When Republicans won in 2024, they talked as if they had reshaped American politics for a generation, the way Franklin Roosevelt did in 1932 or Ronald Reagan in 1980.
On election night, President Donald Trump called his win “a historic realignment, uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.”
Two years later, the promised land has turned out to be a mirage. Trump has lost ground with independents, Latino voters and young men, among other groups who were crucial to his 2024 win.
Republicans mistook voters’ anger for a mandate.
In the final days before the midterms, Republicans found themselves defending Senate seats in states Trump had carried comfortably in 2024, including Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas. Trump’s approval rating is among the lowest in modern polling, while the GOP’s image has taken a hit, with 59% of Americans saying the party is too extreme in a recent Gallup poll.
What went wrong? Trump and his Republican allies mistook voters’ anger with the status quo for a mandate to do whatever they wanted.
They sent immigration agents into courthouses, schools and churches with so few safeguards that they swept up hundreds of U.S. citizens and set a record for deaths in detention. They installed two billionaires to run the Education and Commerce departments and put the world’s richest man in charge of slashing the federal government with little transparency, accountability or regard for constitutional limits. They passed tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy while slashing healthcare subsidies, cutting SNAP benefits and Medicaid coverage, and weakening other programs that working families rely on.
Polls showed broad majorities of Americans disapproved of these policies. But their most damaging mistakes politically may have been imposing broad-based tariffs and launching a war with Iran, both of which raised prices for Americans across the board, making worse the very problem that had gotten them elected in the first place.
This mistake has given Democrats an opening in the midterms. But they need to keep the example of Republicans front of mind.
If Democrats win one or both chambers of Congress, they need to do everything in their power to show that they are cleaning up Republicans’ mess. By design, many of the worst aspects of Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill will not come until next year, once the new Congress is sworn in. These include revoking tax credits for those no longer qualifying for Medicaid and ending student loan deferments based on economic hardship.
They may not win every fight, but they can keep putting simple ideas that would help struggling families before Trump and his Republican allies. The GOP will either fold, giving Democrats a win, or fight, showing again that it still does not care about everyday Americans. That gives Democrats a chance to make a substantive case for their agenda while putting Republicans on the defensive.
At the same time, they can use congressional committees to investigate Trump’s brazen self-enrichment, the government’s lucrative deals with defense and immigration contractors and anything else that will make it plain to Americans how much damage the Republican Party has done over the past two years. That may help stop some of it, but even if it does not, it will help remind voters where each party’s interests lie.
For now, voters trust Democrats more on the economy. But that may prove just as short-lived as their trust in Republicans in 2024. As professor and podcast host Scott Galloway put it recently, “Just because voters hook up with us in the midterms doesn’t mean they want to marry us.”
Democrats need to become marriage material quick, or they are in for a short honeymoon.
Evan Brechtel contributed to this report.
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