The Democratic victory in the midterms was extraordinary. They won a slew of mayoral races. They captured the House. They flipped Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine. The political landscape changed overnight. But my concern is that Democrats are so blinded by their hatred of Trump, and so high on their own supply, that they will assume everyone who voted against him hates him as much as they do, and for the same reasons. If they do, they’ll end up believing their own press, making sloppy and arrogant mistakes, and planting the seeds of their own defeat.
First of all, this was not a win for Democrats so much as a repudiation of the Trump administration. Early CBS polling found Trump at 38% approval, and roughly 60% of voters said he influenced their House vote. Meanwhile, about 20% of Democratic House voters reported an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party. That’s a strange way to win an election. A good chunk of your own voters don’t much like you, but held their noses and voted for you anyway. This happens all the time. Millions of Americans backed Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, then Donald Trump in 2016, and it would be absurd to assume they all abandoned every conviction they held under Obama. The same pattern showed up in 2024. KFF’s analysis of AP VoteCast found that roughly three in 10 voters in Missouri, Arizona, and Nevada who supported abortion protections also voted for Trump. That same year, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin voted for Trump while electing Democratic senators. Imagine a voter who supports abortion rights and wants stricter immigration enforcement. In 2024, immigration mattered more to her, so she voted for Trump and protected abortion rights on the same ballot. Two years later, she’s worried about what the Iran war is doing to gas prices, and she votes for a Democrat. She changed her vote, but without changing her mind about a damned thing.