OPINION:
First, the bad news: President Trump has just 425 days to accomplish some work because on Jan. 3, 2027, Democrats will take over the House.
That’s not coming from pollsters. As the results rolled in Tuesday night, the betting house Polymarket reported that the odds of Democrats regaining control of the chamber had soared to 70%.
The off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia are often harbingers of what will come in the midterms a year later. In this case, though, they may be a canary in a coal mine for the Republican Party. Republicans suffered a sound defeat in gubernatorial elections on Tuesday, indicating dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump just 10 months after he returned to the White House.
Exit polls in the two states found that the top issue for voters was the economy (stupid), and despite the president’s repeated assertions that food prices are down, one trip through the grocery store will tell you that is not true. Throughout his own campaign, Mr. Trump promised to tame inflation and, via his tariffs that are now backfiring, vowed to unleash unprecedented growth. That clearly hasn’t happened, and voters took it out on him at the ballot boxes.
Speaking of backfiring, voters in 2024 also wanted to secure the border, but they didn’t vote for heavily armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents dressed like SWAT team members to arrest moms picking up their children at school. The issue is now almost an afterthought; just 1 in 10 said immigration reform was a top issue for them, exit polls found.
So those are the problems Republicans face when Americans return to the polls in less than a year to elect members of Congress. Yet the outcome Tuesday presents a far more puzzling problem for Democrats, who must make a choice — soon — on which way to go.
For instance, Zohran Mamdani won big in New York City, knocking off serial sex pest Andrew Cuomo, Republican Curtis Sliwa, not to mention DoorDash, Airbnb, Mike Bloomberg, Walmart heiress Alice Walton, Bill Ackman, Mr. Trump, Elon Musk and a long list of other billionaire donors who backed his opponents.
In electing Mr. Mamdani, voters picked a democratic socialist and snubbed Mr. Cuomo, about as entrenched as one can be in the Democratic Party’s establishment. The former governor, who resigned in disgrace, had access to hundreds of millions of dollars and lied through his teeth in an effort to battle the candidate promising free schools, buses and a slew of other handouts. But he never came close to victory.
Fellow democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called the Muslim’s victory the beginning of a new movement within the party. She said Mr. Mamdani’s campaign was “not just tasked with defeating a Republican; they were tasked with defeating the ‘Old Guard’ of the Democratic Party.”
“I do think that this moment — a lot of people who are willing to talk about party unity when it serves everybody, it puts those folks on notice. And I think it also puts folks on notice that we have a future to plan for, we have a future to fight for, and we’re either going to do that together or you’re going to be left behind,” the far-left liberal said.
But New Jersey and Virginia offered a different story. The wins by Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger put party moderates back in the driver’s seats. Ms. Sherrill’s win was particularly noteworthy because she defeated several liberals who were not unlike Mr. Mamdani.
And Ms. Spanberger — a pragmatic centrist who, like Ms. Sherrill, distanced herself from the far-left wing of her party — thumped the sitting lieutenant governor by 11.5 points. Election strategists say her campaign drafted a playbook that other Democrats can use to beat Trump-backed Republicans in the midterm elections.
For Democrats of every stripe, 2024 was an unmitigated disaster. A weak candidate in Kamala Harris, plus the low resonance of fringe issues embraced by the vice president — including trans rights and diversity, equity and inclusion policies — led to a shellacking by Mr. Trump.
The question now is, which winning strategy will the party embrace: hard left or middle of the road?
AOC says that’s not the real question. “It’s not about progressive, it’s not about moderate, it’s not about liberal — this is about, do you understand the assignment of fighting fascism right now? And the assignment is to come together across differences no matter what.”
That’s far easier said than done. And remember, election 2026 is still a long way off. Democrats will have plenty of time to bicker among themselves and, once again, pick the wrong path and blow it big time.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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