Consider, for a minute, what it would mean for the polls to be right. Democrats could plausibly win Senate races not just in North Carolina and Georgia but also in Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Alaska. Come January, they could control both houses of Congress and command subpoena and investigative power after a historic run of Republican corruption and self-enrichment. They could also control 28 of the country's 50 governorships. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro might win re-election by 25 points. Blue districts could command 70 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
We've spent the past decade in what feels unmistakably like the Trump era, with even progressive strategy and Democratic policy shaped by the gravity of the president and MAGA's claim on the American future. Donald Trump has claimed center stage in the country's political imagination since he descended that gold escalator in 2015. Joe Biden began his term dreaming of an F.D.R. presidency, but his administration lingers in national memory more like an asterisk.
What would it be like to leave that whole era behind? Perhaps those questions sound like a jinx. The path to a Democratic Senate still looks like a tightrope walk, dependent on structurally unlikely victories in red states. There are reasons to worry that polls have been too optimistic, that rural voters may still turn up to vote, and that a tsunami of Republican spending could hit soon, including hundreds of millions of dollars from Elon Musk alone. Even a blue wave would leave several years of contentious lame-duck conflict in Washington.
Eras can still come to a close more quickly than you might expect. As late as spring 2003, President George W. Bush's approval rating hovered around 70 percent, yet his influence faded faster than many predicted. Elections have consequences, but that doesn't mean every vote marks a long-lasting shift in the character of the country. Victory in the midterms would give the Democratic Party an opportunity to decide what it actually stands for.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing