Opinion

The Democrats won big Tuesday. Here are nine thoughts.

1. It’s a good thing when the Democrats win. There are some who would have you believe the opposite is true. As the New York Times Pitchbot said: “Zohran Mamdani won. So why does it feel like he lost.” He didn’t lose. Neither did statewide Democratic candidates in Virginia, Georgia and New Jersey. Neither did Democrats in towns and cities across America. It was a blue wave that suggests more blue waves to come. Democrats won by unexpected margins and in unexpected places (eg, Bristol, Connecticut). That’s good. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

2. Those who would have us doubt the goodness of electoral victory are typically invested in the idea that there are deep, perhaps irreconcilable, differences between Democratic factions. Though the Republicans got shellacked, they are not being asked to rethink their future. Axios reported that it’s the Democrats who must settle a “civil war over the best way to move forward after its crushing losses in 2024.” Do they choose to moderate Democrats or “leftwing” Democrats? It sounds reasonable. It might even sound noble. It’s not. It’s phony.

3. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York, and Abigail Spanberger, the governor-elect of Virginia, are very different Democrats who certainly disagree on policy. That is not a weakness. It’s the strength found in a multi-racial ideologically heterodox organization like the Democrats. Each candidate amassed winning coalitions according to the conditions of their constituencies. That’s all they were thinking about. That’s all any of the winners was thinking about. No one was thinking about whether they speak for the entire Democratic Party in its fight against Donald Trump. That Axios is pretending otherwise is why its reporting about “civil war” is actually concern-trolling.

4. I would guess, if left to their own devices, a moderate like Spanberger and a progressive like Mamdani could work things out if given sufficient motivation. I think the problem comes when Democratic leaders stop listening to each other and start privileging the perspectives of people who do not have the interests of their party, or those of the people they represent, foremost in their minds. By that, I mean a Washington press corps that has internalized the idea that the Republicans are the only legitimate leaders as well as the idea that the Democrats, even after they win, must seek the Republicans’ consent before using the power they have legitimately earned.

5. Some centrist Democrats confuse compromise with consent. This prevents them from using the power they have to solve problems that they have told voters they would solve. That, in turn, makes them look weak in comparison to Republicans, who never seek the consent of the Democrats, which in turn, triggers a crisis of faith. Donald Trump has created conditions in which fighters ranging from Mamdani to Spanberger are trusted while middle-of-the-road centrists who can’t decide whether to join the fight open themselves up to contempt from both sides.

6. Some centrists, and perhaps some progressives, believe they will benefit from a backlash. They will interpret last night’s results as what political scientists call “thermostatic politics” (think: pendulum swing). But the intensity of the blue wave suggests something else. Many voters seem to be reacting as if they were scammed. Every single county in Virginia shifted left, even the whitest, western-most ones. In New Jersey, the Democratic candidate wiped out gains Trump made with Black and Hispanic voters. G Elliott Morris said the best explanation is “that voters didn’t know what they were getting with Trump 2.0 last November, but now they do — and they don’t like it." But they didn’t know because our media has been so thoroughly corrupted. It sold them vibes. What they got was fascism.

7. Pollster Tom Bonier put it this way: “None of this is complicated. The GOP ran on affordability in 2024. They gave sanctimonious lectures on cable news on election night about how ‘the silent working class majority’ had spoken. Then they governed as reckless authoritarians, punishing the working class.”
8. But it is complicated. If voters really are punishing the Republicans for breaking their promise, they would have wanted to know that Joe Biden presided over the world’s greatest recovery from the covid. Wages were up, debts were down, employment was rarely higher. They would have wanted to know the cost of food and energy was getting back to normal. (Perhaps they would have wanted to know more about Kamala Harris’ plan to prosecute price-gouging.) They would have wanted to know, but didn’t, because they could not hear over the din of Trump’s lies or the media’s obsession with a recession that never came (not to mention reporters making fetish of Joe Biden’s age). If voters are acting like they were scammed, they should know Trump wasn't alone. The media scammed them, too. And the Democrats should never play nice with scammers.

9. If what we are seeing were normal “thermostatic politics,” we could expect Trump to modulate. He won’t. He’s going to break more laws, steal more power, take more bribes and keep grinding the working class to dust. His party won’t back off, either, not when it can cheat. (“We have a very favorable election map on the Republican side,” Mike Johnson said today, “And it will be more favorable when all the redistricting stuff is done.”) Voters held Trump and the Republicans accountable last night but they are now pretending voters did no such thing. And as they have since Trump came on the scene, reporters are going to play along. That’s why it’s the Democrats, not the Republicans, who must rethink their future. Failure isn’t a problem for the GOP, but victory is for the Democrats.

Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.