Which Party Is in Trouble, Again?

Thoughts after a very blue night

Yesterday was a very good day for Democrats and a very bad day for both MAGA and the oligarchy. If I were a properly house-trained pundit, I would immediately follow that statement by throwing some shade at Democrats. But this was a blowout, pure and simple.

Here are a few takes on what just happened:

The polls beat the pundits

Nobody should have been surprised that Democrats had a very good night. These elections were, as expected, largely a referendum on Donald Trump, and polling says that Trump is very, very unpopular. Even if you dismissed Trump’s dismal approval rating as fake news, there were plenty of other indications that Trump would drag his party down. The second No Kings Day was the largest one-day demonstration since Earth Day in 1970. Democrats have been outperforming by something like 15 points in special elections. And polling averages favored Democrats in key races.

So everything pointed to big Dem gains, although the scale of the victories was a surprise. There had been a steady drumbeat of warnings that Mikie Sherrill, in particular, might be in trouble. Instead she won in a 13-point landslide.

Yet for the past few months the punditocracy has been obsessed with the narrative that Democrats are in big trouble, out of touch with Real Americans ™. I’d like to see some soul-searching among those pushing that narrative — the same kind of soul-searching they’ve been demanding from Democrats. But I won’t be holding my breath.

It’s still (largely) the economy, stupid

The 2024 election was mainly about economics. There was a big runup in prices in 2021-22, as the world economy, recovering from Covid, experienced a lot of supply-chain bottlenecks. This price surge, coming after decades of low inflation, upset voters. Biden administration officials could and did point out that it was a one-time price hike, that inflation — the rate of change of prices — fell rapidly from its 2022 peak, and was back to more or less normal levels by 2024. They could also point out that America’s inflation experience was very similar to the experiences of other nations, e.g. in Europe, indicating that global factors rather than Democratic policies were the main culprit.

But voters were unmoved by these arguments, if they heard about them at all. What they did hear was Donald Trump promising not just to reduce inflation but to bring prices way back down. And many of them believed him.

Of course, Trump didn’t have a plan, or even a concept of a plan, about how to accomplish this. Instead he imposed tariffs and began deporting immigrant workers, both of which raised prices.

So prices haven’t come down; instead, inflation has accelerated. And the job market has gotten worse. Thanks to the shutdown, we’re not getting official employment numbers, but I’ve been looking at private surveys. One number I find especially striking is the Conference Board’s “labor market differential,” the difference between the percentage of Americans who say jobs are “plentiful” and those who say jobs are “hard to get.” This number is way down, which says that ordinary Americans perceive a very tough job market:

Source: Haver Analytics

Pretty clearly, many Americans now believe that they were lied to. My guess (we’ll know more in a few days) is that this is especially true for Hispanic voters, who swung to Trump believing that he would deliver prosperity and are swinging hard back to Democrats now that he hasn’t.

It also surely doesn’t help that Trump and his minions keep insisting that everything is great, that there is no inflation and the economy is booming. This doesn’t persuade anyone not in the cult and just makes them look out of touch. Which they are.

Which party is out of touch, again?

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York, in the face of hysterical opposition from the big money, has grabbed many of the headlines, which I understand — it’s an amazing story. And I wonder what the right-wing tech bros are thinking: If Wall Street couldn’t buy New York, can they really buy America?

But Mamdani’s win doesn’t tell us much about national politics: New York City is just very different from the rest of the country.

I’m seeing some commentators argue that Mamdani will be a problem for Democrats, allowing Republicans to paint them as extremists who are out of touch with America. But Republicans would do that anyway. For what it’s worth, Mamdani may be on the left, but all indications are that he’s a pragmatist who will get along fine with the rest of his party.

Meanwhile, you know which party is out of touch and riddled with extremists? The G.O.P.

If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning, it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t matter much to ordinary Americans. Republicans may be obsessed with trans athletes, but most people aren’t. Polls and yesterday’s elections suggest that rants about the menace of illegal aliens have a lot less traction with the public than G.O.P. apparatchiks imagine — and that Americans don’t like the spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street.

This disconnect between party priorities and what matters to ordinary people seems to me like a much bigger deal than Democratic “wokeness,” which was always exaggerated anyway.

And if we’re talking about extremists within the party, well, Democrats have people like Mamdani, a mild-mannered guy who says he’s a socialist but really isn’t. The Republican Party, by contrast, has been largely taken over by outright fascists, and is facing a major outbreak of old-fashioned antisemitism.

Now what?

Last night’s blue wave won’t stop MAGA’s attempt to consolidate authoritarian rule in America. If anything, they’ll redouble efforts to rig the 2026 midterms, although California, by approving a major redistricting, has largely neutralized their gerrymandering plot.

A couple of months ago I noted that previous examples of autocrats who consolidated power after winning an election, from Hitler to Viktor Orban, did so while they were still popular. I asked whether a despised autocrat could do the same. After yesterday, it’s clear that Trump really is despised. Can he still end our democracy?

I guess we’ll find out.

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