Jack Crosbie
View all posts by Jack Crosbie September 18, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
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An attendee holds up their sign before hearing Senate candidate James Talarico speak in Houston on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images The Democratic Party is very, very good at losing. They have made a habit of prying defeat from the jaws of victory, squandering generational chances to win the presidency and establish a trifecta in 2016 and 2024, and continually underperforming in chaotic midterm cycles. But in politics, there’s always the next cycle, and November’s midterm elections are the Democrats’ best chance in years to build real power. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular, and Democratic candidates are riding a wave of ire at the sitting president to shocking leads in places they often can’t even contest. Texas is on the board. So too is Maine, and Ohio, and dozens of House districts. A “blue tsunami” sweeping across the electoral map is a real possibility.
But it’s not a given. The party has its own issues: Democratic strategists told me they’re aghast that the party’s bloody fight between progressives and moderates is still being aired out, just a few weeks before the midterms. And the GOP still has money on its side: huge war chests that will certainly flood into the TV markets as mail-in ballots start to go out.
“There’s definitely a sense of nervousness,” says Bhavik Lathia, a Democratic strategist and founder of the consulting firm Fausto. “But there’s also a confidence — man, diesel is above $6 a gallon and nobody likes the Iran War.”
Those factors have certainly given the Democrats a heavy lead in the polls. An Emerson College poll released on Thursday showed the Democrats’ candidate for Senate in Texas, James Talarico, with a narrow lead over former Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In Maine, Troy Jackson appears to have weathered the fallout from Graham Platner’s shocking fall from grace and is holding a narrow lead over Republican incumbent Susan Collins. Democrats also have a lead nationally. A Quinnipiac poll released on September 10 found that 46 percent of voters think the Democratic Party is more in touch with the concerns of Americans, as opposed to only 35 percent who said the same of Republicans. A few days later, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans on virtually every issue, from health care and immigration to the economy and foreign wars. It’s gotten so bad that on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance practically begged voters to give the GOP another chance.
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Those numbers do still have some cautionary notes, however. The Democratic Party may be more popular than the GOP right now, but that doesn’t mean voters like it: on the Quinnipiac poll, only 21 percent of them said that they approve of how the Democrats in Congress are doing their jobs.
What this means is that there is a huge opportunity for any candidate who promises something other than more of the same, says Celinda Lake, a long-time Democratic strategist and campaign veteran.
“I think there’s a very, very good opportunity here,” Lake says. “It’s very good that so many change-oriented candidates won the primaries because that makes [them] more viable in the general.”
Getting there wasn’t easy, however. The Democratic primary season was brutal, as progressives and “change-oriented” candidates clashed with moderates and establishment figures in races around the country.
“There are some people who feel personally aggrieved,” says Matt Bennett, a vice president at the centrist think tank Third Way. “If you feel someone is bigoted against you it is very hard to let go of whatever beef you’ve got. That’s a personal decision. But if it’s political — you gotta get over it and get on board.”
Bennett and Lake both say the blueprint for this kind of big-tent reconciliation is in Michigan, where former candidates Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens immediately got behind progressive Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The aftershocks of these primary battles are still playing out in some circles, as moderates warn that the rising socialist wing of the party could doom its chances in a general election. Lake says that these battles could be a serious liability come November.
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“The Republicans would never have this fight before the election,” Lake says. “They would have it after the election. I can’t imagine why, 45 days out from the election, this is a productive fight to have.”
The risk, Lake says, is letting internal divisions further sink the party’s standing in the eyes of the voters they want to capture. “If we lose this election there will be one reason for it: It’ll be because we didn’t get young people out to vote,” Lake says.
The way to do that, Lathia says, is to focus on what the party knows it can win on: affordability and anti-war politics. Democrats have a real chance here to shake off the days of Clinton-dominated interventionist policy and forge a new image of the party in the minds of the public.
“Americans are sick and tired of endless wars,” Lathia says. “We nominated enough genuinely credible anti-war leaders that there’s a good chance for our party to take that mantle. If we are known as the party of both anti-war politics and affordability, this year is going to be a blue tsunami.”
The biggest advantage the Democrats have is still Trump himself. “Donald Trump is a real stone around a lot of Republicans’ necks, particularly because they’re so intimidated by staying close to him,” Lake says.
“Republicans are desperate to make these elections local,” Bennett says, referring to GOP candidates who are trying to cautiously distance themselves from the president. On Thursday morning, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, whose district voted for Trump by close to 15 points in 2024, released a video breaking with Trump and claiming his immigration crackdown had “gone too far.” Salazar, along with most other Republicans, previously advocated for additional funding for ICE.
“We need to make them eat every single thing that Donald Trump has done,” Bennett says.
Thus far, the GOP’s strategy has been to lean heavily on culture war issues, including trans rights, gender politics, and accusations of being “woke.” It can be a thorny issue to deal with, especially in moderate electorates and toss-up seats. But strategists say that what will beat that is a relentless focus on the issues that actually matter.
“All of this name calling and finger pointing is because they’ve got nothing,” Bennett says.
“Frankly, what I tell my people is fuck these bad faith motherfuckers,” Lathia says. “They are destroying the economy.”
The real risk for Democrats may be financial. Of course, consultants always say that — but everyone I spoke to reiterated the same concerns: Democrats are getting outspent in almost every battleground race, and the last TV ad buys are already starting to go out. In Texas, the GOP is walloping them, putting down $63.9 million to the Democrats’ $11.5 million, according to Axios. Trump himself is planning a $138 million spending spree from his super PAC to buoy flagging Republican candidates. “The TV ad spending is what can always make a tsunami a ripple,” Lathia says. But if the Democrats can hit fundraising goals by the end of the month and get close to some kind of spending parity, it should offset any damage the GOP can do.
