This yr, progressive younger Democrats sketched a path to significant wins in 2026. Is the celebration paying consideration?
Democrats have developed an uncanny talent for seizing defeat from the jaws of victory lately. That didn’t occur, although, within the December 2 particular election to fill a US Home seat in Tennessee. Whereas progressive Democrat Aftyn Behn fell brief in her quest to flip a radically gerrymandered Republican district, she made up a lot floor that sensible Democrats have already begun to redo their calculations—and rethink their methods—relating to the midterm elections.
In the event that they rethink these methods boldly sufficient, they might seize a nationwide victory in 2026 from the jaws of Behn’s slim defeat in 2025. By dramatically increasing the map of Home and Senate races wherein they make investments sources, by recognizing the necessity not simply to run in opposition to Donald Trump however to run for one thing, and by embracing the progressive financial insurance policies which have boosted turnout for candidates as various as Behn and New York Metropolis Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Democrats may safe midterm victories which might be about rather more than partisan point-scoring. They may disempower Trump’s MAGA motion sufficiently to test and steadiness the corruption, financial plundering, cruelty, racism, xenophobia, and authoritarian overreach that has characterised essentially the most harmful administration in trendy historical past.
The stakes are so excessive—and the threats to democracy so actual—that many progressives nonetheless refuse to permit themselves to hope. But the spirit of resistance is alive within the land. And it’s rising in a way that tells us that 2026 can and needs to be seen as a vital juncture for a rustic that may not settle for the backward politics of Trump and his MAGA satraps.
The previous yr, for all its frustrations and disappointments, drew the outlines of opposition. Brave progressive activists and electeds stepped up from the beginning of Trump’s time period with a boldness and readability of imaginative and prescient—as this yr’s Nation Honor Roll (web page 46) illustrates. Because the months went on, the attain of the resistance grew to become ever extra inspiring—and visual. People turned out by the hundreds of thousands for “No Kings” rallies in June and October, filling the streets of nice city facilities in addition to the city squares of rural communities to protest every part from ICE raids to assaults on science to Republican schemes to fund tax cuts for the wealthy by gutting Medicaid and anti-hunger applications. Then, on November 4, the resistance flooded polling locations nationwide. Democrats swept gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey by far wider margins than predicted and secured overwhelming management of the legislative chambers in these states. Additionally they received breakthrough victories for candidates in purple states: flipping Georgia Public Service Fee seats and grabbing sufficient legislative posts to finish Republican supermajority management of the Mississippi state Senate. And in Seattle and New York Metropolis, voters rejected right-wing demagoguery and centrist Democratic warning to decide on dynamic younger democratic socialists as their mayors.
The 2025 fightback in opposition to Trump, within the streets and on the polls, has been unprecedented. However will or not it’s sufficiently highly effective in 2026 to upend the Republican management of Congress that permits Trump, Stephen Miller, and their MAGA wrecking crew? A solution might be discovered within the outcomes of Behn’s race and different 2025 campaigns that rallied a brand new technology of voters with an aggressively progressive affordability agenda.
In a Tennessee district the place the celebration’s nationwide ticket was on the shedding facet of a 60–38 break up in 2024, Behn narrowed the margin to 54–45 in a particular election that noticed surprisingly strong turnout. That outcome wasn’t an outlier: In each particular election for open US Home seats since Trump started his second time period, emboldened Democrats have, on common, outrun the chances for the celebration’s 2024 presidential ticket by roughly the identical 13-point swing that Behn achieved. “Whether or not you go from the suburbs of Washington, DC, all the way in which to the Southwest in Arizona, whether or not you’re taking a look at Texas, whether or not you’re taking a look at Tennessee, whether or not you go all the way down to Florida, we’re seeing the Democratic out-performance of Kamala Harris occurring throughout the political map,” stated Harry Enten, CNN’s veteran quantity cruncher.
Present Challenge
Republicans and their amen nook within the DC pundit class can declare that special-election outcomes inform us nothing about how upcoming midterms will go. However they’re mistaken. “We even have historical past to point out that what occurs in particular elections doesn’t simply keep in particular elections; it spills over to the midterm outcomes,” defined Enten. “When a celebration outperformed in particular elections since 2005, 5 out of 5 occasions they went on to win a majority within the US Home of Representatives. What occurred…in Tennessee is a really, very dangerous omen for Republicans and a really, excellent omen for Democrats.”
How good? A 13-point swing from Trump in 2024 to the 2026 midterms may flip greater than three dozen GOP-held seats to the Democrats—a swing much like the 2018 “blue wave” that disempowered Trump two years into his first time period. Even Republicans acknowledge that the slim GOP benefit within the Home is now exceptionally susceptible. And a few fear that the celebration’s three-seat Senate majority would possibly out of the blue be threatened, with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) describing the Tennessee outcomes as a “harmful” indicator that disdain for Trump has grow to be “a robust motivator” even in purple states.
If Democrats are wanting just for a confidence increase, then they will thank Behn and the celebration’s different 2025 special-election candidates—a few of whom had been elected, others of whom closed the partisan divide by as a lot as 28 factors—for a collective bump to a celebration that at the moment lacks the flexibility to restrain or counter Trump, not least on Capitol Hill, the place the Democrats have struggled with the fundamental calls for of mounting a reputable opposition to a president whose mismanagement of the financial system, private scandals, and chaotic and corrupt method to governing has decimated approval scores for each Trump and the GOP.
People are prepared to offer Democratic candidates sufficient assist to get the celebration again into the battle politically. However the Democrats—whose personal approval scores are nothing to get enthusiastic about—shouldn’t be happy with merely providing a substitute for Trump. It’s true that the president is unpopular and that his coverage stances—even on points like tariffs and immigration—have been massively discredited within the eyes of the voters. However Trump hates to lose.
The president, who nonetheless refuses to simply accept the outcomes of the 2020 election, has devoted his vitality in latest months to rewriting the principles earlier than the 2026 elections. Along with schemes that gerrymander the Home district strains of purple states like Texas and Missouri, he’s calling for federal and state stress to upend constructions that make it simpler to vote, declaring: “No mail-in or ‘Early’ Voting, Sure to Voter ID!” And he is not going to cease there. Rely on the president to enter the brand new yr with contemporary “flood the zone” schemes to take again momentum from the Democrats. Count on him to maintain concentrating on “blue cities” with violent immigration raids and federal occupation methods—and to ramp up assaults on range, fairness, and inclusion and the trans group. Who is aware of how far he’ll take his lawless threats in opposition to Venezuela, his tariff adventurism, or his nuclear brinkmanship?
Finally, Trump’s desperation will lead him to attempt to compete with Democrats on essentially the most compelling of home points: the escalating affordability disaster. Democrats resembling Mamdani, who promised to rein in the price of residing, received massive in 2025. Trump will attempt to muddy the waters in 2026 with convoluted healthcare-pricing interventions, cynical pledges of focused tax cuts, and dangerously ill-conceived proposals to decontrol AI. He’ll have a tough time getting proposals via a US Home wherein Republican Speaker Mike Johnson seems to have misplaced management of his caucus. However wager on the billionaire class, company pursuits—particularly these for AI and crypto—and AIPAC to spend report quantities of cash to attempt to save the GOP.
In opposition to Trump’s willingness to abuse his authority obscenely and the willingness of his allies to spend simply as obscenely, Democrats can’t afford to run cautiously. They should recruit and assist dynamic younger and progressive candidates in purple and purple states. They usually can’t concern major fights—so long as these fights nominate contenders who’re ready to go massive in November.
Widespread
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What does going massive seem like? Democrats should provide voters an affordability agenda that:
• expands entry to healthcare and provides a path to the Medicare for All reforms that polls present most People favor;
• replaces the minimal wage with a residing wage;
• places ahead complete methods for reasonably priced childcare that comply with the lead of New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham;
• creates a Marshall Plan for the development of reasonably priced housing nationwide; and
• provides an AI regulatory agenda that addresses the actual fears that People have for his or her jobs and the social prices of a know-how that prioritizes tech-bro earnings over humanity.
Democrats also needs to have the braveness to acknowledge that People are horrified by the genocide in Gaza, the prospect of struggle within the Caribbean, and Trump’s nuclear brinkmanship.
Above all, the celebration should, as California Consultant Ro Khanna argues, “perceive the political second we’re in.” That received’t be straightforward for celebration leaders who’re hooked on warning. However the outcomes from 2025 inform us {that a} Democratic Occasion that’s ready to battle all over the place—and never simply in opposition to Trump, however for an impressed imaginative and prescient of an reasonably priced and humane America—can win a mandate in 2026. If it does so, it can assist pull our nation again from the brink.
Over the previous yr you’ve learn Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky tackle the Trump household’s corruption, set the report straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Wholesome Once more motion, survey the fallout and human value of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Courtroom’s harmful antidemocratic rulings, and amplify profitable techniques of resistance on the streets and in Congress.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and writer, The Nation
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