Have the Democrats Figured Out How to Win Again?

0:06Hey, Ben. Hey, Tyler. So we had the first major elections of President Trump's second term last night, and the Democrats absolutely swept. It's hard to find a bad result for a Democrat anywhere. And, you know, we were already anticipating a good night for the Democrats based on the polls, like Abigail Spanberger's win in Virginia and Mikey Sherrill's victory in New Jersey weren't unprecedented. And Zoran Mamdani's win in the New York City mayoral race was definitely expected. But I did find the actual results of these races kind of staggering. And so I'm wondering what element of last night was most surprising in your view, just kind of looking at the individual ways that different precincts swung and, you know, just like the outcomes of the various races.

0:52I think the first thing that stuck out to me actually has nothing to do with anything specific. It's the scale and the suite. You know, we're talking about margins that approach 2017, you know, the last time when Democrats, you know, in leading up to the 2018 midterms really seem to be sort of winning everywhere. where we're talking about, yeah, those cardinal races you talked about in New Jersey, in Virginia, and in New York City, but also down-ballot races in the Mississippi state legislature and, you know, a few minor statewide races in Georgia. And across the board, what you see is a really, really strong Democratic performance.

1:36There are a couple of kind of details, kind of little lagoons of this thing that we can get into. But, you know, for me, the biggest story is just how comprehensive this was. It was a really good night for Democrats. That's Benjamin Wallace-Wells, a staff writer at The New Yorker. On Tuesday night, we saw a handful of state and local elections with massive electoral and policy implications. From a high-profile mayoral race in New York City to a ballot initiative in California that will shape the congressional map of the nation's largest state in favor of Democrats. We also saw the first major test of how Donald Trump's second term is or isn't resonating with voters and whether Democrats may be starting to find their way out of their crisis of popularity.

2:22I wanted to talk with Ben about the implications of Tuesday's election results, both on the lives of the people who live in the states and cities affected and what it also tells us about the near future of American politics heading into the midterms just a year from now. This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

2:43You mentioned that the last time we saw something like this was in 2017, which was also, you know, right after Trump had been elected. And so we kind of saw this rebuke from the rest of the country not long after his election. I mean, do you think that this is are we seeing a Trump effect here? And is this something specific to Trump where it's like he's a great campaigner and then he comes into office and immediately pisses everyone off and hurts everyone? And so then voters have a chance to choose something different at the polls and they do that? Or do you think that we're seeing something slightly different this time around?

3:18Yeah, I mean, the Trump overextension. Yeah, version two. I think there's something to that. I mean, part of the story here is just that his coalition is one that is less reliable for turning out and off your elections, is, you know, less likely to be college educated than Republican coalitions have been in the past. So when Trump goes out like he did today and says, you know, the reason why this happened is because I wasn't on the ballot. That isn't just pure bombast. Like there actually is something to that. Right. I think there is something to that. On the other hand, we have a lot of indications over the last two or three months that the country is for the second time falling out of love with Donald J.

4:00Trump. And we've seen his approval ratings fade a little bit. we've seen the approval voters accord him on the economy in particular decline quite a lot, which I think is significant. This is in poll after poll. And so it's not enough to sort of tank his, the overall impression of him. But I think that this does validate that something has shifted over the last couple of months and that, you know, the kind of thesis of Trump that, you know, a lot of institutions in the Democratic Party, I think had in the spring where it was, they felt and certainly acted as if this guy really did have a mandate and he really did have the majority of the country behind him.

4:38I think that that is beginning to crack a little bit. And, you know, I would say that though there has been a lot that has gone on over the last six months with the intensity of the ICE raids and the brutality of them being constant, it does feel, especially with the degree to which these candidates focused on the economy and Trump's numbers starting to look a little bit worse there, that the combination of tariffs, the shutdown, and some of the economic uncertainty might be weakening his grip. You use the word mandate, which makes me want to talk a little bit more about the New York City mayoral race in particular.

5:16So, of course, this is the race where Zoran Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist state assemblyman, defeated former New York governor, I should say the disgraced former governor, Andrew Cuomo. You know, this was again, this was a win that we were all expecting. The polls all showed that Mom Donnie was going to run away with it. But I think that there was a you know, I was watching MSNBC last night and they were talking about how Mom Donnie's coalition and his supporters were all really invested in this idea of him getting more than 50 percent of the vote because that would indicate that he had a real mandate to kind of move forward with these policies.

5:51And there was also a lot of talk going into the election that that was not going to happen because you just have Andrew Cuomo running as an independent, Curtis Sliwa running as a Republican. A lot of people hate Cuomo, but a lot of people were also skeptical of Momdani. I think, you know, we're speaking right now at 930 in the morning on Wednesday and 90 percent of the votes are in. And the latest numbers show that Momdani has 50.4 percent of the vote. But I guess based on the numbers that we have at this moment, do you think that his win was as decisive as expected? And does it matter if it's as decisive as expected?

6:26I like you outing yourself as an MSNBC viewer here. They have the best. Like I try to watch Fox sometimes because I think it's like good to kind of see what, you know, the narrative is like on the different channels. But with MSNBC, I find it to be the most aesthetically pleasing. You know, like the graphics are just incredible. Whereas like watching Fox, I don't know, it's just like the ads, the colors, it's harsh on the eyes. Yeah, it gives you a headache. You know, the city government is just different than federal government, you know, and the mayor has less autonomy than, you know, the president has.

7:01And certainly than this president has asserted in terms of raising his budget, in terms of, you know, changing policy. He's often complicated by Albany or by particular laws and structural bureaucratic limitations. And so, you know, whether Mamdani can claim a mandate coming out of this election might be a little bit less meaningful in terms of the governance of the city over the next four years than whether a president can. But for me, you know, the really significant thing here is not the scale of the victory, but the size of the sheer size of the vote. I think this is the largest turnout on a proportion basis in a New York mayoral election since the 1960s.

7:42We're talking about, you know, a figure who, in Mandani, who, in a moment when Democrats were understood to be really struggling to get anybody, but their most committed, you know, Upper West Side, Brownstone, Brooklyn voters out to the polls basically ever, you know, really struggling to reach voters who, you know, might not pay very much attention to politics. Mamdani really managed it. You know, I think we're going to be over 2 million votes. We might be not that far off the presidential vote total in New York City in 2024. And, you know, to me, I think that this was a kind of complicated race in that, yes, as you say, you had a former governor running and, you know, a Democrat getting the endorsement of Donald Trump.

8:25This is Andrew Cuomo, you know, shortly before the election. But to me, the thing that really stands out about the New York City race is just the scale, how many people participated in this election. So I think that's a real credit to Mamdani, who, you know, has come in for a lot of intra-party bashing from other Democrats over the last six months because of some of his, you know, his positions. But it's a real credit to Mamdani and something that, you know, I'm sure many other Democrats will be interested in seeing if there's any way they can replicate. Yeah, I want to talk more about that replication just because there's been this narrative ever since Mom Donnie won the primary that, you know, he is the future of the party.

9:04And there's been so much excitement about him, not just in New York. But, you know, I was reading about how there were watch parties in the U.K. was almost giving like Obama vibes. Yeah. And I guess I just wonder if given the results last night, not just in New York, but the fact that we have, you know, candidates like Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill doing so well. Do you think that there is still going to be this kind of attempt to replicate what we saw with Mom Donnie? Or do you think that actually what we're going to see is a push toward more moderate Democratic candidates like the ones in Virginia and New Jersey?

9:38Because I think like, you know, Mom Donnie is a lot more, way more progressive than they are. Like he represents something completely different. Although maybe the thing that connects all of them is their focus on affordability. Yeah, I think that's true. And we can talk about that in a second. I think it's also true, as you're sort of alluding to there, that like Mamdani is not a great candidate to win like, you know, electoral votes in Pennsylvania, or at least not a natural one. But look, I mean, my general experience of politicians over the years is that political talent is pretty rare and pretty specific.

10:12And you can't fantasy baseball up, you know, a moderate candidate in a jurisdiction, you know, or a progressive candidate in a state. You kind of have to take what comes, you know. So do I think that this is Mamdani's night more than Spanberger's or Cheryl's? Do I think that the future of the party belongs to him? I think far, far too soon to tell. I do think that what we're seeing is a real generational turnover, though. It's finally, belatedly beginning. All three of these candidates entered politics after Donald Trump won the presidency the first time. The Democrats have been, I think, rightly mocked and derided a lot over the past decade for running again and again.

10:59candidates in their 70s and created probably a pretty lasting impression of just age and incompetence around the party that they're having a lot of trouble dispelling. But time does march on, you know, and we are now, you know, beginning to get some candidates who are, I think, probably ideologically different, but in tune with some of the feeling of emergency and sense that the stakes are incredibly high in everything and the kind of media centricness of this era of politics. And I think that, you know, whether the Democratic Party embraces in a more fulsome way some of the idealism of democratic socialism that, you know, Mamdani embodies and avows, you know, I'm not sure I see a ton of evidence for that yet.

11:53I do think cities are getting considerably more progressive and we probably will see more mayors somewhat like Mamdani. You know, we saw a candidate in Seattle, Katie Wilson, who is, you know, running in a sort of similar vein and that race is, is I think too close to call still. We saw a candidate in Minneapolis come relatively close. They're not getting over the top against an incumbent in Jacob Frey. But I think that there are a lot of things about Mamdani that are pretty singular. There are also a lot of things about Abigail Spanberger that are pretty singular. And I would be hesitant to say that, like, the party is going to, you know, push in one direction or another.

12:30I think that the party will follow the talent. Let's talk more about Spanberger. I mean, you said that there are things about her that are pretty singular. Can you get into those? I mean, what do you think it was that helped propel her to, you know, become the first woman to be elected governor of Virginia? Well, I think she's a very good debater and she's very, very pragmatic. And she ran against a candidate who was underfunded, too extreme and not very good. And those are those are some like like very. It's the dream. Very contingent things that matter a lot. Yeah. But she, I think, more than most Democrats in this vein can embody and has now for five or six years a feeling of real betrayal on behalf of the kind of national security establishment, the people who put their lives into serving the country.

13:21She herself was a CIA hand for many years, leaving a couple years before she decided to run for office. And, you know, one of the things that was pretty striking in this campaign was how effectively and well she spoke on behalf of the federal employees who were under pressure and laid off through Doge. I do think, though, it is somewhat under, it's been somewhat underplayed in our politics. I think there is room for somebody who can speak to collective endeavor and collective sacrifice and the kind of necessity of that and the way that is coming under pressure from Trump, you know, right now, but also over the last decade.

13:59And I think she does that incredibly ably and well. Meanwhile, it seems like her opponent, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earl Sears, who you, as you noted, was a pretty weak candidate. It seems like she made a big bet on running on an anti-trans platform, spending a lot of the money that she had. And as you noted, she didn't have that much on, you know, these kind of anti-trans ads and not really speaking as much about the economy and jobs. Which makes me wonder, I mean, do you think that is this just kind of like a unique failure here where like this kind of thing isn't going to work in Virginia?

14:34Or do you think that what we're seeing is that Republicans kind of learned the wrong thing from Trump's presidential victory? I mean, so much of the discourse after Trump won was, you know, that they them ad, you know, so many people saw it. And that's clearly the thing that, you know, lost the Democrats the race. And so they need to be less woke. And what we see with Spanberger isn't someone who's super woke, but someone who's just actually focusing on issues that, you know, it's like kitchen table issues, as they call it. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up. And I really, really do think that this is right.

15:03You know, the Republicans really overlearned, I think, a very particular slice of what happened in 2024 and have assumed a mandate that I'm just not sure they have. I think that the Earl Sears campaign raises some good questions about what is the Republican agenda right now that they're willing to present to voters, you know, because you could imagine ways in which what Trump is doing at the federal level might be cheerled and, you know, spun out by a candidate for governor. You could imagine a campaign that leaned heavily into, you know, ICE cooperation and, you know, the budgetary pressures of undocumented people on state and local institutions.

15:49That wasn't really this, you know. It certainly wasn't a campaign that leaned into a economy that was transforming with, you know, Trump's acceleration of AI and cryptocurrency. In fact, you know, the presence of electricity, guzzling utility data centers in suburban Virginia was something that, you know, was a concern for a lot of voters in Virginia. So, like, you know, right now, what is Donald Trump giving to his party that they can take forward and present to voters? And, you know, acknowledging that we are talking about two pretty blue states, you know, and the voters that they have to, you know, the candidates in Virginia and New Jersey have to have to appeal to are probably a bit left of what they will have to the median voter in a presidential race.

16:37You know, I do think that there is something a little underwhelming maybe about the Republican campaigns right now. And I think there is some uncertainty from that party about what the agenda is. I want to talk about the New Jersey gubernatorial race and California redistricting. But first, we're going to take a quick break. More from the political scene from The New Yorker in just a moment.

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18:11So Ben, I would say like at least just personally, I feel like the worst results for the Republicans weren't in Virginia where, you know, as we were talking about, there's like a lot of federal employees who were voting essentially against Doge and who were affected by the shutdown and where we had this really weak Republican candidate. I feel like the scariest results for the Republicans were probably in New Jersey, where the Democrat Mikey Sherrill defeated Jack Cittarelli, winning by 13 points in a state that Harris won by just six. And where there was a lot of talk about how the governorship was gettable for Republicans, you know, since Phil Murphy only won by three points in 2021 and Trump had so much success in gaining ground in that state.

18:53I mean, would you agree with that, that this was – that the New Jersey race might be the one that, I guess, bodes most poorly for the future of the Republican Party? Yeah, and I applaud your pronunciation of Chattarelli. That's very elegantly done. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I mean, New Jersey swung all over the place. You know, you mentioned the three-point Murphy margin in 2021. I think the margin in 2017 was close to 20. You know, so the Democrats have at times won New Jersey by just a little bit recently and at times won it by quite a lot. I think that, you know, unlike in Virginia, in New Jersey, Democrats have run the state for eight years and more than that.

19:36But they've run the state in recent memory. And so Cheryl, though a new candidate, a congresswoman, had a sort of legacy to defend. And I think what's interesting there is I think she was a big issue in the New Jersey race was the skyrocketing cost of electricity, which I think is something that is going to be a big deal everywhere. And it's a complicated situation. You know, some of it has to do with escalating demand because of AI data centers, but also there have been underinvestment in the grid over time and the economy has been growing. It's complicated. And I can't say I'm an expert. But it was a big issue.

20:16It was a pocketbook issue. It was the kind of thing that Trump, who campaigned promising he'd bring energy costs down, seemed to focus on. It was the kind of thing that also would set up a pretty well-funded and kind of talented Republican candidate to capitalize on. And I think Cheryl, whose campaign took a significant amount of criticism over the course of the last couple months, did manage to demonstrate. You know, her plan was she'd institute a state of emergency on her first day of office that would freeze electricity costs for, you know, New Jersey homeowners. And I think she did manage to demonstrate that she was up to date with what was happening to people and their household spending in New Jersey.

20:58And my in-laws live in New Jersey. Like a lot of New Yorkers, I'm there a lot. And, you know, I have felt a kind of swelling trumpiness over the last couple of years. You know, the vigils for Charlie Kirk in the town where my in-laws live were so big, they had to be moved from the basketball court at the high school to a minor league baseball stadium. And, you know, that's just one tiny anecdotal thing. But I do think that this was a state that, you know, had begun to shift towards Trump and the Republicans. And I do think it's significant that that seems to have, at least for the moment, been, you know, the gains Trump made in 2024 dissipated.

21:40And that is another pattern you see, at least here and there, in New York and Virginia. And I think it should give Democrats at least a little bit of confidence that the country has maybe not realigned electorally in quite the same way that people were talking about, you know, nine months ago. I mean, when you raise that, like, I want to talk about California redistricting. But first, I guess before that, you know, what you're saying makes me wonder about Republican redistricting efforts. I mean, maybe it's not smart to try to take voting patterns in New Jersey and kind of apply them to voting patterns of the Latino population in Texas.

22:20But I guess I'm just wondering if like if you see that at least in Texas that the Republicans redistricting push was centered on the idea that Latino voters would vote the way that they did in 2024. then given that we're not seeing those kinds of patterns hold true in states like New Jersey, I guess I'm just wondering if you think that anything from last night might pause or slow down those redistricting efforts because we just can't really anticipate things the way that Republicans really thought they could. I would never bet against Republican lawyers continuing to pursue what they want to pursue.

22:53But I think there is a huge question here, which is just, was 2024 about Donald Trump? Was it a vote to go back to all of this that we've seen over the last nine months? Or was it about Joe Biden? Was it about the, you know, incompetence and out-to-lunchness of the Democratic administration that was in the White House that gave a lot of people a sense that there was no hand on the tiller? And I think that, you know, last night is along a number of different dimensions, a pretty significant vote that, you know, maybe this was about Joe Biden and maybe it was not as profound a commitment to the right, to the politics of Donald Trump as a lot of institutions and politicians have seemed to assume.

23:47Yeah, I wonder if we can talk a little bit about Prop 50 in California, which was the ballot measure on the state's congressional map. Can you tell us a little bit more about that effort, which I believe was led by Gavin Newsom and sort of what we saw when people actually went to the polls? You know, a real Republican preoccupation right now is the midterms and avoiding the situation that happened in 2018, where Trump lost control of Congress and, you know, lost his ability to impose his agenda. And Republicans, I think, are rightly at least a little bit nervous about that situation. The Senate looks relatively promising for them.

24:25Democrats would have to, just based on the seats that are up, win a lot of seats in pretty Republican states, not just North Carolina, but Ohio and Alaska and so on. And so there has been a tremendous amount of focus first by Republicans on trying to find ways to ensure a bigger margin in the House. And they have in a couple states pretty effectively pushed using this software that now exists to draw districts to maximize the number of Republican votes. They have pushed to get as much out of the red states as they can. And Newsom, you know, led an effort in California to try to do the opposite, to, you know, ask voters to give him the authority to create a map that would benefit Democrats.

25:16That they passed it is, you know, maybe not a surprise, given how partisan the electorate is right now and how Democratic California is. I do wonder a little bit about the effect. I think most of the analyses I've seen have said that there's just a lot more room for Republicans to get more seats out of the states that Republican legislatures and governors control than there is for Democrats. And so if we are in a kind of arms race, you know, where each party is trying to maximize how many seats it can get out of the states that it controls, I don't think that's great. But I also don't think that necessarily benefits Democrats.

25:54Lastly, I want to talk about just any other notable or surprising results that are on your mind and kind of just like what this all means and kind of the biggest takeaways from last night. We're going to take another break. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.