Embattled Democrats have new reason to hope.
The party has spent the early months of the year soul-searching the causes of a bitter election defeat and fighting internally over how best to counter President Trump and his fierce effort to dismantle the traditional workings of Washington.
But Democrats this week have watched the political pendulum swing into their favor.
In Wisconsin, they easily won a hard-fought battle for a coveted seat on the state Supreme Court, despite a massive spending push by Elon Musk.
In Florida, they put a dent in the Republicans’ comfortable edge in two deep-red House districts, despite a late intervention from the president.
In Washington, Trump’s approval rating fell to a new low amid rising prices and sinking consumer confidence — even before new tariffs unveiled Wednesday are expected to exacerbate those menacing trends.
And on Capitol Hill, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) captured Democrats’ attention with a record-breaking, 25-hour speech railing against Trump’s policies, while Republican divisions in the House surfaced in stark fashion when a group of GOP rebels bucked Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over proxy voting for new parents — an aggressive show of resistance that forced GOP leaders to cancel votes for the rest of the week.
To be sure, the party is still in an exceedingly difficult position, unable to effectively fight back against a Republican trifecta in Washington and facing widespread frustration from its voters.
But the combination of events this week has given a boost to beleaguered Democrats, who are united heading into the next big fight in the Capitol over Trump’s domestic priorities, and have new reason to believe they’re entering a season when the sharpest clashes will pit Republicans against one another.
“They’re on the run on the economy. They’re on the run legislatively — yesterday they got out of town before sundown, because they have no agenda to make life better for the American people. And they’re on the run politically,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday in the Capitol.
Just a few weeks ago, Democrats weren’t flying so high.
The March battle over a Republican spending bill had badly divided Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, where Jeffries and House Democrats fought to sink the proposal only to watch in frustration as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) helped usher the legislation to Trump’s desk. The disagreement was over tactics, not policy, but the debate eroded trust between the chambers; undermined the Democrats’ claims of unity in the face of Trump; and infuriated liberals, some of whom called for Schumer to give up his leadership post.
House Democrats have also clashed internally over the most effective strategy for pushing back against Trump in the early months of his second term, which have been defined by aggressive efforts to gut the federal government, fire federal workers and use the levers of the executive branch to punish political enemies.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), for instance, generated countless headlines last month when he heckled Trump during the president’s speech before Congress. The protest was cheered by some liberals but infuriated more centrist lawmakers wary that the in-your-face demonstration could alienate moderate Republicans and independents in their battleground districts.
Such debates have posed a huge challenge for Jeffries and his leadership team, who have sought to strike a balance between those Democrats advocating for party leaders to counter Trump more aggressively and those calling for a “tactical pause” to give Republicans the space to wage their own civil war over the more unpopular elements of Trump’s domestic wishlist.
“[R]oll over and play dead,” James Carville, the prominent Democratic strategist, advised his party recently in The New York Times. “Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s said to be eyeing a presidential bid in 2028, has been even harsher in his assessment of his fellow Democrats, saying recently that the party’s brand is “toxic” — and it’s a self-inflicted wound.
“We talk down to people. We talk past people,” he said last week in an interview on “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
A series of events since then have challenged Republicans, bolstered the Democrats’ image and heightened the confidence from party leaders that they’ll flip control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court victory was the most notable development. Musk had spent millions of dollars on the race, warning that a Democratic win would spell doom for the country. But voters rejected that message in resounding numbers, giving the Democrat a 10-point victory in a state that Trump carried less than five months earlier — an outcome that will have an outsized impact on the Badger State’s abortion policies and House map.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D), a Wisconsin liberal, said the result is a clear sign that Democratic voters are animated and activated by the threat they see in Trump.
“[Voters] want us to fight. They don’t like what’s happening, and they certainly came to the fight by turning out to vote,” Pocan said Wednesday. “Right now, the good news is, the people are leading. Now we just need the leaders to follow.”
The special elections to fill vacant seats in Florida didn’t flip any seats to Democrats. But the party was able to close the gap significantly in districts Trump had won by more than 30 points in November, and Democratic leaders said the results should be a warning bell for battleground Republicans across the country.
“These are deeply Republican districts. Why in the world were they even competitive?” Jeffries asked. “There are 60 House Republicans who hold districts right now that Donald Trump won by 15 points or less in November. Every single one of those Republicans should be concerned.”
Republicans’ have dismissed the Democrats’ optimism surrounding those races. And the GOP’s campaign army quickly took a victory lap, saying Democrats had frittered away tens of millions of dollars that would have been better spent on more competitive districts.
“Florida’s resounding Republican victories send a clear message: Americans are fired up to elect leaders who will fight for President Trump’s agenda and reject the Democrats’ failed policies,” Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
“While Democrats set their cash ablaze, House Republicans will keep hammering them for being out of touch — and we’ll crush them again in 2026.”
Still, Trump won’t be on the ticket in the midterms, which will likely deflate GOP turnout. And some election observers say the environment feels similar to that in the early stages of Trump’s first term, when Democrats seized control of the House in the 2018 midterms.
“The more short-term [signal] is that … the trends we saw in 2017 are repeating in 2025 and that, in it of itself, is positive for Democrats,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an independent election handicapper based at the University of Virginia.
“Pretty clearly, they’re showing up in a way that’s already familiar to what we saw in 2017.”
Caroline Vakil contributed.
