Photo: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This is a strange, disorienting era for the Democratic Party. It is completely locked out of power as Donald Trump runs roughshod over the federal government. By any polling metric, it is more unpopular than ever, and many voters are weary of the party leadership, especially Chuck Schumer, the longtime Senate Democratic leader. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, has struggled with various internal crises, and there’s little evidence the party can articulate a governing vision of its own anytime soon.

Yet whenever elections are held in the second Trump term, Democrats win. There’s evidence to suggest, too, they’re performing even better than they were in the early days of 2017, when anti-Trump fervor was, culturally at least, much greater. Last week, Democrat James Walkinshaw handily defeated Republican Stewart Whitson in a race to fill the Virginia House seat of the late Gerry Connolly, who died in May. The district is safely Democratic, and Walkinshaw’s victory, on its own, wasn’t a surprise. Rather, it was the margin: Walkinshaw won by 50 points, while Kamala Harris only carried the district by 34 points last year.

Beyond the success in Virginia, Democrats also overperformed by 16 and 23 points in a pair of Florida special congressional elections in April. They won, that same month, a high-profile statewide race for a state-supreme-court seat in Wisconsin, where Trump was triumphant last year. Local races have been a boon too. Democrats flipped two Iowa state-senate districts that Trump carried by double digits and took a Pennsylvania state-senate seat that had a 15-point Trump margin. All of this points to a strong performance in the midterm next year, when Democrats, who only trail the GOP by six seats, could easily flip the House.

Are Democrats, then, actually in disarray? Are they a party lost or a party about to be found?

The answer is complicated. There’s no doubt the current Democratic coalition is far better built for off-year elections than it was in the Obama years. High-propensity college-educated voters make up a large share of the Democratic base, while working-class voters and those less likely to show up beyond the presidential cycle have drifted to the GOP. In addition to this Democratic advantage, the party out of power usually performs quite well in midterms. Trump’s approval rating has tailed off, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest a backlash is brewing akin to what he faced in 2018.

This does not mean Democrats have fixed their broader messaging problems or will crown a potent nominee for the 2028 presidential race. It also does not mean they’ve figured out how to compete, over the long term, in the rural states where they’ve bled so much support. Once, Democrats could regularly boast senators from Iowa, Montana, West Virginia, Nebraska, and Missouri. The same was true for Ohio and Florida. Fixing the Democratic brand in all of these states will be an enormous task, one that will outlast Trump. For now, anti-Trump energy can carry the day in individual House and state legislative races. The party itself hasn’t struggled for stronger recruits there. It was why, for all the agita of 2024, the downballot was not a disaster for the Democratic Party. Democrats almost took the House and weren’t wiped out in state legislatures. Even with aggressive Republican gerrymanders, Democrats can keep winning.

Two major challenges for the Democrats remain. One is elevating a strong 2028 presidential nominee, and the other is retaking the Senate. The former is easier than the latter. For the first time since 2008, Democrats will wage a truly open primary, absent any two-term former vice-presidents (Joe Biden) or dynastic power brokers (Hillary Clinton). This competition should produce, at the very minimum, a battle-tested nominee who has done the tough work of stumping state to state and facing the scrutiny of voters and the media. Whether their opponent is Donald Trump illegally running for a third term or J.D. Vance succeeding him, the Democrats should feel good about their chances, even with the possibility of another attempted stolen election. (It will be critical for Democrats that they retain governorships in enough pivotal swing states.)

The toughest war will be in the Senate, where Democrats will not only have to retain the seats they hold but figure out how to knock out Republicans in Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and somewhere else more forbidding, like Iowa or Texas. This is not impossible, but it is unlikely. To win again throughout America, Democrats will need to build broad, multiracial coalitions and excite working-class voters. They will have to think very hard on how to do that. Opposing MAGA alone won’t be enough.

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