Could Democrats Win the Midterm Elections and Still Blow It?

In the wake of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the Democrats picked up a net of 49 House seats and four Senate seats in 1974. Wouldn’t it be terrific if Democrats could do at least as well in November, given the unbearable chaos fomented by arguably the worst president in American history?

Let’s review the many Trump-gates:

• Attacking the rule of law, including multiple attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and pardoning the insurrectionists (while trying to gift them reparations as well!)
• Using Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented workers—and sometimes documented immigrants or US citizens—and, in some cases, shooting and maiming people rather than focusing on the violent criminals President Donald Trump promised to deport.
• Launching another Middle East war, this time with Iran, at enormous cost to American taxpayers and with no clear end in sight.
• Allowing Israel to continue harming Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
• Promoting policies and a war that have pushed gasoline prices up by 40% while diesel prices have reached record levels.
• Raising prices on consumer goods by imposing tariffs willy-nilly, on top of the oil shock caused by the Iran War.
• Imposing tariffs that create difficulties for small businesses.
• Launching a trade war and threatening Canada, our neighbor, our largest trading partner, and formerly a valued ally.
• Threatening to annex Greenland.
• Failing to end the Ukraine War, which Trump said he would end within 24 hours of taking office.
• Cutting back healthcare protections and access while putting Medicaid and other health programs at risk.
• Dismantling climate protections, pushing the country back toward fossil-fuel dependence, and acting against wind and solar development.
• Allowing and abetting all manner of corruption, using government contracts and money to enrich his family and allies.
• Launching vanity projects without congressional or environmental review, paid for with taxpayer money.
• Giving tax breaks to the rich while undermining the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to collect the taxes they owe.
• Kissing up to dictators, especially Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Streaming an execution live to shift attention away from all of the above.

And there is more. Much more. All of which makes the disgraced Nixon, in comparison, look like a Boy Scout.

A Democratic Tsunami?

A sweeping Democratic victory could limit Trump’s ability to carry out his agenda and help protect the democratic process.

But even if Democrats reclaim Congress by a wide margin, they will still face a fundamental problem: The party has lost the trust of too many working people. An electoral victory and the restoration of a durable working-class political base are two different, yet entangled issues.

Why the working-class departure?

The question, then, is not whether Democrats should win in November. They should. The question is how to build a political organization of, by, and for working people, especially in red areas where Democrats fail to compete.

Too many Democratic leaders, I believe, seem to resent the American working class. Not all Democratic officials, of course. But as more of the party’s fundraising and support comes from the well-to-do, many working people now believe that the party no longer represents them.

This disconnect provides Democratic functionaries with a convenient explanation for why they lost twice to Trump. The problem, in this view, is that working people—especially white working people—are more than a little sexist, racist, anti-gay, and anti-immigrant. They supposedly gravitate toward Trump precisely because of his racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.

Isn’t this why Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, two able women, lost to him? Isn’t this why Trump can violate presidential norms and still command nearly total Republican loyalty?

Racism and other forms of prejudice are real, and found within all demographic groups. But they cannot, by themselves, explain the working-class vote. My research shows that working people shifted away from the Democrats primarily due to job insecurity, not prejudice.

This anti-worker attitude I’m describing helps explain why the Democratic establishment failed to renounce Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who, in 2016, gleefully boasted:

For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.

Schumer wasn’t criticized by party leaders for writing off the working class; he was rewarded with the Senate Democratic leadership.

Still, many of my colleagues see no choice but to work tirelessly on how best “to bring back the working class.”

My response is always, “To what?”

To a party that has written them off? To a party that caters to corporate and financial elites? To a party that failed to pass even moderate labor-law reform when it controlled Congress and the White House under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden?

“To what?” also requires a closer examination of the party’s ecosystem that is populated by functionaries who have grown wealthy by running it. Paul Rivera, the author of the 2024 Democratic Party autopsy report, released its most critical chapter that the party’s leadership failed to publish. In it he wrote:

…there are too many people who have become generationally wealthy off politics and drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem… [T]he senior staff, the media strategists, the pollsters, the digital consultants are financially secure.

A party whose decision-makers are generationally wealthy can become dangerously detached from people whose economic security has disappeared.

Let’s pause for a minute and think about what generationally wealthy actually means. It’s not just being well off so that you and your family can lead decent lives. It’s being so well off that your children, and their children, also will never face the economic hardships that plague the rest of America.

No wonder so many working people feel betrayed.

It’s going to take a lot of turnover and internal reform to remove the anti-worker stigma from the Democratic Party. Perhaps more Democratic senators will join Michael Bennet of Colorado to finally admit that the party is seriously flawed.

As Bennet put it:

It is so hard to lose two general elections to Donald Trump, in political terms, to imagine a worse failure than losing two national elections to Donald Trump. And yet the establishment Democratic Party did, and I think of it as a failed enterprise.

A failed enterprise! He said that, not me.

But why did it fail? Bennet doesn’t mince words:

There’s something fundamentally wrong with the nature of our capitalist system that is delivering these outsize gains for the people at the very top at the expense of everybody else in the economy.

There it is.

For decades, the Democratic establishment did too little to stop runaway inequality, the destruction of jobs, and the overall economic insecurity that working people face. In important respects, the party’s embrace of neoliberalism and its dependence on wealthy donors made matters worse.

Now the party faces a credibility problem. It is one thing to promise an anti-corporate, pro-working-class agenda. It is another to persuade voters that a party deeply enmeshed with corporate and financial interests will actually carry it out.

It will take more than new slogans, better focus groups, or even new working-class candidates. It will require replacing the entire ecosystem of generationally wealthy operatives who shape the party’s priorities to reflect their own interests rather than the interests of working people.

A Democratic Resurrection?

Hopefully, a massive Democratic victory in November will stop Trump and his minions from robbing us blind. But even a historic victory would leave the party’s underlying problem unresolved.

You can’t “bring back the working class” to a party that working people believe has abandoned them. And you cannot rebuild their trust simply by telling them that the other party is worse.

The question, then, is not whether Democrats should win in November. They should. The question is how to build a political organization of, by, and for working people, especially in red areas where Democrats fail to compete.

Such an organization would need to organize people around their shared economic interests, develop a durable local base, recruit candidates from working-class communities, run independent candidates where they have a plausible path to winning, and promote ballot initiatives that improve living and working conditions. It would need to demonstrate, through its actions, that working people—not wealthy donors and political insiders—set its priorities.

Sticking with a “failed enterprise,” no matter what, will only create more space for the next version of MAGA to fester. Failing and fearing to discuss alternatives doesn’t make the problem go away.

But in the midst of this political morass, there is hope. Working people want something new.

It’s time we caught up with them.