Suddenly, Green Shoots of Dem Optimism About the Senate
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill has given the opposition party some modest, new hope about the upper chamber.
Dreams of the Upper Chamber
DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERS ACKNOWLEDGE that their path to taking back the Senate in 2026 is incredibly steep. In my own conversations with party officials, their attitude can often venture into doomerism: a type of reluctant acceptance that they won’t obtain the Senate majority for the foreseeable future.
Such cynicism isn’t without reason. Next year, Democrats have to defend two seats in states that Donald Trump won (Georgia and Michigan) as well as flip four Republican-held seats to get just a bare 51–49 majority. When you list the states where the party has the best chances of flipping seats, the difficulty of the task becomes even clearer: Maine and North Carolina, plus some combination of Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, Alaska, and Ohio.
But over the past few days, in conversations with those same officials, I’ve started to detect a note of, if not confidence, at least not abject despair. For the first time, Democrats are starting to say out loud that they can see a way to flip the Senate. Sure, some of it might be wishcasting, some of it self-delusion.
But this isn’t just a mood swing—there are real facts and insights giving Democrats reasons for hope. Over the past few days, I’ve heard probably the most optimistic outlook from Democrats of any since the start of the Trump administration.
Read on to understand why.