I am a big believer in staying calm and steady, keeping on an even keel. No panicking and no counting of those proverbial chickens before they are hatched. But this is a year full of possibility for Democrats.
We have a long way to go and many hurdles to overcome before Election Day, and then likely after as Republicans try to scramble to invalidate election returns. Trump’s team of authoritarian fascists is looking under every slimy rock for ways to cheat on an election that looks bad for them. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel, and a hundred other right-wing billionaires are going to spend billions of dollars to try to win this election, so that nobody in DC ever does any oversight on their attempts to control the world.
Aside from Republican shenanigans, there are the Democratic Party’s on-going, every election weaknesses: we spend too much on TV and not enough on organizing and organic social media; we have not built the kind of media and social media infrastructure the other side has; party leaders have failed to unify us around an economic platform that could excite people outside the Beltway (especially the working-class voters we need).
So yes, there are certainly a lot of obstacles to victory. But even with all those very real hurdles, something is going on out there this year. I spend a lot of time reviewing polling in the Senate races, and yes, we are in good position in the state everyone is watching. Democratic candidates are either ahead or in the margin of error (depending on the poll) in Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Texas, and Alaska. If we win them all, we control the Senate with an extra seat to spare.
But even beyond those most highly targeted races that everyone is looking at, there are a bunch of very red states that the polls tell us we have a shot in. There are at least two recent public polls showing Democratic Senate candidates within the margin of error, tied, or even ahead in Iowa, Kansas, and Arkansas. In Mississippi, there is a poll showing Scott Colom, the Democratic Senate candidate, down only six, so just outside the margin of error. He is an impressive candidate raising a lot of money and building a strong field organization on the ground. And in Nebraska and South Dakota, there are working-class Independents who are running even in the polls — against Republican incumbents, with no Democrat on the ballot to divide the vote.
The candidates in all these races are really appealing and impressive, mixing compelling biographies and a strong populist message with campaigns doing great work in social media and on the ground. They are talking about real things that happened to them, like Hallie Shoffner from Arkansas speaking passionately about having to give up her 5th generation family farm because the farm economy is so bad. Or Dan Osborn in Nebraska recounting getting fired after he led his union’s successful strike. Or Adam Hamilton in Kansas describing what it was like to build a small Methodist church from the ground up and turn it into the biggest Methodist church in America, and about how being a minister has taught him how to solve problems and bring people together.
What It All Means
Think about the stats mentioned in this article for a minute. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won Maine in the last two elections, the only one of these states won both times. Biden and Ossoff won six years ago in Georgia, and Harris came relatively close there. Biden and a Democratic Senate candidate won Michigan, and Harris almost won it. Though Biden and Harris lost North Carolina, both were competitive in the state.
So four states with big Senate races were at least competitive for Dems in the last two presidential elections. But every other state listed here — Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas — were all massive blowouts for the Republicans in the presidential races in 2020 and 2024. Let’s take out Ohio and Alaska, where we have strong candidates who have won statewide elections within the last decade, and who competed very well in the statewide elections they lost in 2024. The other seven states — let me repeat that, seven states — have not been states where Democrats have had even a ghost of a chance in the last several elections. And the polling right now is showing them to be winnable races for the Democrats.
I would never tell you we are going to win all or even a majority of these seven races. Democratic Party and progressive movement infrastructure is very weak in these states, and the Democratic brand is in terrible shape. The Republicans and their corporate/billionaire allies will be out-spending us by a ton. We have let races like these slip away many times in the last decade plus.
But folks, when this many red states, when the Plains states going down to the deep Republican South, are this close in the polling two months out from the election, something is bubbling out there.
Democrats need to not let this opportunity slip away. We need to speak to the rural and blue collar voters in these states, talking to them about the kitchen table issues that matter the most to them. We need to move the resources needed to compete — and in most of these rural states, it wouldn’t take that much money to run a strong campaign. We need to talk about an agenda that makes sense to them, so that we aren’t just the anti-Trump party.
In 2006, the sixth year of an unpopular Republican presidency bogged down in a badly managed Mideast war, with an economy starting to show some serious cracks, Democrats shocked the hell out of everyone by not only picking up 31 House seats, but by winning six out of the seven most closely contested Senate pick-up opportunities. We can match or exceed that victory this year, because things are bubbling out there.
Is it a “holy shit, we are going to win a sweeping victory” year? It’s up to us.