Mid-terms a chance for Democrats to meaningfully oppose Trump

US President Donald Trump has continued to dominate the American political psyche in a manner unlike any other figure in its nearly 250-year history, even when he’s not on any ballot.

Since his restoration to the presidency in 2024’s national election, he has set his sights on several fundamental changes to the US system of government. First, we have witnessed the implementation of Project 2025 (a policy that candidate Trump explicitly repudiated) – a plan to remake government by gutting it.

The most spectacular application of this was perhaps Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative (remember that?) and the sweeping cuts to government, including the shameful annihilation of the country’s Agency for International Development, USAID.

DOGE was followed by the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which, among other things, cut taxes and sought to deprive the government’s vast social programmes of necessary funding (through tax cuts) while massively investing in defence and immigration enforcement.

These aggressive activities were paired with more passive ones, including simply refusing to spend the money Congress had allocated. This, and Congress’s inability to fund further government spending, culminated in the longest-ever government shutdown. This shutdown has resulted in a pause in all non-essential services, with many federal workers furloughed or required to work without pay, and has disrupted other public services. Although a last-minute deal to reopen the government has just been passed by the Senate, the outcome remains unclear.

It was against this backdrop that Americans went to the polls on November 4. Democrats and independent voters turned out in high numbers across several jurisdictions, all resulting in significant Democrat victories. But what, if anything, can we glean from these results? Will they have any immediate impact on the national political scene? I suggest ‘not much’ to both.

As former Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill, the long-serving South Boston Democrat, once said: all politics is local. An expression that seems quaint in an age of algorithms, social media, and artificial intelligence, but remains resonant. There is always a ‘referendum on the ruling party’ element to off-year elections, and when one man has wholly subsumed the ruling party, then the referendum becomes indistinguishable between the party and the man.

Trump has never been good for the Republican Party when he is not on the ballot, and sometimes not even when he is. His absence from the ballot in 2018 and his defeat in 2020 coincided with significant gains by the Democratic Party. More importantly, he won’t be on next year’s ballot when the entire House of Representatives and a third of Senate seats are up for grabs, though mainly in Republican or Republican-leaning seats.

In last week’s elections, Democrats exceeded expectations, and it is clear many voters were highly motivated by Trump’s agenda. Much has been made of the Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York and the defeat of New York Democrat Party mainstay former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The victory was impressive, for sure, but dear reader, could you name the last New York City mayor elected to a higher office after having been mayor? (Answer: not since 1866 when John Hoffman was elected Governor of New York.) This isn’t typically a stepping stone and for most it is a political tombstone. Yet Mamdani is young and charismatic, so perhaps his story will be different.

But Democrats and Republicans might take his victory as an opportunity to refocus on the tremendous economic pressure voters face and gross income inequality across the United States. In New York, Mamdani won every socio-economic category except for those earning under $30k and those over $300k a year.

Economic inequality as a campaign issue last bubbled up in Trump’s first campaign, as well as in the Democratic primary of Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016, pitting the establishment against the insurgent. In effect Trump co-opted the populist, ‘outsider’ mantle, leading to victory against the Democrats’ more mainstream nomination of Hillary Clinton.

Although I am dubious that the Democratic Party will go “full Bernie” in 2028, the days of paying pure lip service on issues of inequality are gone for Democrats.

This imperative is perhaps best represented not in Mamdani’s victory in New York, but instead in New Jersey and Virginia. In these states, two Democratic women running for governor showed how to win with a centrist, bipartisan message. Mikie Sherrill’s New Jersey campaign focused on protecting reproductive rights, strengthening public education, and delivering economic security for working families, emphasising bipartisanship and investments in infrastructure and clean energy. She defeated her opponent decisively, with more than 56 percent of the vote in what many expected to be a far closer result.

In Virginia, a perennial battleground state with sharp divides between urban Democratic strongholds and rural Republican areas, Abigail Spanberger ran on restoring trust in government, protecting reproductive rights, strengthening public education, stressing bipartisan leadership, pragmatic problem-solving, and economic growth through workforce development and infrastructure investment. Her message framed Virginia as a place of opportunity and stability, contrasting sharply with the divisive politics of her opponent. She won 57 percent of the vote, becoming the first woman elected governor in Virginia.

Finally, honourable mention goes to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who emerged as a national party leader heading into the mid-terms. His full-throated opposition to Donald Trump and the national Republican efforts to gerrymander Texas into a virtual Republican-only state led to his proposal and support for Proposition 50, which allows the Democrat-controlled state legislature to redraw state congressional district maps, thereby creating more Democrat-leaning electorates to offset the gerrymandering in Texas. It was not a high point in moral and ethical leadership, but still a valuable victory for realpolitik.

There is now less than a year until the mid-term elections and the Democrat Party’s first real chance to effectively rebut and meaningfully oppose Trump’s expansion of presidential power and to offer more effective oversight in the form of investigations and hearings, and the President’s ability to propose and pass legislation.

Undoubtedly, the year ahead will be one in which President Trump continues to use the bully pulpit to punish his opponents, settle political scores, reward allies and widen his expansive view of executive power. The question remains how the Democrats will continue to oppose him and his party allies in Congress as they seek to make the mid-terms at least as successful as their 2025 gains.