What the Democrats Must Do Now to Defeat Trump

Donald Trump’s name was nowhere to be found on the ballots of the 2018 midterm elections, but the vote, as he put it at one rally, “is a referendum about me.” In recent weeks, as he appeared at one rally after another, the President became himself, only more so, slamming the press, sliming opponents, and waging the most bigoted national political campaign in this country since the days of George Wallace.
The Democratic Party failed to achieve a “blue wave,” an overwhelming victory that would have represented a nationwide repudiation of the 2016 election. Our divisions have only deepened. But Trump lost in some consequential ways. In a high-turnout election, the G.O.P. yielded control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats for the first time in eight years—a crucial check on Presidential power. A record number of women were elected to Congress—a reflection, in part, of a #MeToo movement that the President has disdained. At least four of them were young women of color, including Rashida Tlaib, in Michigan; Ilhan Omar, in Minnesota; Lauren Underwood, in Illinois; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in New York. Democrats also improved, since 2016, among Midwestern and suburban voters. And, for the second time in two years, Trump and his allies lost the popular vote.
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