Democrats Reclaimed Power. Now They Have to Prove It

The map no one expected

The bright blue map that emerged on election night in the US was unthinkable two years ago. When Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, many Democratic voters curled up in bed and doomscrolled, fatigued and fearful about the direction of the country. Any desire to fight back was dampened by the enormity of the loss. The mood gradually shifted over the following two years, culminating in a generational shift: Democrats flipped five governors’ seats and took control of the House and Senate by wide margins.

Voters were angry about the rising cost of living, the war in Iran, masked immigration agents in their neighborhoods and datacenters rising in their backyards. Anger alone didn’t boost turnout. That required years of building coalitions, developing local campaigns and expanding movement infrastructure that turned frustration into organized action — and eventually votes. The map was not a surprise to the people who had been knocking on doors all year. It was the payoff.

In his first sit-down interview since the midterms, President Donald Trump blamed Republicans’ poor showing on “bad messaging” — essentially not properly conveying to American voters all of the accomplishments of his second term. He said the stock market “lost almost 2,000 points because of the Democrats’” sweeping victories. The Dow Jones was a little higher at the close on Nov. 9 than it was on Election Day. The S&P 500 is down slightly, less than 0.3%. He falsely claimed he had brought gas below $2 per gallon in Iowa before the war with Iran, and said “we have historically good numbers” on the economy while inflation has gone up under Trump.

The political fallout was immediate. A few days after the election, a Maryland senator announced he would challenge Chuck Schumer for Senate majority leader when Democrats regain the majority in January. “In this election, the American people called for change. They called for a change from Donald Trump’s disastrous policies — but even bigger than that, a change from the status quo that isn’t working for working people,” Chris Van Hollen said. “It’s now on us to meet this moment, and to do that we need new leadership.” Schumer responded less than a minute later: he welcomed discussion, said he was proud of what they’ve accomplished together — 55 seats and counting is an amazing result — and that he has the votes to continue serving as Democratic leader.

The battle pits a progressive Democrat against a centrist. The closed-door, secret-ballot election will be held in early December. It will be the first contested election for Democratic leader in decades. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed endorsed Van Hollen. The question is not just who leads, but what the party intends to do with the power it just won.

Anger organized

The national No Kings protests have been some of the most visible actions in the second Trump administration. The coalition, made up of dozens of groups and partner organizations, emerged in the middle of 2025 as intentionally leaderless and decentralized, its marches designed to be a container for the variety of grievances that millions of people wanted to express, from anger over gas prices and federal workforce cuts to frustration over war.

“One thing is clear: the work of protecting our democracy doesn’t begin or end with this election,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, which helps power No Kings. The marches provided an entry point for people who were new to activism, and now, after the midterms, the coalition is regrouping.

Drawing attention to injustice or sounding the alarm isn’t enough. “People are more engaged than ever before,” said Jamila Raqib, executive director of the non-profit Albert Einstein Institution, which studies nonviolent action. “They’re taking action in response to the crises we face, but they’re less often achieving concrete objectives.” Movements need to adapt tactics to keep up with authoritarian governments, she said. Many governments have learned that brutal crackdowns on nonviolent action tend to backfire, so they rely on “smart repression” — selective arrests, legal harassment, surveillance, disinformation, funding restrictions and job losses — to wait movements out.

Several of those ideas showed up in Minnesota in January. A general strike, sit-ins at corporate headquarters and pressure on employers to speak out weakened Trump’s Operation Metro Surge in ways a single march could not. After federal agents killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, tens of thousands of people marched in subzero cold under the banner “No Work, No School, No Shopping”. Trump ended the operation the following month.

The response rested on years of labor, faith and community organizing, said Doran Schrantz, a longtime Minnesota organizer who founded the Organizing Lab. Thousands had trained as legal observers starting in January 2025 through immigrant rights groups like Unidos and the Immigrant Defense Network. Groups like Defend the 612 built an efficient rapid-response system to observe and document ICE agents, and the Ice Out Now coalition linked all groups on the ground.

To resist, “not everyone has to march in the streets”, Raqib said. Setting clear demands matters. The fight over datacenters has united Americans across party lines, showing what is possible when resistance is local and personal and outlines clear demands. “There is an authentic local response to these datacenters,” said Schrantz. It was something that people felt they had agency over.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an African American studies professor at Princeton University and author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, put it simply: “Elections themselves don’t achieve what it is that people want. They set the table for the possibility of change.”

The ads that defined the cycle

The 2026 midterms were an AI election. The Wesleyan Media Project said $137 million was spent on 220 ads featuring AI-generated or enhanced content through Oct. 11. That’s up from virtually nothing in 2024, and still likely an undercount. Republicans, more so than Democrats, have used the technology when producing ads. Most of the ads don’t even mention being made with AI, leaving viewers to figure it out.

The ads were loud, cheap and often bizarre. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, candidate for Tennessee governor, starred in a spot about cracking down on China that involved going to a Chinese restaurant and smashing all of its fortune cookies. “Here in Tennessee, we’re going to stop communist China and protect Tennessee land,” she says, appearing satisfied with her display of destruction.

Wisconsin state Rep. Steve Doyle’s recipe for an effective ad was a dash of humor and a sprinkle of manipulation. The Democratic assemblyman running for reelection held a baby of his own — an adorable alpaca named Pasta — while warning voters about politicians who prey on emotions. “Have you noticed how politicians prey on emotions to influence voters?” he asks, adding that they’ll use “pictures of babies” or “scare tactics” just to get votes. Don’t fall for it, he says, all while holding Pasta. Because of that distraction, viewers missed everything Doyle later said about wanting to lower taxes, make healthcare affordable and reign in big tech. Pasta has an alpaca sister named Noodle.

Democrat Charly Ray, running for state Senate in Wisconsin, put out an ad embracing voter reaction to his large, unruly brows, while taking the opportunity to use them as policy metaphors. “Like data centers, they’ve had very little oversight,” Ray says of his brows in an impressive deadpan. “Like our schools, maintenance has been underfunded.” He boasts that his eyebrows are “all-natural,” unlike those of “some politicians,” as the ad flashes a photo of Republican U.S. House candidate Michael Alfonso, whose well-coiffed brows have drawn comparisons to Bert the Muppet.

The Worst Romance Plotline went to Steve Hilton, the Republican running for governor in California. The ad shows two young women sitting on a bed in a darkened room, music playing, a large Pride flag on the wall behind them. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” one says. “Don’t be nervous,” the other says, stroking her hair. “It’s not that bad.” Eventually, the camera pans down and we see what they’re talking about: filling out a ballot for a Republican, namely Hilton.

The themes that cut through the noise were economic. With annualized inflation at 3.7% and gasoline prices at $4.27 per gallon the week of Oct. 26 — higher than the metrics when President Donald Trump’s second term began — inflation and gasoline prices are again a centerpiece of the midterm elections, with the party roles reversed. Most of the Democratic ads blame the war in Iran and Republicans’ support for it.

Transgender issues were another flashpoint. Since Labor Day, $162 million has been spent on more than 260 ads containing the words “sex change,” according to AdImpact’s ad-tracking database, with $91.5 million spent in federal Senate races alone. Republicans have distorted the facts in claiming that their Democratic opponents support “sex changes” for children or taxpayer funding of such surgeries.

More than 350 different TV ads that mention Jeffrey Epstein have been aired since Labor Day, from both sides of the political aisle. Numerous ads from Democratic-aligned groups claimed Republican candidates voted against releasing the Epstein files, while candidates from both parties accused each other of taking donations from associates of the late convicted sex offender.

Republican candidates and the PACs supporting them touted tax cuts for tips, overtime and older Americans that were part of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Many other ads attacked Democrats who voted against or opposed the OBBBA, claiming they were against those popular tax cuts. It’s true that not a single Democrat in either the House or Senate voted in favor of the OBBBA, which was signed into law by Trump on July 4, 2025. The law did cut — though didn’t completely eliminate — taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security through 2028.

A party with a new majority

The new majority is already being tested. Democrat Cindy Holscher was elected Kansas governor to replace term-limited Democrat Laura Kelly. Colom made history with a Democratic Senate victory in Mississippi.

The Senate caucus is choosing its leader in the shadow of that victory. Van Hollen’s challenge comes after he said he was considering a bid and after Schumer said he had the necessary support to win. Many senators will not say publicly how they will vote. They have privately deliberated about what message to take from the election, and Schumer recruited many of the party’s winning candidates and raised money for them. But some of the winning candidates, most notably Michigan’s senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, did not initially have Schumer’s support.

Schumer has been talking to Democratic senators since the election about forming an agenda for 2027. “I’m going to win it,” Schumer told the Associated Press in an interview last week.

The tension is familiar: a party that just won power because voters wanted change, now deciding whether to deliver it by continuing the status quo or breaking with it.

The Wednesday agenda

After Tuesday’s election, “everyone must have a Wednesday agenda,” experts say. The goal was never about any one party or politician. To continue to build power, movements must diversify their tactics, make clear demands, put pressure on the newly elected and keep building community-based networks.

Organizers who turned anger into turnout are now asking the newly elected to do more than hold a seat. Mutual-aid networks, community defense groups and independent media can sustain a movement through a long fight. Digital security is treated as a basic organizing skill, planning for the arrest of key leaders and training successors before a crackdown comes.

The blue map is real. The work of protecting democracy, building power and making demands of the newly elected begins the day after the map is drawn.