Ever since Donald Trump and Republicans routed Democrats in the 2024 election, the party has been listless, confused, uncoordinated — politically moribund.
When I think about today’s Democrats, I see a person performing an autopsy on themselves, looking for signs of life, like they are in a David Cronenberg body horror film or George Romero’s “Day of the Dead.”
In the Nov. 4 elections, Democrats — for that day, at least — showed signs of political life. They were riding high on a series of wins that included governorships in Virginia and New Jersey; and the mayoral race in New York City; the Prop 50 ballot initiative in California, which will temporarily allow the Democratic-controlled state legislature to redraw congressional districts; and even two seats on Georgia’s utility board that were held by Republicans.
Then came Sunday night, when eight Senate Democrats sacrificed some of that enthusiasm and momentum by making a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown, for which they received nothing tangible in return.
Still, after those election gains, which Trump credited to the GOP being blamed for the shutdown, the question is how he and MAGA Republicans will fight back.
First, there is the good
Voters moved toward Democrats in nearly every state that held elections. “Affordability” proved a winning message amid the dismal numbers of Trump’s economy.
In more good news for the Democrats, data from DownBallot shows Democrats outperforming former Vice President Kamala Harris’ vote percentage in this year’s elections.
Trumpism and MAGA are becoming an increasingly toxic brand. Exit polls show that on issues from the economy and inflation to mass deportations and attacks on democracy, more Americans are turning against Trump’s agenda.
Young people and Hispanics, who made up a core part of Trump’s 2024 multiracial coalition of rage and resentment, also appear to be turning away from the Republican Party. This is a function of Trump’s failed promises to improve the economy and the public brutality of his mass deportation campaign.
As The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson pointed out, data consistently shows that Donald Trump the candidate — the avatar of rage and the unfulfilled dreams of many Americans who are justifiably angry at “the system” — is far more popular than President Trump, whose record in office is vindictive and steeped in meanness.
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York is important. By running a genuinely populist campaign backed by the city’s most diverse coalition in decades, he won with the highest turnout in 56 years.
In all, if these trends continue — and that’s a very big if — Democrats would have a real chance of retaking the House and the Senate in the 2026 midterms, enabling them to act as a check on Trump’s expanding authoritarian regime.
But Democrats need to get some perspective
While the Republican Party was soundly beaten in the off-year elections, the Democratic Party’s leadership remains deeply unpopular among their own voters — especially after the group of eight moderate senators, none of whom are up for reelection in 2026, caved to GOP demands in a deal that appears to have been tacitly approved by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The party is also historically unpopular, polling at the lowest approval rate in some 30 years — and lower even than Trump. In some polls, Democrats are less trusted across a range of issues, including the economy and crime, than Republicans.
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Data journalist G. Elliott Morris offered an important qualifier about the Democrats’ victories last Tuesday: “More said they were voting against him than voting for either party’s nominees for governor, according to the [exit polls].”
The election was conclusively a referendum on the president’s extreme policies. But Trump himself was not on the ballot, and he remains a unique figure in American politics with a great amount of control over his many tens of millions of followers. The Democratic Party’s defeat of the Republicans last Tuesday is part of the historic trend where the incumbent party usually loses off-year elections.
Then there is a looming question: Will the party leaders and its consultant class learn the right lessons from last Tuesday’s victories — or the wrong ones?
With Sunday’s shutdown surrender, Senate Democrats are already showing signs of their terminally bad habits. Writing at Off Message, former New Republic editor Brian Beutler characterized the eight Democrats as “insane” for their betrayal. “If they want to drain all the momentum and goodwill they’ve gained coming out of Tuesday night,” he wrote, “I can think of no better way than caving in a fight they’re winning.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom also expressed his disgust at news of the agreement. “Pathetic,” he wrote on X. “This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” After the Senate voted to approve the agreement by a 60-40 margin — with only the eight Democrats breaking ranks, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., joining Democrats in opposition — Newsom posted simply, “America deserves better.”
The empire always strikes back
Some Democrats, and liberal and centrist pundits, are already telling themselves that Trump is a lame duck.
This is a very premature conclusion.
More importantly, it is based on the obsolete assumption that America is a healthy democracy instead of one that is rapidly collapsing into a state of autocracy.
Trump and MAGA Republicans are largely unresponsive to public opinion. They are anti-majoritarian, embracing policies that most Americans reject. If anything, after last week’s defeats at the polls, they are likely to escalate their attacks on American democracy…
Trump and MAGA Republicans are largely unresponsive to public opinion. They are anti-majoritarian, embracing policies — such as tariffs and allowing health care premiums to skyrocket — that most Americans reject. If anything, after last week’s defeats at the polls, they are likely to escalate their attacks on American democracy because they have reasonably concluded that, with the 2026 midterms approaching, the window of maximum opportunity and leverage may be closing.
To that end, Trump is amplifying his threats to use the Insurrection Act to invoke de facto martial law and order the military to invade Democratic-led cities. In such a scenario, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that elections could be suspended.
Trump has issued executive orders and National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 that directs federal agencies to monitor individuals and groups accused of advancing “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the U.S. government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility toward traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
This is nothing short of an attempt to criminalize free speech and opposition.
The administration dispatched agents from the Department of Justice to monitor elections in California and New Jersey for supposed fraud and irregularities. These tactics could be applied to other blue parts of the country, and specifically, to key battleground states.
Trump is preparing an executive order to restrict mail-in voting and require voters IDs as part of a larger plan to further limit the franchise and ensure that Democratic voters are not able to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed rights. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a Mississippi law that allowed counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day, which has the potential to overturn similar measures in dozens of other states ahead of the midterms.
In comments on the Democracy Watch podcast, leading voting rights attorney Marc Elias discussed the expected executive order and Trump’s other machinations. “The morning after the election,” he said, “you have Donald Trump talking about the filibuster, and what does he say? They need to get rid of the filibuster in his view so they can enact voter ID and other anti-voting measures.”
Elias warned of dark times ahead. “[T]his is a White House that understands that it lost big, that the American people are not with them,” he said. “And so it’s going to have to double down and triple down on voter suppression and election subversion if it’s to have a chance in 2026.”
Increasingly, it appears that the administration’s ultimate goal is, just like in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Viktor Orban’s Hungary, to de facto outlaw the Democratic Party and any other opposition movement. Under that scenario, the United States would be ruled by a system of competitive authoritarianism. Elections would take place, but the outcome would be rigged in favor of Trumpists.
That could even be the “best” outcome. Since his return to office in January, Trump’s plans have become so extreme that the veneer of a fake democracy could even be replaced with a full-on authoritarian regime.
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In an act of retaliation, Trump is threatening to deny billions of dollars in federal funding to New York, the country’s largest city, because its residents dared to exercise their constitutional rights by electing Mamdani, a democratic socialist.
I have been accused of being a doomsayer, but this is not true. I am a realist who has no use for hope-peddlers and happy-pill sellers in this time of existential crisis.
Yet even I, after watching Democrats trounce Republicans in the recent elections, see a glimmer of hope for the American people and our democracy.
“It is premature to declare the 2025 elections and the politics of government shutdown a turning point,” Robert Kuttner wrote at The American Prospect. “To paraphrase Churchill, after British forces won a desperately needed victory at El Alamein in 1942, this is not the end of Trump. It is not even the beginning of the end of Trump. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
World War II raged on for three more years after Britain was victorious at El Alamein. The road ahead will be long and brutal for the American people. These are still the good times compared to what may come.
But on Nov. 4, pro-democracy Americans saw hope turn into tangible victory. Trump and MAGA are not forever. The elections proved that American democracy can still fight back. The question is whether it can survive its next battle.
