voters and addresses lingering economic uncertainty. Then the opposition harnesses economic anger to produce a change election. Rinse and repeat.

Is there a way out of this doom loop? Eventually, hopefully, I don’t know. As the country has experienced, it takes time to bring down inflation system-wide, and it’s not even clear that the government itself can do all that much these days other than not making it worse with too much partisan spending or self-inflicted wounds like tariffs. As Greg Ip astutely summarized in the Wall Street Journal:

There is nothing any elected official can do to “solve” the affordability crisis reliably. As Biden learned, people don’t want lower inflation (i.e., prices to rise more slowly); they want prices to fall. Trump promised they would. Overall prices haven’t fallen and almost certainly won’t. For prices merely to stop rising for a year (i.e., an inflation rate of zero), would probably require a deep recession. Overall prices haven’t fallen materially since the Great Depression.

Individual actions such as reduced regulation on energy production and infrastructure and capping certain drug prices will help at the margin, but tariffs do the opposite (as Trump seems to have acknowledged by rolling some back).

Housing is especially hard to solve. It has become much more expensive since the pandemic. From 2008 through 2021, mortgage rates were abnormally low, a product of very low inflation and aggressive Federal Reserve policies, which boosted home prices. Mortgage rates have since returned to pre-2008 norms, but housing prices haven’t yet adjusted downward, so monthly payments remain high, especially for first-time buyers.

That is slowly changing. New-home prices have slipped for the past few years, existing-home prices have stopped rising, and mortgage rates are down half a percentage point in the past year.

Housing affordability is now slightly below its pre-2008 average, according to the National Association of Realtors, so room for improvement is limited. Trump wants to stack the Fed with loyalists who will slash interest rates, but that wouldn’t return mortgage costs to prepandemic lows absent a much-worse economy. And a politicized Fed would ultimately lead to higher inflation and rates.

As things sort themselves out, expect a lot more anger from voters, more rage from populist and mainstream candidates running on affordability but not being able to do much about it, and shifting partisan control of government in response.

As you may recall, the high hosannas with which Republicans greeted Trump’s 2024 win were accompanied by predictions of a new and broader GOP coalition. They aren’t looking so good now, as I noted at New York:

In June, the Pew Research Center’s analysis of validated voters in 2024 gave us the most definitive information on how Donald Trump won the presidency over Kamala Harris. And it left little doubt that the most important gains Trump made between his 2020 defeat and his 2024 win were not among young voters or Black voters or white working-class voters, but among Latino voters:

“In 2020, Joe Biden won Hispanic voters by 25 percentage points, and Hispanic voters supported Hillary Clinton by an even wider margin in 2016. But Trump drew nearly even with Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, losing among them by only 3 points.”

This shift among Latinos voters was decisive. And since Latinos make up the most rapidly growing segment of the electorate, a lot of the “realignment” talk surrounding Trump’s return to power stemmed from a theory that Latinos were undergoing a sort of delayed ideological sorting out that meant they might keep trending Republican and become a solid part of the GOP coalition. If true, that might have been disastrous for Democrats.

But a new study from Pew, long an authority on Latino voters, suggests otherwise. Trump’s appeal to Latinos is clearly sagging and could erode even further if he doesn’t change his policies on immigration and the economy:

“70% of Latinos disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president.

“65% disapprove of the administration’s approach to immigration.

“61% say Trump’s economic policies have made economic conditions worse.”

Even among the Latinos who voted for him in 2024, Trump’s job-approval rating has dropped from 93 percent at the beginning of the year to 81 percent right now. Fully 34 percent of these Trump voters say his second-term policies “have been harmful” to Latinos. And 2024 Harris voters seems to loathe him universally. Overall, Latino voters view what’s happening under Trump 2.0 with great trepidation:

“Hispanics are pessimistic about their standing in America. About two-thirds (68%) say the situation of U.S. Hispanics today is worse than it was a year ago, while 9% say it’s better and 22% say it’s about the same.

“This is the first time that most Hispanics say their situation has worsened in nearly two decades of Pew Research Center Hispanic surveys. When we asked this question in 2019, late during Trump’s first administration, 39% said the situation of U.S. Hispanics had worsened and in 2021, 26% said this.

“When asked about how the Trump administration’s policies impact Hispanics overall, far more say they harm Hispanics than help them (78% vs. 10%).

“That’s a significantly darker outlook than Latinos had in 2019, shortly before they gave Joe Biden 61 percent of their votes.”

Since Latinos trended away from Biden in 2024 in no small part because of his economic policies, this finding could be especially important:

“When asked about the overall U.S. economy, Hispanics’ views are mostly negative and unchanged from 2024. Some 78% say the economy is in only fair or poor shape, while 22% say it’s in excellent or good shape. In 2024, 76% gave the economy a negative rating.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s mass-deportation policies are distinctly unpopular among one of ICE’s chief target populations, as it has become clear that they are not at all focused on “violent criminals”:

“52% of Latino adults say they worry a lot or some that they, a family member or a close friend could be deported. This is up from 42% in March …

“19% say they have recently changed their day-to-day activities because they think they’ll be asked to prove their legal status in the country.

“11% say they now carry a document proving their U.S. citizenship or immigration status more often than they normally would.”

Yes, concerns about Trump’s immigration policies vary among those with different countries of origin, but the overall picture remains negative:

“Across Hispanic origin groups, about two-thirds of Central Americans and Mexicans disapprove of the administration’s approach to immigration. By comparison, 63% of South Americans, 58% of Puerto Ricans and 50% of Cubans say the same.”

Puerto Ricans are by definition American citizens by birth, and Cuban Americans, long a Republican stronghold, are increasingly either American born or were naturalized some time ago. But Republican hopes for big Mexican American voting margins in states like Texas and Arizona may be in vain as long as Stephen Miller is in charge of deliberately cruel immigration policies.

Even if Trump manages to improve his current standing among Latinos, the idea that they are in the process of permanently trending Republican like the white Southerners of an earlier generation seems delusional. And if current trends persist, Latinos could contribute to a significant Democratic midterm victory in 2026.

At Daily Kos, Kos reports that a campaign to make the Democratic primaries decided by ranked-choice voting is gaining traction:

Some nuggets from “The party’s over: young men reject Trump’s tough-guy flim flam and vote Democratic” by thecritical mind at Daily Kos: “In 2024, Trump won because young men cut themselves a slice of the MAGA hype. But like many decisions that seem sensible through a late-night tequila lens, dawn’s light illuminated the folly of an ill-considered choice. In the 2025 elections, these young men returned home. Good…Some left-wing purists might say “Feck ’em.” I say, “Welcome back. Just don’t do it again.”…The evidence for this buyer’s remorse is the demographics of the November 2025 elections. The Daily Mail (I know, “Daily Fail.” But even a blind squirrel can sometimes find a nut) reported:

The following article, “The Left’s 21st Century Project Has Failed” 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:

The 20^th century encompassed the era of social democracy followed by an attempt to resurrect the left through the Third Way after that era’s ignominious end. In the 21^st century, the left embarked on a new project they hoped would remedy 20^th century weaknesses and inaugurate a new era of political and governance success. We are now a quarter of the way through the 21^st century, which has witnessed both a genuine “crisis of capitalism” (the Great Recession of 2007-09) and the systemic breakdown of the COVID era (2020-22). Enough time has gone by to render a judgement: despite ample opportunity to advance their cause, the left’s 21^st century project has failed and failed badly.

Consider:

• It has failed to stop the rise of right populism.
• It has failed to create durable electoral majorities.
• It has failed to achieve broad social hegemony.
• It has failed to retain its working-class base.
• It has failed to promote social order.
• It has failed to practice effective governance.
• It has failed to jump-start rapid economic growth.
• It has failed to generate optimism about the future.

Of course, the project hasn’t been a complete failure. Left parties, including the Democratic Party, have succeeded in building strong bases among the educated and professional classes and, if they have lacked broad social hegemony, they have generally controlled the commanding heights of cultural production. As a result they have mostly set the terms of “respectable” discourse in elite circles.

But that’s pretty weak beer compared to all those massive failures and the heady aspirations of those who presume to be on “the right side of history.” Most on the left would prefer to believe that the left’s 21^st century project is basically sound and just needs a few tweaks. This is whistling past the graveyard. After a quarter century, it is time to face the facts: the project is simply not fit for purpose and needs to be jettisoned.

When we look at what has been distinctive about the left’s 21^stcentury project, it is not hard to see why it has not had its desired result. Here are the key strands of the project:

Mass immigration. In the 20^th century, the left was generally suspicious of uncontrolled immigration. But all over Europe in the 21^st century, immigration surges abetted by the left have contributed to results like these:

At the end of Milan’s M1 metro line you’ll find Sesto San Giovanni, a sizable blue-collar city. It was once called “Italy’s Stalingrad,” not only for its Brutalist concrete block apartment buildings and hulking steelworks, but also because Sesto San Giovanni was consistently one of the most left-wing towns in Italy…

That’s all over. In 2017 Sesto elected a right-wing mayor for the first time in 71 years. And in 2022, Sesto voted for Giorgia Meloni’s right-populist alliance by double-digit margins. Over the same period, Milan, rich as ever, has drifted to the left.

Immigration was the issue at the heart of these elections.

Such trends have been repeated in working-class areas in the rest of Italy and all over Europe. And of course we have many such equivalents in our own country as working-class areas have moved to the right, with the immigration issue playing a starring role. But, as in Europe, the American left has repeatedly refused to see anything wrong with a de facto policy of mass immigration, which is considered an unalloyed good contributing to a more diverse society. Therefore, to oppose mass immigration is to oppose diversity, which can only mean that you are racist and xenophobic. It’s that simple.

This attitude is a huge mistake because in fact there are rational reasons for voters to oppose mass immigration that cannot be reduced to racism or xenophobia. As Josh Barro notes:

Democrats…need to get back in touch with the reasons that both uncontrolled migration and excessive volumes of migration really are problems—not just political problems, but substantive ones. That is, they need to get back in touch with the feeling that illegal and irregular migration reflect a failure of our civic institutions, a misuse of the social safety net, and a breakdown of the rule of law, and that all of that is actually bad…

Illegal immigration, and other forms of irregular migration that happen with the authorization of the executive branch, really do hurt Americans by putting strain on public resources, imposing costs on taxpayers, and undermining social cohesion. And this has been particularly noticeable because of the huge surge in three categories of migration over the last few years: old-fashioned illegal immigration; migrants abusing our asylum system to gain years of legal access to the U.S., even without claims that are likely to be judged valid in the end; and the Biden administration’s large-scale use of the Temporary Protected Status designation to admit about a million mostly low-skill, mostly non-English-speaking migrants into our communities, especially from Haiti and Venezuela.

Here and in Europe, promoting and defending mass immigration has been a core part of the 21^st century left’s project. And it has been a massive failure.

Climate change politics. At the end of the 20^th century, climate change was an issue on the left but generally a peripheral one. A time-traveler from the year 2000 would be shocked to discover how the status of the issue evolved in the intervening decades. Far from peripheral, it became a core part of the left’s 21^st century project in country after country including the United States.

This was despite a thunderous lack of interest from these countries’ working classes. But for these parties’ burgeoning Brahmin left constituencies, it became a non-negotiable commitment—after all, they were saving the world! As the 21^st century unfolded, more and more of left parties’ policy plans centered around combating climate change and promoting a rapid clean energy transition. The claim was that the clean energy transition was not only a virtuous thing to do but would actually drive the economy forward. Hence, the Democrats’ Green New Deal, a version of which was implemented by the Biden administration, and similar schemes in other countries.

The working class has not been impressed. In the United States, these voters view climate change as a third-tier issue, vastly prioritize the cost and reliability of energy over its effect on the climate, and, if action on climate change it to be taken, are primarily concerned with the effect of such actions on consumer costs and economic growth. Making fast progress toward net-zero barely registers. The left’s assurance that the clean energy transition will deliver prosperity has fallen on deaf ears. The working class just doesn’t believe it will. And it hasn’t.

Nor do they believe the end of the world is nigh if the green transition doesn’t proceed really fast. And Bill Gates thinks they’re right!

Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future…Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.

OK then! Sorry about all that “uninhabitable earth” stuff. As the entire world transitions away from the green transition, it’s now clear that making climate change politics core to the left’s 21^st century project has been a huge mistake.

Cultural radicalism. The 20^th century left generally tried to remain on the high ground of anti-discrimination, basic civil rights, and colorblind meritocracy. The left’s 21^st century project went in a much more radical direction.

The high ground was left behind in favor of an ideology that judges actions or arguments not by their content but rather by the identity of those engaging in them. Those identities are defined by an intersectional web of oppressed and oppressors, of the powerful and powerless, of the dominant and marginalized. With this approach, an action is judged not by whether it is justified—or an argument by whether it is true—but rather by whether the people advancing it are in the oppressed/powerless/marginalized group or not. If they are, the actions or arguments should be supported; if not, they should be opposed.

This doesn’t make much logical sense, and it has led left parties, including the Democrats, to take many positions at odds with the concerns of ordinary voters. Voters overwhelmingly believe illegal immigration by anyone is wrong and should be deterred, not indulged, as Democrats have frequently done. They believe crimes should be punished no matter who commits them, public safety is sacrosanct, and police and policing are vital necessities, not tools of oppression. They believe, with Martin Luther King, that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” and therefore oppose discrimination on the basis of race no matter who benefits from that discrimination.

Perhaps most pernicious: the ideal of equal opportunity has been compromised by commitment to a new ideal of “equity” that strives for equal outcomes. Lack of proportional representation by racial groups in desirable positions or achievements is taken as evidence of racism, structural or otherwise. Therefore, the outcomes should be equalized regardless of merit.

But voters’ common sense is that opportunities should be made equal if they are not, and then let people achieve as they will. There is no guarantee, nor should there be, that everyone will wind up in the same place. Indeed, voters deeply believe in the idea of merit and they in their ability to acquire merit and attendant rewards if given the opportunity to do so. To believe otherwise is insulting to them and contravenes their view about the central role of merit in fair decisions. As George Orwell put it: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

But perhaps nothing would surprise our time traveler from 2000 as much as the incorporation of transgender “rights” into the left’s 21^stcentury project. Going far beyond basic civil rights in housing and employment, left parties in Europe and very much here in the United States have uncritically embraced the ideological agenda of trans activists who believe gender identity trumps biological sex, and that therefore, for example, transwomen—trans-identified males—are literally women and must be able to access all women’s spaces and opportunities. The same goes for children whose gender dysphoria should generally be medically treated with puberty blockers, hormones, and, if desired, surgery to align their bodies with their “true” sex (their gender identity).

This remarkably radical approach has until very recently been met with very little resistance on the left, including in the Democratic Party. But as evidence mounts that the medicalization of children is not a benign and life-saving approach, but rather a life-changingtreatment with many negative effects, and voters stubbornly refuse to endorse the idea that biological sex is just a technicality, the left’s identification with gender ideology has become a massive political liability.

Leaving the high ground of anti-discrimination, basic civil rights, and colorblind meritocracy for these radical alternatives has been a defining part of the left’s 21^st century project. And it has been a huge mistake.

Economic growth. The 20^th century left at its best understood the centrality of economic growth. That’s because growth, particularly productivity growth, is what drives rising living standards over time. The left sought to harness the benefits of growth for the working class, not to interfere with the economic engine of progress. They believed in the future and the possibilities for dramatic improvement in human welfare.

The left’s 21^st century project has, at its core, been dedicated to other goals. They now prize goals like fighting climate change, reducing inequality, pursuing procedural justice, and advocating for immigrants and identity groups above promoting growth. This is remarkably short-sighted. Faster growth gives the left far more degrees of freedom to attain its goals. Hard economic times and slow economic growth typically generate pessimism about the future and fear of change, not broad support for more democracy and social reform. In contrast, when times are good—when the economy is expanding and living standards are steadily rising for most of the population—people see better opportunities for themselves and are more inclined toward social generosity, tolerance, and collective advance.

Reflecting this lack of interest in economic growth, the left’s 21^stcentury project has not been techno-optimist, tending to focus instead on mitigating the negative effects of technological change. This is very odd. Almost everything people like about the modern world, including relatively high living standards, is traceable to technological advances and the knowledge embedded in those advances. From smart phones, flat-screen TVs, and the internet, to air and auto travel, to central heating and air conditioning, to the medical devices and drugs that cure disease and extend life, to electric lights and the mundane flush toilet, technology has dramatically transformed people’s lives for the better. It is difficult to argue that the average person today is not far, far better off than his or her counterpart in the past. As the Northwestern University economic historian and newly-minted Nobel Prize winner Joel Mokyr puts it, “The good old days were old but not good.”

Given this, the left’s 21^st century project should have embraced techno-optimism rather than techno-pessimism. Rapid technological advance is key to fast productivity growth and rising living standards. But the left has been lukewarm at best about the possibilities of new and better technologies, leaving techno-optimism to the libertarian-minded denizens of Silicon Valley. As British science journalist Leigh Phillips has observed:

Once upon a time, the Left…promised more innovation, faster progress, greater abundance. One of the reasons…that the historically fringe ideology of libertarianism is today so surprisingly popular in Silicon Valley and with tech-savvy young people more broadly…is that libertarianism is the only extant ideology that so substantially promises a significantly materially better future.

Sound familiar? The left has ignored growth and its drivers to its great detriment. In its place, it has squandered enormous political capital on a 21^st project that has largely failed. Twenty-five years is long enough; it is high time to try something new.

Not that long ago it looked like Republicans might hold onto their trifecta next year by rigging U.S. House maps. Not so much any more, as I explained at New York:

At some point earlier this year, Donald Trump took a look at his shaky political standing and decided two things. First, he really wanted to hold on to the trifecta control of the federal government that made all his 2025 power grabs possible. And second, he recognized that keeping control of the U.S. House during the 2026 midterms would probably require a big thumb on the scales, which he could most easily achieve by quite literally changing the landscape. He went public in July with a national effort to get red states to remap their congressional districts immediately so that the GOP would go into the midterms with a cushion larger than the likely Democratic gains. And it all began with a blunt demand that Texas give the GOP four or five new seats in a special session that was originally supposed to focus on flood recovery.

Texas complied, and other red states followed suit, even as Democrats — most notably in California — retaliated the best they could with their own gerrymanders. But now, the original map-rigging in Texas has just been canceled (subject to U.S. Supreme Court review) thanks to the ham-handed incompetence of the Trump administration, as Democracy Docket explains:

“A federal court Tuesday delivered a devastating blow to Texas Republicans’ attempt at a mid-decade gerrymander. And the court found that a July letter sent by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — intended to justify the GOP’s aggressive redraw — effectively handed voting rights advocates a smoking gun proving it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. …

“Unless the U.S. Supreme Court reverses it — Texas has already said it will appeal — the state must use its 2021 congressional map for the 2026 elections, killing what had been the GOP’s biggest planned redistricting gain of the decade.”

The blow to Trump’s plans came from two federal district-court judges (one of whom is a Trump appointee) who were part of a three-judge panel. Their order made it clear that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, under the direction of Trump appointee and longtime Republican operative Harmeet Dhillon, stupidly insisted on making its instructions to Texas Republicans revolve around the racial makeup of the desired new districts, which is a big constitutional no-no:

“’It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,’ the judges wrote. ‘Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally unsound,” “baseless,” “erroneous,” “ham-fisted,” and “a mess.”‘

“The judges noted that while Texas insisted the 2025 map was drawn for partisan reasons, the DOJ letter made no such claim and framed its demands entirely around race.

“That omission was pivotal.”

The grand irony is that this same DOJ Civil Rights Division subsequently sued California to invalidate that state’s voter-approved gerrymander on grounds that the legislators who drew the map had taken race into account in designing the new districts.

Trump’s whole map-rigging exercise seems to be unraveling all over the country. On the very same day as the Texas ruling, Indiana’s Republican-controlled state Senate killed a special session that Trump, J.D. Vance, U.S. senator Jim Banks, and Governor Mike Braun had all demanded in order to wipe out two Democratic U.S. House districts. Kansas Republicans have similarly balked at Trump’s orders to kill a Democratic district. Voters in Missouri seem poised to cancel that state’s recent gerrymander designed to eliminate a Democratic seat in a ballot initiative. Fearing litigation, Ohio Republicans cut a deal with Democrats to make two Democratic-controlled House districts a bit redder instead of flipping them altogether. And on November 4, voters in Virginia solidified Democratic control of that state’s legislature and elected a new Democratic governor, which greatly facilitated plans to remap that state’s congressional districts to flip as many as three GOP seats.

Republicans could still gain seats in Florida, and a U.S. Supreme Court review of the Voting Rights Act could create all sorts of chaos. But Trump’s gerrymandering crusade will soon hit the wall of 2026 candidate filing deadlines. As Punchbowl News observes, his party could actually lose ground overall: “It’s not impossible to imagine that [Democrats] end up netting more seats than the GOP in these mid-decade redraws, a stunning change of circumstances that didn’t seem possible only a few months ago.”

Trump opened a Pandora’s box in Texas, and he and his party — not to mention his bumbling and heavily politicized legal beagles — are now dealing with the consequences.