Democrats who won in the midterms, including those in places previously considered off the blue map and those in Democratic strongholds, crafted their campaigns around economic populism and accountability.
Lawmakers in the anti-establishment incoming congressional class have more in common with each other than divisions, even across ideological factions. Voters sent a resounding message to work on affordability and rein in the Trump administration, and Democrats across the party have many more shared goals than Republicans, who face a more existential level of discord.
The challenge comes when this class of newcomers meets a Washington machine that they view as stuck to the status quo, and as they confront institutional barriers – and a president with a veto pen at the ready – that could prevent them from installing the tangible changes voters demanded.
But, political operatives and officials said, the shared agenda is clear, and Democrats need to stay focused on it, lest they lose the seats they just won in parts of the country where they previously weren’t getting traction.
“They got to just keep being who they are,” said Joe Maxwell, president of Farm Action Fund, a non-profit focused on building back rural communities. “There’s a whole different rhythm and politics and narrative to be able to be effective in Washington DC.”
Before the new lawmakers take their oath of office, they will have to decide whether to keep their party’s leaders. In the US Senate, Chris Van Hollen announced a challenge to longtime leader Chuck Schumer. On the House side, Hakeem Jeffries so far appears to have the speaker job.
In a speech at the Democrats’ meetup in Denver on Friday, Van Hollen said his bid was a response to voters’ calls for a political system that serves them.
“We should not be preserving our institutions if they are not delivering for the American people,” he continued. “And we should be making delivering for the American people the single mission of our government, even when that means shaking things up.”
Disagreements over a leader don’t mean there are deep disagreements on the path forward, though, Democrats insist.
“There’s a very small set of consultants and self-interested commentators and donor-aligned op-ed writers who are crashing out on the internet right now,” said Maurice Mitchell, the leader of the Working Families party. “I think it would be a distraction to focus on a factional fight that they are so thirsty for, when Tuesday suggested that you should be past the narrow politics of factionalism inside the Democratic party.”
This month’s wins present a “generational opportunity” to deliver results for the American people, Mitchell said, and trying to fit that into a “narrow framework” that pits moderates versus progressives misses the point.
“We just want to get things done, and we think that there’s a big terrain to get things done,” he said.
The Democratic party once again becomes a big tent, full of people from different parts of the country with varying life experiences. Because so many different Democrats got elected, there is an “interesting mix of basically a slice of America governing”, said Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic party.
“For me, that means we’re going to have a much more durable party,” she said. “It’s not going to be a one-note party.”
As former CBS News journalist John Dickerson put it: “A party big enough to win everywhere has to hold people who disagree. The tension comes with winning. When coverage treats that tension as a crack-up or a flaw, it mistakes how the game works for a threat to the game. Tackling isn’t an obstacle to football. Tackling is football.”
Newly elected Democratic lawmakers have expressed a willingness to talk to anyone. They’ve highlighted speaking with voters who disagreed with them on the campaign trail and ran against how both parties do politics. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive who won the US Senate race in Michigan, has said Trump can call Medicare for All “Trumpcare for All” if he wants, as long as it makes it into law.
Some new members will join multiple Democratic caucuses that may seem to have competing ideologies. Indeed, the various caucuses announced big increases in membership after the election, from the progressive to the centrist New Democrats. Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper who flipped a congressional district in Montana, joined both the Progressive and Blue Dog caucuses, saying he would be one of few Democrats sitting in both. Being in both rooms would give him “a chance to fight for populist economic policies that are actually going to help working people and finally put us all back at the front of the line”, he said.
“What you realize once you get elected is that you now are the establishment,” Kleeb said. “So I think you’ll see a reopening of what the establishment means, and I do think it’s really good that the DC traditional establishment does get shook up.”
The shared agenda
Affordability, affordability, affordability: the campaign’s theme will become the clear frontrunner on a shared Democratic agenda.
That includes working to end the war in Iran to lower gas prices, rolling back tariffs, restoring subsidies on the health insurance exchanges that have pummeled people with massive cost increases, and reversing upcoming cuts to social services.
“I haven’t heard any Democrat with a different position on those,” said Glenn Ivey, a Democratic representative from Maryland. “Everybody wants to end the war. Everybody wants to roll back the tariffs. Everybody wants gas and grocery prices to go down. Everybody wants to help expand healthcare tax credits and restore Medicaid and the like.”
Other bills are more niche, but could be simple ways to respond to affordability. Maxwell, of the Farm Action Fund, said there’s already a bipartisan bill filed to address consolidation in the meatpacking industry, which would help lower meat prices.
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The second-most-frequent refrain from voters was to bring accountability to the Trump administration. Amanda Litman, the founder of progressive candidate pipeline Run for Something, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to forgo any oversight in the name of putting the past behind them. This doesn’t mean a revenge or retribution campaign like Trump undertook in his second term, but an effort to show voters that there needs to be respect for the law, she said.
“At the very least, we’ve killed how many people in fishing boats off the shore?” she said. “It would be useful to have some hearings.”
There’s also consistent support for institutional reforms that would help restore public trust in Congress. A group of 50 incoming freshmen sent a letter to Democratic leadership to call for a stock trading ban, a frequent campaign promise for Democrats – and some Republicans – this year.
“A stock trading ban alone will not fix Washington, but it is the fastest way to show voters we heard them,” the group wrote in its letter. “This rule would be a down payment on much-needed reform to prevent elected and appointed government officials and their spouses from trading stocks. We promised our communities we would clean up this place. In January, we should do just that.”
At the post-election Democratic confab in Denver this week, Jeffries said banning congressional stock trading was on the menu. He also said he supported new rules that would limit how long members of Congress can serve as leaders on committees in an effort to give new, younger lawmakers a chance at leading.
Procedurally, Maxwell, of the Farm Action Fund, said Democrats should work on single-issue or pared-down bills rather than weighty omnibus measures that obscure the work that lawmakers do. People need to see movement, he said.
This also sets up Republicans to vote up or down on specific issues, then Trump to have to veto, or, possibly, not. Mitchell, of the Working Families party, said lawmakers shouldn’t hedge their bills against whether Trump will veto them.
“They voted people in to fight for them,” Mitchell said. “It’s their job to pass the legislation in line with what the voters want, and dare the president not to sign that legislation.”
Democrats flipped state legislatures in several states and now have new governing trifectas that make policy wins much more possible at the state level, which could serve as a balm to the partisan gridlock common in Washington. When these states pass new laws, “we need to communicate governing wins”, said Kleeb, the Nebraska party chair.
High pressure to deliver
Communication will be key, Democrats said. If a piece of legislation meets a roadblock in Congress, name it, said the Minnesota senator-elect Peggy Flanagan. If Trump vetoes a bill, make it clear that he’s responsible for that.
Voters understood that this election was not “business as usual”, Flanagan said, and they demanded change. Some people in power may now “sort of be kicking and screaming along the way with this change”, but Flanagan said her job is to represent the Minnesotans who shared their deeply personal struggles.
The social media prowess of the incoming class means that each lawmaker functions as their own small media entity, Litman said. They can use this massive reach to show the work they are doing to fight for the agendas they ran on, she added.
“I do think it is really, really important for Democrats in Congress to get caught trying,” Litman said.
The stakes are high for Democrats to show the cross-partisan group of voters who elected them that they can govern, or they will face the same rebuke Republicans got this year, Mitchell said.
“They will not be kind to Democrats,” Mitchell said of the voters who are sick of the status quo. “On the flip side, if Democrats actually deliver, we could be talking about the beginnings of a realignment in this country.”
Shrai Popat and Ariana Baio contributed reporting
