Decision 2026 Final Thoughts: Even If The Blue Wave Happens Some Lessons Democrats Need To Take Away (Because The Left Won't)

 

 

Like everyone else the closer we get to election day the more deluged I am by campaign ads those running in the tri-State area, not just New York but also New Jersey and Connecticut.  And while I've been basically ignoring political ads on every level since I was, well, let's say  fourteen it's not like I haven't noticed certain things from an objective way.

One of the most recent ads have been ones that are marketing by a Republican superPAC arguably that Cait Conley, who's running to replace Republican Mike Lawler in a vital upstate swing district has the complete support of the Democratic Socialist and puts AOC and Mamdani front and center. Most of these ads run in such a cheery and positive tone that if you were slightly less intelligent – as indeed many campaign individuals in both parties believe the electorate is – you might think that this was a positive ad.  I almost wonder if far-left voters in Conley's district might read it that way and actually vote for her as a result.

What this Pac knows is something that I suspect the average progressive refuses to accept: that the candidates and elected officials that they worship from a distance are held with decidedly mixed emotions in the states and even cities they represent. This has always been true with AOC, who despite having become a national figure after her upset victory in 2018 is rarely, if ever, mention in ads by Democratic politicians in New York particular those who represent more conservative parts of the state such as my district represented by Tom Suozzi.

Suozzi himself was the target of quite a few ads linking him directly to every policy that AOC, Mamdani and even Bernie Sanders have endorsed for the last decade even though Suozzi's only been in the House (again) since February of 2024. This has been the tactic of almost every major Republican ad for almost every Republican running for office whether they are those running for Congress or Bruce Blakeman's ads running for Governor.

None of this is likely to make  much of a difference here on Tuesday: all four swing districts are likely to remain or go Democrat, Hochul is certain to win reelection in a landslide and we may even pick up the seat that Elsie Stefanik held way up in Utica, which has been reliably Republican for years but has recently been moved to 'Toss-up' by almost every major political website.  Much of this is due to the fact that every nominee for every statewide office is focusing on how every Republican candidate and office holder has ties to MAGA which is even more toxic in New York by and large than anything on the far left.

What matters is what I've seen in everyone of these Democratic candidates – or rather who I haven't seen. None of them mention AOC and Mamdani or anything that could be tied as progressive even when they're not laser focus on MAGA and the White House. They do mention their public service (Conley and Rebecca Bennett mention how they've served in the military) representatives like Laura  Gillen and Suozzi will mention their willingness to be bipartisan and work with anyone (and their voting record more than backs that up) and they talk about issues involving corruption to the point they don't mention the Democrats that much. But none of them have gotten AOC and/or Mamdani to do ads or campaign for them and they certainly do everything possible to distance themselves from the democratic socialism that both have become nationally prominent for on the stump advocating enthusiastically for.

And this pattern, I should be clear, predates this election.  In the three previous election cycles none of the swing district candidates or for that matter those running for governor or Senator have mentioned that they so much as know AOC. This would come as a shock to those who believe that defeat only comes when you cede ground to the right that should go to the left. And yet the fact remains by and large almost every statewide official has kept AOC at arms' length, no doubt because they've seen that she doesn't have a great track record with endorsements of other candidates that aren't in New York and even those who are themselves progressive. One saw this play out most famously two years ago when Jamaal Bowman was primaried from the right by George Latimer and lost by nearly eighteen points despite AOC campaigning with him at multiple rallies.

There is every indication that the Democrats are set for a blue wave, very close to a tidal one. At this point Real Clear Politics  by far the most conservative slanted political website of those that track elections is saying the Democrats will gain six seats in the Senate, including Iowa and Kansas and that the Democrats will likely win 238 seats in the House. Other pollsters are being more cautious but even they admit they might be underselling how well the Democrats could do. It is possible, even increasingly probable, that this may be a generational shift across the country. And that's why I think its important even before the votes are counted to make sure that the Democrats don't take the same lessons from it that we did back in the last major blue wave in 2018.

At the time, in large part because of AOC's upset primary victim and the triumphs of the Squad many key Democrats chose to embrace the idea that the progressive agenda was the path forward for the party. We took that approach in 2020 and it actually hurt us at a Congressional level. Because of everything Trump did in the aftermath as well as his continued presence the party chose to ignore the lessons and in 2024 they came back to bite us hard. It's vital as we move into an era where Trump is finally leaving the national stage that the Democrats learn from the mistakes we made before – and might be making now – so we don't pay for them later.

This is not my opinion alone. Last week Ezra Klein interviewed the celebrated pollster Nate Silver in regard to what he thought was going to happen in 2026. He actually thinks that things are going to be very good in both the polls and his gut but he did point out some critical things.

Klein mentioned that in several states where the Democrats needed to be competitive the party decided to endorse far more 'conventional' candidates then we had in past elections. This included James Talarico in Texas, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and of course Mary Peltola in Alaska. (I'll leave her out of this for the sake of objectivity.) But he also mentioned how in states that should be more traditionally safe Democratic states the party embraced more far-left  candidates for Senate and that has caused signs for the party to be concerned, even if they win – which is increasingly likely.

The biggest problem and the one the GOP has increasingly been trying to make the new face of the Democratic Party is of course Abdul El-Sayid in Michigan. Mike Rogers has been essentially backed by every Republican surrogate from Trump and Vance all the way down essentially using every single play in the worst parts of their playbook.  As horrible as the frequently Islamophobic comments have been, the truth is they are just a variation on an old Republican standard that goes back to Lee Atwater and that is barely veiled in the adds using Mamdani and AOC in New York. They are morally despicable but considering the party's effectiveness of them it's very difficult for them to be going back to their greatest hits.

The issue is that this blatant racism and bigotry will cover the multitude of sins El-Sayid has had as a candidate. In previous articles I pointed out for him to win he was going to have to move towards the political center, away from the progressive vote that elected him, towards those who voted for Haley Stevens who came with an inch of beating him in the primary. That also meant that he would have to shore up his standing among African-American voters, who are historically vital  to any Democratic victory as well as Jewish voters who his rhetoric on Gaza did much to isolate during the primary. And the reason the race has been so close until fairly recently – and indeed may be closer then the polls indicate – is that El-Sayid has done very little during the campaign to win them back and the efforts he has made have been perfunctory compared to his continued outreach to the progressives who helped nominate him and by their nature refuse to allow any concessions to the center.

There have been signs during the fall that Rogers may well be making up ground with African-Americans as well as the Jewish voters. His campaign has made very attempts to have events with Stevens on the same platform, and in fact he's reached out to Mallory McMorrow who dropped out of the primary late, far more often then Stevens. Stevens has repeatedly said that she supports the nominee but has not publicly said if she's voting for him and that her fiancée has made it clear that he's crossing party lines to endorse Rogers is very telling.

We have found a variation on this to the west in Minnesota where just a few weeks after El-Sayid's narrow victory Peggy Flanagan, a more progressive candidate, upset favorite Angie Craig to win the Democratic nomination for the Senate. Minnesota has been plagued by chaos and controversy all year starting with ICE coming out in force in January in a series of violent and public confrontations that led to multiple ICE related to deaths and the focus of the world on Minneapolis. Tim Walz, who just two years ago had his public profile raised as Kamala Harris Vice Presidential nominee, was embroiled in a welfare scandal and announced he would not seek reelection. This led Amy Klobuchar to announce she was running for governor and a certain amount of electoral turmoil in a reliably Democratic state. This may have led to the voters choosing Flanagan over Craig.

And despite Minnesota having been one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation for more than sixty years, particularly at a statewide level, Flanagan was seen constantly polling far lower than the average Democrat candidate has with multiple polls continuing to show her within the margin of error over Republican candidate Michele Tafoya.

The comparison has to be made in both these midwestern states in comparison to the gubernatorial race in each. Amy Klobuchar has always been polling significantly ahead of her Republican opponent by 8 to 10 points with a weighted average of 10.6 percent.  By contrast the weighted average shows Flanagan's margin at 6 percent over Tafoya. Similarly while polls have shown El-Sayid on average 5.8 percent ahead of Rogers, Jocelyn Benson the nominee for Governor of Michigan has always been ahead of her Republican opponent John James by double digits and is currently 9 percent of him on average going into the final weekend.

And it's worth noting that a major cause that progressives such as AOC and Ilhan Ohmar have been infuriated by is why the DNC hasn't given what they consider sufficient support to the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida Angie Nixon, a former DSA member who managed an upset primary win over Alexander Vindman this August. It's not that complicated. The Democratic Party is concentrating on races that it has a chance of winning and Nixon has no chance of defeating Ashley Moody.

There has never been a moment in Nixon's campaign where she has been even close to within the margin of error of her Republican opponent. Going into October while there are polls show that she has narrowed the gap slightly the most charitable ones have her losing by at least six percent. Florida has been increasingly red during the last decade and it was always a long shot that any Democrat was going to win there. But going into the primary all polls showed Alexander Vindman running a closer race against Moody, some showing him statistically tied. There was never any poll before or after the primary that showed Nixon within 5 points of defeating Moody.  Winning in Florida was always going to be an uphill climb in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats in registration by nearly two to one. Nominating a DSA candidate sealed any chance we had of winning there and the Democratic Party knows that even if AOC and the Squad won't acknowledge it.

A Times Op-Ed acknowledged part of the reason that Republicans lost reasons that have been winnable is that they've had a history of nominating far right candidates who win the primary but lose in the general. This played out quite a bit  during Trump's tenure as his decision to empower Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker almost certainly cost the GOP a chance to take the Senate in the last midterms. The Democrats had mostly managed to avoid these mistakes in the 21^st century and when they did make them they were overpowered by so much of the actions of Trump.

But when the left unified behind Graham Platner in Maine as a 'working class progressive' despite all of the very real warning signs it looked very much like the left was about to do just that. Platner's campaign spectacularly imploded during the summer, forcing the Democrats to go to the fallback position of Troy Jackson. It may yet work out – the polls do show Jackson still ahead of Collins as we go into the final weekend – but it was clear just how badly the left was prepared to sabotage the Democrats nationally in the name of ideological purity.

The danger, as I said, is not about what happens in this cycle but in 2028 and going forward. It is imperative that the Democrats not repeat the same mistakes they made in the aftermath of 2018, particularly now that our enemy for the last decade is very soon going to be gone from the field of battle. (Remembering just how little good against so many of his soldiers in Congress who survived despite labeling them is MAGA would help us well.) This means doing an accounting of where these kinds of candidates are weak and where they are strong. And this election cycle will give us multiple opportunities to show exactly that across America.

The consensus among all major pollsters is that in addition to winning control of both houses of Congress the Democrats are favored to either win or be in control of the majority of the governorship this cycle for the first time in 20 years.  And in almost every state where there is a competitive senate race there's also a gubernatorial race. After all the ballots are counted on Election Day we'll be able to compare just how well ultra progressive candidates such as El-Sayid and Flanagan did in comparison to more moderate governors such as Benson and Klobuchar.

And we will be obligated to extend it in every other state in play as well. It will be less important in states such as Illinois or Ohio where we are favored to win both statewide races handily. But there will be multiple cases where it is looking like ballot-splitting may take place at a far greater level in several critical states, either for the senatorial or gubernatorial candidate. We will likely see this in Texas where James Talarico is heavily favored to win but Greg Abbott is looking like he will narrowly hold on the governor's race or in Georgia where Jon Osoff is expected to win in a landslide but gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms has been running either dead even or trailing Republican candidate Rick Jackson. Considering that four years ago Brian Kemp beat Stacy Abrams by eight points to win reelection but Raphael Warnock managed to prevail against Herschel Walker in the Senate we'll have to pay close attention, particularly because Warnock will be up for reelection in 2028 as well.

It may also cut both ways in Iowa where Rob Sand is expected to win the governor's race in a landslide but Josh Turek is in a razor-thin race with Republican Ashley Hinson. It's looking like we're going to win three of the four Congressional districts this cycle so we're going to need to know why Turek polled poorer to Sand.

We'll also have to see how badly Nixon does compared to David Jolly in the race for the Florida governorship. Jolly has been polling slightly better against Bryan Donalds for governor then Nixon has for the Senate but not by that  much, usually at most trailing by three or four points. Still we need to do better for the future which is coming up soon – Moody will be running for reelection in her own right in two years and we will get another bite at the apple.

To do an autopsy on the midterms when its looking very much like we're going to have a generational wave may seem like I'm taking the tone of the kinds of nattering nabobs of negativism that make up so much of the columns. The thing is we've been down this road before. In the aftermath of the 2006 midterms and then the Obama landslide many in the party and others thought that this was the beginning of the end for the GOP. Just two years after that came the Tea Party and within 6 years all the Democratic gains we made were completely washed away, which led us pretty much to where we are now. The fact that we took the wrong conclusion from the 2018 elections made it very clear that the Democratic Party, given the opportunity can and will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Republican Party and the conservative movement have always known the weakness of  our own left flank are the best weapon they have to maintain their control over those working class voters who find the policies and approach of those such as AOC and Mamdani incredibly distasteful at best. While that weapon has lost much of its effectiveness during Trump's second term, that doesn't mean it's still not potent nor that America is any more willing to accept the warm embrace of collectivism. The left in other cities and states may yearn for an Mamdani of their own unwilling to accept that in his own city Mamdani is viewed with mixed emotions at best.

The good news that if – or more likely – when the Democrats do very well Tuesday it will be because they have chosen to embrace the idea of centrist candidates like Talarico and Brown far more then those of El-Sayid and Angie Nixon. There has to be room in our big tent for all of them but we have to be sure that one does crowd the other out. We've managed a decent job keeping them relatively on the fringes to this point. It's important this remains the status quo after this election and the ones to come for the good of the Democratic Party, if not the country as a whole.