This year appears likely to bring a similar swing, in what political scientists sometimes call a “thermostatic” reaction to the previous election (as when a thermostat switches on and off to adjust between too hot and too cold). In this case, it will also be a specific response to the ideological excesses, broken promises, and epic corruption of the Trump administration.

Some midterm backlashes are not much more than that— thermostatic swings in the numbers and majorities in Congress, after which the administration settles back to a compromised middle period. But other midterm elections have an impact that goes well beyond the electoral numbers, and consequences that last longer than a two-term presidency. A “blue” or “red” “wave” is usually measured by the number of seats flipped and the winning party’s new margin in each House of Congress. But there have been midterms that had consequences beyond the numbers. In the 1994 midterm, for example, voters not only repudiated Bill Clinton’s modest tax increases and clumsy attempt at health reform, the election also broke a four-decade run of Democratic control of the House that had been baked into assumptions about how Washington worked. And it brought to power Newt Gingrich and an arrogant, ugly, gleefully dishonest mode of Republican politics that has deepened over 30 years. Although Gingrich’s hubris caught up with him just a few years later, Republicans held onto the House for the next 12 years, and 24 of the last 30.

A comparable counterreaction to Obama, in 2010, probably mattered even more. . Aside from recapturing the House just four years after Democrats won it back, the GOP achieved “trifectas” — full control of the state legislature and governor’s office — in 23 states, at just the right time to control redistricting after the 2010 census. They were able to lock in not only future gains in the House, but also use gerrymandering to perpetuate control of state legislatures for the next 16 years. As a result, even when states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have elected Democratic governors, those governors ability to achieve change have been sharply constrained.

Not only did the recent practice of aggressive partisan gerrymandering, even mid-decade or weeks before an election, have its roots in that moment, a new mode of politician emerged, the Tea Party and later the Freedom Caucus Republican: even more willing than the Gingrich crowd to engage in vicious political language, with a strong view of politics as a conflict of “makers and takers,” uninterested in finding shared ground on immigration, social policy, or other issues where their predecessors had been more cautious. Although they were more similar in style than substance, the Tea Party reactionaries walked so Trump could run.

You’ll notice that I’ve cited two notable backlash elections won by Republicans. A theory I’m testing here is that one source of Republican and conservative resilience over the last few decades is simply that they gained more durable power from their midterm wins than Democrats took from their own successes. In the last 50 years, Democrats have had big midterms in 1982 (amid the Reagan recession), 2006, and 2018, gaining between 26 and 41 House seats in each. Not only were those smaller numbers than the 54 and 63 seats Republicans gained in 1994 and 2010, these were fairly standard elections in which the numbers and majorities changed, but not much else.1 For the most part, Democrats regained swing districts with more ideologically moderate candidates, or continued a pattern of gains in traditionally Republican districts in the Northeast, in affluent suburbs, and in diversifying areas such as in California.

Many of the House members elected in those Democratic cycles were predictably more ideologically “moderate” than their colleagues, and thus also more cautious, and later they were often unreliable allies to the Democratic presidents elected in 2008 and 2020. Again, this is a theory and deserves a more careful quantitative analysis, but my hypothesis is that midterm gains in 2006 and 2018 mostly pulled the Democratic caucus to the right, while Republicans’ big midterm wins also bolstered the right wing of their caucus, shifting the whole system rightward. Republican midterms changed their party and the scope of political possibility in ways that Democratic backlash wins did not.

A Democratic Midterm that Really Mattered

You might have noticed that I limited my analysis above to “the last 50 years.” If we open the aperture by just two more years, we could include the 1974 election, which would have been the second midterm of the Nixon presidency, if Nixon had not already resigned and turned the White House over to Gerald Ford. Democrats gained 48 House seats that year, and five in the Senate, more than in any midterm since. But more notably, the Class of ‘74, sometimes known as the Watergate Babies, brought an attitude and energy that was a noticeable break from the establishment Democrats of that time.

Above all, it was a generational shift, as the first Boomers reached adulthood, shaped by the experience of opposition to the Vietnam War, wider access to higher education (including law school), and in reaction to the corruption of the Nixon administration. Some younger members had already emerged in 1972, such as Colorado representative Patricia Schroeder and New York’s Elizabeth Holtzman, both of whom broke through in primaries, in Holtzman’s case defeating the liberal, but far-too-old chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Another member of the 1972 group was Joe Biden, also not quite a Boomer but still not old enough to serve in the Senate on the day he was elected.

The 1974 class included figures such as California’s Henry Waxman, one of the most productive legislators in modern history and a master of investigations, and Gary Hart, who had been George McGovern’s campaign manager in 1972 and later an ill-fated, underappreciated presidential candidate himself. Bill Clinton first ran for office in 1974, unsuccessfully, and Al Gore’s political career began two years later. The 1970s Democrats overthrew several octogenarian committee chairs, took reform and transparency seriously, embraced the consumer and environmental movements, and understood that developing expertise on a complex issue could be a source of political power on its own. And in part because quite a few of them had defeated older incumbents who had lost touch with their constituents, they were determined not to repeat those mistakes, building robust constituent services operations and filling their time at home with town hall meetings and other ways to remain accessible, including to hostile constituents. That level of personal engagement enabled many to hold their seats for decades even as their districts moved to the right.

By the 1990s, when I worked in the Senate, Democratic politicians first elected in the 1970s were at the peak of their formal power. Many, such as Clinton, had begun to seem compromised, especially in confronting the economic inequalities and neoliberal consensus that emerged in the 1980s. They showed little appreciation for the traditional New Deal vision represented by some of the old chairmen they ousted. Hart’s comment, “We’re not a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys,” is often quoted as evidence of their rejection of progressive politics, and its true that they had lost the deep connection to New Deal liberalism that, thankfully, animates many progressives today. In part that’s because Humphrey, who as vice president had been constrained from speaking out about Vietnam in roughly the same way Kamala Harris was about Gaza, really did represent the ways in which the older Cold War liberal tradition had gone off the tracks.

But my point is not so much about the ideological commitments of the 1970s politicians, which varied widely, but their approach to politics, which was inclusive, aspirational, energetic, reformist and at best, daring. Similarly, for all the attention to the ideological positioning of the 2026 candidates, it’s their approach to politics—their tone and energy—that is most distinctive. Obviously, they too are young at a moment when the political establishment is mired in gerontocracy, but they also seem willing to engage with people of various kinds and in a way that politicians of the last two decades, constrained by cautious demographic micro-targeting of voters and media, have not been. They are able to be themselves, to share aspects of their lives that older politicians would never consider, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s charming and informative videos about her decision to freeze her eggs as the ultimate expression of that openness.

There are sometimes uncanny parallels: Just as Patricia Schroeder was a 32-year-old lawyer who challenged an establishment Democrat on an anti-war platform and defeated a Republican incumbent in 1972 to win the Denver congressional seat, Melat Kiros is a a 29-year-old lawyer who defeated Schroeder’s successor, Diana DeGette, for the same seat.2

Even when their ideological positions might seem out of step, or perhaps just ahead of public opinion as measured by polls, these candidates have the tangible advantage that they are saying what they actually believe. That has an appeal of its own. For example, I’m not an enthusiastic advocate for single-payer health care or Medicare for All. (I appreciate it as an ideal, but worry about the transition and the potential for backlash, just because health care change makes people particularly anxious.) But it doesn’t make me like Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed any less to hear him make a passionate, knowledgeable case for M4A, rooted in his own experience and expertise. That kind of commitment can connect to voters in a way that poll-tested, compromised positions rarely will.

These Democratic candidates also share a commitment to structural reforms and accountability for corruption, much like the ‘70s cohort who essentially constructed the mechanisms of accountability and limits on power that held for half a century. Where establishment Democrats shift every conversation to “affordability” and the poll-tested messages, newer Dems connect those concerns to Trumpian corruption and abuse of power, including the political influence of billionaires.

Perhaps some or many of these younger Democrats will lose, whether because of their positions or their lack of political experience, name recognition or (least likely) money. Even in big midterm sweeps, such as 2010, some challengers don’t make it. But if candidates like el-Sayed, Florida nominee Angie Nixon, or various younger insurgent House candidates do succeed, 2026 will be the kind of midterm election that Democrats have not seen in many decades, one that transforms the basic rules of politics, for a decade or more to come.

Affordability is a familiar theme in American politics, but it’s often been used with a modifier: Politicians talk about college affordability, or health care costs, more often than the one word on its own, and the use of the word has gained traction in just the last year, as measured by its use in official emails from Democrats in Congress.

On its own, the word creates a capacious political theme. It’s a plain-sense word that won’t wind up on any list of “words to avoid,” such as the one put out by the centrist lobby group Third Way that targets useful but specialized phrases such as “food insecurity.” It goes well beyond “inflation,” which represents only the recent change in prices for a basket of goods and not all our experiences of costs. The word also encompasses costs that are persistently high, as the result of past inflation, although actually bringing down prices across the board—deflation—is usually associated with deep recession. Far better, as Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute argued recently, would be policies that raise wages, which is the other dimension of affordability. Median wages rose during the Biden administration, but price inflation negated most of those gains; wage gains with steady prices would have the same effect as lowering prices. As Becky Chao and Mike Konczal of the Economic Security Project say in their excellent recent paper, “The Affordability Framework,” affordability is where “broken incomes” and “broken markets” meet.

Affordability is universal, but also a young adult issue

If “things cost too much” (inflation) and “I don’t make enough” (income) are two dimensions of affordability, there’s a third dimension, which is something like, “I can’t afford what I most need at this stage of life.” The costs of housing (rental or first home purchase), child care, and higher education or training (whether current or financed by debt), and health insurance are not only high, but often pile up at exactly the period in the life cycle, typically, one’s 20s and early 30s, when people’s incomes tend to be lower, they are more likely to be managing student loans and other debts, and they may want to reduce their hours of work if they’re starting a family.

“Affordability” is a powerfully universal theme, but it hits differently for someone with a recent degree (or still completing their schooling), considering having children, aspiring to buy a home, and burdened by debts, compared to someone later in life with a nearly paid-off mortgage from 20 years ago and no need for child care. Although some costs hit later in life, usually people are more settled at that point, their incomes are higher, and they’re more likely to have a buffer of savings.

It’s become commonplace to say that the current 25-34 generation might be the first that will not do better than their parents. That remains to be seen—it’s been said in the past, too. But there’s no doubt that the generation’s current circumstances are particularly difficult, and also that, politically, they are volatile and persuadable.

“Affordability,” then, is both a universalist response, and one that’s targeted to the concerns of a portion of the population that most needs support. It also creates a new language to talk about a “care economy,” particularly child care, paid leave, and flexible work, in a way that speaks to both men and women.

Who is the affordability villain?

But there’s one puzzle about the Democratic and progressive embrace of the theme of affordability. It seems to violate a broadly accepted dogma about political narrative: Stories need a villain. MAGA, of course, is all about villains. Anat Shenker-Osorio, the preeminent consultant on progressive narrative, reminds us that a compelling political argument should be based on “values, vision, and villains.” Messages that describe a problem in the abstract, without naming the bad actor(s) responsible for the problem, don’t resonate or persuade. This insight has become familiar wisdom, and Democrats have sought to move on from Obama’s high-minded language of solving problems together. And many economic narratives lend themselves to naming a villian—greedy Wall Streeters or private equity, health insurance companies, etc., though these stories often oversimplify the real dynamics.

So why doesn’t anyone seem concerned that “affordability” breaks this principle? Who is the affordability villain? Or is it possible that the message is strong, even without naming a bad guy?

One way to square the circle is to argue that affordability is, to borrow Konczal and Chao’s word, more a “framework” than a narrative. Within the loose and inclusive concept, there are a dozen ways to tell the story, and their paper includes many of them, and many of those stories could be structured in a way that clearly identifies the bad actors, or those who profit from making life less affordable. Another possibility is that for the majority of Americans, the villain is right there, occupying our attention all the time, in the form of Donald Trump. He hardly needs to be named, and even if he’s not directly responsible for, say, the high cost of child care, he’s the president and most people now dislike him and distrust him.

But it’s also possible that every story doesn’t really need a villain. Sometimes a language of shared problem-solving, working together rather than placing blame, can be effective, too. Progressives often cite FDR, declaring in Madison Square Garden in 1936 that the wealthy bankers hate him, and “I welcome their hate” as an example of a vigorous, inspiring naming-of-villains. But FDR had many moods, and for every “welcome their hate” moment, there were others where his theme was “bold, persistent experimentation” to bring the economy out of recession, or the sense of shared purpose needed to mobilize for WWII.

Language of shared purpose may seem flabby or inadequate to the challenges of this moment, a leftover from Obama’s naivete. But it also has a rich tradition in American progressivism and, in the form of the “affordability” theme, might still have some relevance to the fights ahead.

Trump has defied several of these laws, in some cases indicating that he’ll push for  a Supreme Court loaded with his allies to overturn them. Others, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act limiting overseas bribery, he’s declared he won’t enforce. He persuaded Congress, in the recent spending bill, to waive parts of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that would constrain his ability to impose tariffs. He and DOGE have found ingenious ways to cut off spending appropriated by Congress, hoping to provoke a direct challenge to the Impoundment Control Act, which formalizes the Constitutional clause that gives Congress the “power of the purse.” He fired many of the inspectors general, and appointed political loyalists, including two of his personal lawyers, to top posts at the Justice Department, while firing individual prosecutors via an email from the White House.

There’s one thing that these laws and norms that Trump rejects have in common. All have their origins in a single burst of reformist energy, roughly 50 years ago. After the Watergate scandal and related abuses of power during Richard Nixon’s presidency, Congress between roughly 1974 and 1978 passed a remarkable series of laws intended to rein in what scholars at the time called “the imperial presidency” and ensure accountability to Congress and the Constitution. 

Alongside new laws, a set of widely understood principles emerged in the mid-70s, among them the autonomy of the Justice Department. After Nixon’s first two attorney generals faced criminal charges, Edward Levi, named to the post by Gerald Ford, formalized the hands-off relationship in a series of memos and speeches, all of which were respected almost to a fault by President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. But those memos proved no bar to Trump, who like Nixon has appointed his personal lawyers to top positions and recently appeared at the Department to call for the criminal prosecution of cable news channels and lawyers who had been involved in cases involving him or the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021. 

The post-Watergate settlement, which also includes laws such as the Federal Campaign Reform Act and the War Powers Resolution, represented a moment when the constitutional ideals of the separation of powers were fully realized in law, in much the same way that the civil rights revolution of the 1960s made real and enforceable the promise of equality in the 14th Amendment. As political theorist Jacob Levy has argued, “the separation of powers might well be the crucial concept in what we have come to think of as constitutionalism or constitutional government.”

The post-Watergate guardrails on presidential power were an extraordinary accomplishment for the legislators of that idealistic era. 
It’s a defensive line that, for the most part, fell quickly under Trump’s assault. But the structure was fraying before Trump came along. The campaign finance law, for example, had become a dead letter long before the 2010 Citizens United decision, when candidates in the 2000s began to ignore its voluntary limits and public financing, and spending moved into super PACs and outside channels. The War Powers Resolution was never fully accepted by presidents of either party. Presidents before Trump had tested the independence of the Justice Department, notably in the George W. Bush administration.

Resistance to the 1970s reforms was given a veneer of legitimacy by the conservative legal scholars who developed the “unitary executive” theory of presidential power, in particular challenging Congress’s right to establish independent agencies. The Republican dissent in the final report of the congressional committees that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987, led by then-Rep. Dick Cheney, was another significant kick at the foundations of the Watergate-era reforms.  

Trump’s demolition of the post-Watergate boundaries was never an end in itself.  Most are formal procedures, technical and abstract, and don’t directly affect people. But it’s what’s on the other side of the line that matters, the abuses that become possible without these guardrails. We’re not merely turning the clock back to 1973. Considerably more malevolent than Nixon, Trump has already moved far beyond these boundaries toward what appears to be his primary goal: a fully personalized presidency that allows him to mete out punishments to perceived enemies and rewards to those who show sufficient deference.

To achieve that authoritarian goal requires smashing through barriers even when it’s not necessary to defy Congress. The attack on the Impoundment Act is particularly telling about the administration’s intentions. Passed as a component of the law that creates the modern federal budget process, the act reaffirms that the President cannot prevent appropriated funds from being spent, but creates an alternate process for a president to reclaim unspent funds, known as rescission. With a rescission request, Trump could ask Congress to rescind appropriated funds and Congress would be required to vote on the request. It couldn’t be filibustered in the Senate. With unified Republican control, Trump could in theory have cut any spending he or DOGE identified as wasteful. 

But instead of following that process, they devised tricks to cut off programs by firing employees, placing employees on administrative leave, shutting down the buildings that house agencies, or cancelling specific grant payments across the board. Such tactics give the administration direct and unfettered leverage not only over agencies and professional staff, but thousands of companies, non-profit organizations, and state and local governments that depend on federal grants or contracts. While some of these moves may be constrained by courts, the sheer volume means that it will be too late to reverse many. In both Project 2025 and the November op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that launched DOGE, administration officials have said that they believe the Supreme Court would reverse precedent and side with them on the President’s power to unilaterally cancel spending. 

The end result is what the legislators of the mid-1970s had reason to worry about: a government reduced to individual transactional power, in which a single figure can grant or withhold funding, clemency, or autonomy to millions of individuals and organizations. 

The post-Watergate guardrails fell quickly, but seeing how quickly they were built can be a source of hope. Perhaps after this chaotic, autocratic era ends, a new and similarly idealistic Congress will set out to rebuild the structures that balance power and responsibility. But rather than rebuild them as they were, we should seek to understand their vulnerabilities and find a better model.

What did the generation of fifty years ago get wrong? First, they didn’t foresee what political parties could become, or that a party could become completely beholden to a single individual. They assumed that institutions, such as Congress or the Appropriations Committees, would zealously guard their own interests first. After all, this was the same era in which the Democratic committee chairs turned on a newly elected Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, over his attempts to cut spending on water projects. 

Second, the 1970s reformers presumably didn’t foresee a Supreme Court that would become so partisan and open to fringe theories such as those underlying the presidential immunity case. Although a majority of the justices in the mid-70s had been appointed by Republican presidents, the Court remained moderate and far more concerned about abuses of power than the current Court. Perhaps some form of Supreme Court reform will be necessary to back up the reconstruction of the boundaries on presidential power.

There will be so much to rebuild after the current wrecking-ball campaign against government comes to an end, but it’s not too soon to start envisioning it. The post-Watergate rush of reforms is a good model, but also contains lessons about what not to do.

My general reaction to the argument is mixed. On the one hand, some demands will have other political consequences that politicians should consider. As long as I’ve paid attention to politics, successful Democratic candidates have tried to dodge making commitments to win party primaries that will cost them in a general election. But much of Jentleson’s claim about 2024 hinges on commitments made five years ago, in the run-up to the 2020 primaries, when the progressive “lane” was crowded and Harris, much like Julián Castro, overbid for that slot.

At the same time, I don’t think Democrats should preemptively compromise on matters of basic human rights and dignity, and they should at least listen to groups that have large, mobilized constituencies that can provide meaningful support, such as organized labor or the abortion-rights movement. It’s true that there are groups that have a staff and presence in DC, but don’t really have the constituency they claim, and thrive mainly on financial support from foundations. Democratic politicians should be able to recognize them.

I also liked Jentleson’s suggestion of “supermajority thinking” for Democrats — to think broadly rather than narrowly about potential allies. But that seems more an indictment of the obsession with data and microtargeting voters as it is of “the groups.”

But mainly I want to zoom in on one paragraph that I haven’t seen mentioned in all the discussion, in which Jentleson singles out his model of an effective “group,” one that I basically share:

My admiration and respect for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is boundless and goes back to the 1990s, when I worked for a progressive member of the Senate Finance Committee. At one time, I knew almost everyone who worked at the Center on Budget, and I still know the main phone number by heart (408-1080). As a foundation program officer, I helped expand its network of state-level affiliates, which has proven extraordinarily effective at improving policies for low-income families in the states.

But I’m mystified by Jentleson’s assertion that the Center’s approach is now “considered unfashionable.” According to the public tax information available at Pro Publica, the Center’s revenues (largely grants from charitable foundations) more than doubled between 2018 and 2022. I have no doubt that if the Trump administration attempts to cut Food Stamps and Medicaid as a way to pay for tax cuts, as reported, the Center will be there with the analysis that will help make the case against those cuts or moderate their impact, just as their analysis helped block George W. Bush’s move to privatize Social Security in 2005.

But as valuable as it is, such policy work is rarely enough on its own. Analysis and data won’t encourage politicians to recognize that there will be political consequences for their choices. For that, they need to see and hear a mobilized constituency. The Center on Budget’s strategic genius is that it knows exactly what it’s good at and sticks closely to it. But such an organization—and this is also true of its state affiliates—is more effective working in a coalition, or at least in parallel with other kinds of activist groups that do other things.

This may seem a nitpicky thing, but I was taken aback by the blanket critique of “the groups,” while singling out for exception one particular group, even though I share Jentleson’s admiration for it.

Finally, my view is that the problem is not so much “the groups,” their funders, or a particular set of tactics. I think the problem is “Overton Window” thinking — that is, the pervasive idea that by advocating a policy proposal that’s outside of what’s currently on the agenda, one can shift the window of what’s considered possible, and get a better result even if it falls short of your demand. For example, demanding single-payer health insurance moves the window in that direction and the result might be better health policy even if not the ideal.

But there’s really no such thing as the “Overton Window.” It’s not a political science theory, much less a law. The man credited with it, Joseph Overton, was a fundraiser for a libertartian think tank in Michigan, the Mackinac Center. It was a clever fundraising pitch for his organization.

Sometimes putting an out-there idea on the agenda might work. For example, there’s some speculation that Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general will fail but make it easier for another nefarious or unqualified candidate to be confirmed. We’ll see. But often taking such positions simply takes an organization out of the conversation entirely. As Jentleson says, it also forces a difficult choice on politicians asked to support a constituency. It would be better if everyone — “the groups,” politicians, funders, etc. — just thought through what they really think would be good, achievable policy, with some support from policy organizations as needed, and advocated for that.

During the first Trump administration, and into the early Biden years, a debate emerged among progressive Democrats about two political strategies, similar but different in one respect: “Popularism,” an idea promoted by some young pollsters, was simply the idea that Democratic candidates should advocate policies that appeared to have broad public support. The alternative, called “Deliverism,” argued that a Democratic administration needed to do more than promise good things; it needed to actively improve people’s lives. Think of it as the difference between Bill Clinton’s politics, full of symbolic but immaterial gestures, and FDR, in which big moves like rural electrification transformed people’s expectations of what government could do for them.

These were actually unduly complicated terms for a basic story we’ve all been told about how politics and government works. When the economy does well for most households, and when programs help create security and opportunity for more people to participate in that economy, political rewards follow. It’s a simple feedback loop. It’s the story we tell about FDR, but also about Ronald Reagan, for example—after a sharp recession in his first term, the economy recovered and voters gave him credit for it, credit that extended to his party for years.

What I’m looking for in the 2024 election is some indication of whether this feedback loop still works at all, and if not, whether we can ever hope to recreate some connection between policies—what government does—and politics—the process by which people express what they want government to do, and who they trust to do it. If there’s no longer a connection between policy and politics, or people are so locked into political identities that neither policy successes nor policy failures that directly affect their lives can shake them, then there’s no accountability in government, and little incentive for politicians to actually improve people’s lives.

Much of politics since Trump appeared almost a decade ago has cast doubt on this common-sense theory about politics and policy. That the 2020 election was so close, after Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and with unemployment still over 6 percent, was as mystifying as the fact that a majority of Americans today describe the economy as poor despite an unemployment rate that’s remained near or below 4 percent for three years, sustained economic growth, the highest labor force participation rates ever recorded, and real wage growth in the lower and middle portions of the economic ladder. Further, legislation enacted under Biden generated real investment—and jobs—in the very counties and regions that had been left behind during the decades before. The administration supported unions and challenged neoliberal dogma on trade. And while there’s terrifying conflict and tragedy in the world, and the US must do more to end it, it’s also true that after two decades, U.S. troops are not directly involved.

It’s tempting to come up with a glib, knowing answer to the failure of this shining story of “deliverism” in practice. Maybe it was just inflation. Sure, inflation hits hard, and hits every household, but it’s been more than two years since price increases peaked and 15 months since the Consumer Price Index dropped to a familiar 3 percent level, while gasoline prices are barely over $3/gallon. Maybe it was just the media talking down the economy, or the influence of moneyed interests, or “vibes,” but people have a sense of their own well-being. Maybe we’re in a post-materialist era, when politics isn’t about “who gets what” (as a classic political science text of the mid-20th century put it) but about identity, alienation, disconnection from one another, or perhaps entirely unrelated anxiety about changing norms around race, gender, and sexuality.

I don’t want to rush to an answer. Sometimes it’s best to pause and admit what we don’t know, that the stories we’ve been told about how economics, policy, personal well-being, and political success interact with each other no longer make sense. But perhaps some clarity will emerge in the patterns of the election.

The most notable of these patterns is the inversion of political coalitions, in which more affluent suburbs and their college-credentialed residents move in the direction of Democrats, while voters without degrees, possibly including a growing number of Black and Latino voters, move in the direction of Trump’s Republicans. Republican support for Kamala Harris, particularly from iconic figures of the traditionally conservative party such as Liz Cheney and her father, is a big part of that story.

But in a further instance of the disconnection between politics and policy, while many progressives are naturally anxious about what that coalition might mean, it doesn’t seem to mean anything in terms of policy. While Harris has pledged to “listen” to all sides and to business leaders, she’s made no real concessions. And the Democrats who represent these more affluent suburban communities are often as committed to policies that boost opportunity for lower-income and non-college-credentialed workers. Think of the policy advocated by Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and adopted by Harris of removing the requirement of a college degree for jobs that don’t really need it.

Meanwhile, the party that increasingly relies on a working-class base continues to embrace policies such as high-end tax cuts, massive spending cuts (now to be overseen by Elon Musk), and, unique to Trump, tariffs that would amount to a regressive national sales tax.

Will the election end with the coalitions and the policy agendas of the two parties and two presidential candidates so far out of line? Is it sustainable to expect that wealthy voters and their representatives will remain supportive of policies that help ordinary working families, while losing the political support of more and more of those families?

That seems to me the central question in American politics over the next several years or longer. Can we reconnect policy and politics in a way that the feedback loop between them works once again? Or must we reconstruct it on a different basis, perhaps a new configuration of new parties? The 2024 election won’t answer that question, but perhaps it will provide some clues.

Whether Trump or Harris wins the presidency, they might take office with a House and Senate of the same party, or the opposing party. Or a friendly House and a Senate controlled by the other party, or the inverse.

In all, there are eight possible combinations of President, Senate, and House. Which of these eight configurations of government emerges after November 5 matters almost as much as the top-line presidential result. And every one of the eight combinations is possible, though not equally probable. That’s unusual. By a rough estimate, the last time the presidency and both houses of Congress were legitimately in play in the same year was twenty years ago, in 2004, and also in 2000. (“In play” means the House majority is within about 30 seats and the Senate about five, but I’m not considering the actual competitiveness of individual seats.) Two decades ago, there was still a fair amount of ideological overlap between the parties, so the precise party divide was less consequential than it would be in the current context.

The complete configuration of the federal government, among the eight options, will have consequences for appointments, legislation, and oversight. But the two parties have different priorities, so, for example, passing legislation other than tax cuts might be less important to Trump and his Republican allies than to Democrats. The options are not symmetrical.

Let’s start with the paths that involve unified government. Needless to say, Trump as president with a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House would be exactly as untethered and unaccountable as his recent behavior would lead you to expect, and as terrifying. Most appointments could be confirmed, there would be no meaningful oversight of the administration or his agenda of retribution, and legislation to extend and expand his 2017 tax cuts, along with changes to health care —including gutting the Affordable Care Act and reversing Biden’s drug-price cuts, perhaps along with Trump’s more absurd recent tax promises, such as to make interest on auto loans deductible — would be easy to achieve through the budget reconciliation process, bypassing the Senate filibuster. In the best case, Trump might encounter some resistance on the most extreme appointments (e.g., Kash Patel to CIA) or legislation from one or two senators, notably Lisa Murkowski, but would probably have a free hand in all other respects. And given the extraordinary scope of executive power in some areas, Trump wouldn’t need legislation to accomplish many of his stated goals, such as mass deportations, punitive tariffs, and the use of the Department of Justice to exact retribution on his perceived enemies.

Notably, unified Republican government would enable Congress to use a special tool to reverse some of the regulatory actions of the Biden administration, the Congressional Review Act. There’s a fast track for CRA “resolutions of disapproval,” so they can’t be filibustered. The CRA process has been around since 1996, but it was used only once before 2017, when the Trump administration and a Republican House and Senate used it to reverse 16 rules from the Obama administration. When Democrats held unified power in 2021, CRA was used three times to reverse Trump-administration rules.

Like other exceptions to the filibuster, CRA favors conservative, deregulatory goals. The exceptions, and the policy bias they induce, are in many ways the best argument for eliminating the filibuster altogether.

Harris with a unified Democratic congress is a less likely prospect, if only because Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate were always long. If it happens, progressives will be tempted to imagine that a Senate liberated from Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will be willing to ditch the filibuster, or at least carve out more exceptions, such as for voting rights or, as Harris has suggested, to reinstate the protections of Roe v. Wade. But while Manchin and Sinema’s narcissism won’t be matched, there are other quieter skeptics of filibuster reform — such as Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed — and some of new senators who would be necessary to a majority, such as the promising Nebraska independent, Dan Osborn, will likely balk at ending the filibuster. That would leave Harris, like Biden in 2021 and 2022, with the narrow set of policy priorities that could be achieved through budget reconciliation or through compromise with a few Republicans. Priorities such as raising the federal minimum wage or the PRO Act to facilitate union organizing would be near impossible, despite Republican talk of being a “workers’ party.” Harris’s proposal for Medicare coverage of at-home care would be complicated to pass through reconciliation, for the same reasons the Affordable Care Act was in 2010, and she would need more revenue for it than even a Democratic congress is likely to support.

Turning to various forms of divided government: If Harris wins and faces opposition control of either house of congress, she’ll have little hope for legislation other than broadly popular measures such as those that Biden passed with bipartisan support. Without the Senate, she’ll be severely constrained in her ability to get appointees confirmed, including cabinet members and judges. Much will depend on whether the next Republican leader can hold the party together with as much discipline as Mitch McConnell exercised, but if not, Murkowski and a few others might break to support some very mainstream nominees. Reconciliation will be a tool only for a bipartisan agreement on the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, with perhaps limited opportunities to improve the Child Tax Credit, for example.

If Republicans control the House but not the Senate, expect Harris to be subjected to relentless, harassing “oversight” from the likes of James Comer and Jim Jordan, on any topic they can find, even those far removed from the White House.

If Trump holds the presidency but Democrats hold the Senate, he’ll face the same opposition to appointments, but he may not care. After all, he spent the second half of his term in office with acting officials in many cabinet positions and declared “I like acting” because because officials in a precarious position of dependency gave him “more flexibility” to appoint and fire, and also to coerce them to do his bidding. Acting cabinet members face complex rules about who can serve and how long they can serve, which vary by agency, but Trump might be willing to test those rules in courts that have an expansive view of presidential power, or judges that he appointed himself.

If Democrats hold either the House or Senate in a Trump term, they will at least have some power of oversight, even if — as history already showed — they won’t be able to carry it to the meaningful consequence of impeachment, should that path be appropriate. Oversight and investigations is a specialty, often chosen by members with fairly safe seats. Generally the House does more of it, and the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, led by Jamie Raskin, seem ready to go. But there will be a set of senators, including newly elected Adam Schiff and Sheldon Whitehouse, who are likely to put most of their energy into investigations.

This is a long-winded survey of the electoral possibilities, but in thinking it all through, I come away with one key point: There’s no symmetry. All four options with Trump at the top are much worse than the options with Harris in the White House, of course. But the other options don’t balance out. Because of their policy preferences and differing regard for norms, Trump would have more freedom to act even with the supposed checks and balances of divided government than a President Harris would have under the same circumstances.

I don’t need to mention that a lot has happened in the two weeks since. One of those things is that the Democratic Party found a way to function as a party. The most difficult challenge a national political party faces is choosing a presidential nominee, and to replace a nominee at a moment of crisis and outside the normal political calendar raises the difficulty rating by several degrees. The party persuaded a nominee for the highest office to step aside and then built a quick consensus around a well-qualified successor in an orderly way that left minimal bad feelings.

None of this could be achieved by the exercise of raw power. No one, and no committee could have forced President Biden to accept the reality that he should not seek another term that would extend his presidency into the second half of his ninth decade. Nor could power alone generate the broad consensus among Democratic voters in support of Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden’s replacement.

By all accounts, a key role in this somewhat overdue transition belongs to Nancy Pelosi, who had been the leader of the House Democrats, and Speaker of the House for two separate stints since 2006. In 2024, Pelosi holds no formal power, her title, “Speaker Emeritus,” is an honorific that no one has held before, and she sits on no committees. She is influential with many Democratic donors, but ultimately they make their own decisions and there are hundreds of other large donors and tens of thousands of small donors who respect Pelosi, but don’t answer to her.

Pelosi’s achievement, in building an actual party that can achieve a collective decision and consensus, is all the more remarkable when we recognize how much she’s already done. In 2022, Pelosi’s House leadership team exemplified the Democrats’ gerontocracy problem. Pelosi, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, and Democratic Conference Chair James Clyburn were all in their 80s, all older than Biden, and while all were still capable, their leadership roles were the result of a deal cut 16 years earlier, when Democrats reclaimed the House in 2006.

And then one day in 2022, all the octogenarians calmly stepped aside and a leadership team of Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar — all roughly three decades younger — took their place. The transition was so smooth that it was barely noticed. Now the Democratic Party has a presidential candidate, and House leadership, in their 40s and 50s. And the House leadership has been as graceful and effective as any party outside the majority can be.

The achievement is all the more notable considering the continuous turmoil in House Republican leadership ever since Newt Gingrich stormed the beaches in 1994. Gingrich was ousted a few years later, and except for one period of stability when Dennis Hastert was speaker and Republican whip Tom DeLay pulled the strings, it’s been one crisis or coup after another. The Democratic side has had it’s own turmoil in the decades since Gingrich forced the resignation of Speaker Jim Wright, whose successor, Tom Foley, then lost his own seat representing the eastern part of Washington. Stability returned when Pelosi took over in 2006.

This is what thinking like a political party looks like. It’s not about bosses who can exercise power with threats and rewards, like Lyndon Johnson staring down a reluctant colleague. It’s building the capacity for collective action and cultivating some kind of consensus, through compromise as well as persuasion, at difficult moments. It shouldn’t depend on Nancy Pelosi — that’s a kind of personalized politics in its own way — but perhaps having done it once, the habit of thinking like a party will persist.

Democrats, on the other hand, had “no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on.” Each presidential candidate had to build an infrastructure for him or herself: “Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.” Some were more successful at that than others — the candidate who would be most successful at building such a candidate-centered structure was at that time still in his first months as a a senator from Illinois — but this personalized politics was fragile and incoherent.

I’ve been thinking about Bradley’s insight — which was not unique to him, but he expressed it better than anyone — since the June 27 debate debacle as I read various rants about how “the DNC” or “the party elders” or “the Democratic establishment” had foisted an aging president on Democratic voters, had forced out primary challengers and punished dissent; while that same party establishment could, if it chose, “put a different top” on the pyramid.

If only that were true! There was a time when there was a Democratic National Committee that operated somewhat autonomously from its presidential candidates, empowered in part by strong state- and sometimes local-level party leaders (aka “bosses”) who controlled blocs of convention delegates and resources. But that was eons ago, and had its downsides. As the Democratic Party became more democratic, particularly in a series of reforms before the 1972 election that expanded primaries, the institutions of the party became weaker and politics more personalized. Especially as more and more money flowed into politics, institutions such as the DNC and RNC became largely giant bank accounts, struggling to coordinate with other big pools of political cash, some controlled by individual mega-donors.

In this world of weak or hollow parties, politics is largely individualized. The choices that led to Biden’s securing renomination were personal and uncoordinated: Biden hinted that he would be a transitional president or “bridge” to the next generation of leadership, but at some point decided his remarkable successes meant he should run again. Other potential candidates except for a third-term member of the House chose not to run, not because they were threatened or yelled at but because they expected to lose and know that intra-party challengers such as Ted Kennedy in 1980, who opposed Jimmy Carter, often get the blame for weakening an incumbent. Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly supported Biden because they too respected his accomplishments and didn’t see a better alternative.

There are no “bosses” anywhere in this story, and no stable institutions. Just an accumulation of individual choices, as in the market. Big donors now play an influential role, especially the few who have their own staffed political operations, but while many of them aspire to coordinate other donors, their egos and their conviction that their wealth reflects their intelligence makes coordination difficult. That’s the case in both parties. There’s no mediating institution to manage all the individual preferences of candidates, elected officials, voters, donors and activists.

Since Bradley’s article in 2005, there has been considerable progress in amassing a stronger “pyramid” on the center-left. A think-tank building boom led to the emergence of the Center for American Progress, the Roosevelt Institute and several others. The progressive infrastructure, once paltry compared to the right, now comprises such a dense web of issue-advocacy, membership, and quasi-electoral organizations—some formed in reaction to Bush-era policies, others from the more positive aspirations of the Obama campaigns, and many from the Trump resistance—that it’s almost impossible to map it all. But with the exception of the brief pre-Obama period when Howard Dean served as DNC chair and sought to rebuild state parties, the Democratic Party itself has been kind of an afterthought — an instrument of the president when there’s been a Democrat in the White House, and otherwise primarily a giant pool of money, and — in part because of the mess that is campaign finance regulation — not even the most important of several giant pools of money.

Meanwhile, the right/Republican pyramid that we envied has been turned completely upside down. The party has been fully personalized, its institutions flipped in service of a single individual. In 2020 it didn’t even have a platform; this year the platform was drafted without debate and described as “a pledge of allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump rather than [a] statement of party values.” Some core organizations in the conservative pyramid, notably the Heritage Foundation and others involved in Project 2025, turned themselves over completely to service of that one individual, while others, such as the older American Enterprise Institute, kept their distance, became home to “never-Trumpers,” and gave up some of their traditional influence.

Meanwhile, many proposed reforms to American democracy are similarly rooted in a view of politics as a wholly individualized enterprise, ignoring the need for stronger mediating institutions. One approach that’s gaining momentum is the nonpartisan primary in which the top two, four, or five candidates advance to a general election. Voters are expected to know about multiple individual candidates without any of the information or engagement that parties provide. This reform might help mitigate polarization by elevating more moderate candidates, but at considerable cost. The combination of campaign finance regulation, and the giant holes in it created by the Federal Election Commissions de facto deregulation, likewise reduce the influence of parties, relative to loosely aligned SuperPACs and donor pools.

The list of reforms that might strengthen intermediary institutions and build a more robust pyramid on both sides (or multiple sides) is long and for another article. They include proportional representation, ballot fusion and campaign reforms that would center parties. But the main point is, democracy is collective action and we should think about how to build institutions that enable long-term, constructive collective action. With luck, we might never face another crisis like today’s.

“Get over yourself,” Hillary Clinton in April advised voters dissatisfied with the electoral choice between President Biden and Donald Trump. Her scolding was tone-deaf, condescending, and unlikely to be persuasive, as that phrase usually is.

She wasn’t entirely wrong, though. Elections are a choice, and winner-take-all elections often present us with the paradox that voting for our first choice means boosting the chances of a candidate or party we see as the worst choice. That can feel like no choice at all. “Get over yourself” is not just a message from Hillary Clinton, it’s a message sent from the system itself, embedded in the code of our country’s unusual practice of single-winner, two-party elections.

There are two different situations that can force voters into this uncomfortable paradox. One is when we actually have a first choice candidate or party we prefer, but we settle reluctantly for a lesser candidate if our first choice has been defeated in the primary, or if a third-party candidate would be a spoiler in a general election. That’s an unavoidable feature of any democratic electoral system, even one with proportional representation or ranked-choice voting. Making decisions with thousands or millions of other people, with their own preferences and intuitions, inevitably means that we don’t always get the choices that match our preferences.

But there’s another scenario — one that better represents the current situation for many dissatisfied voters in 2024— when we want to express a view about policy that isn’t represented by any of the available candidates, or when the candidates who share that view are unacceptable for other reasons. For those opposed to Biden’s support of Israel in its atrocious Gaza war, it’s not just that “Trump would be worse” (though he would be, for many reasons including his limitless personal corruption), but that the Biden policy reflects a longstanding cross-partisan consensus of nearly unconditional support for Israel. Not only do almost all Republicans take an even more hawkish position in support of Israeli policy, so too does the most prominent independent candidate for president, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Despite the deep ideological divide between the two parties, policy toward Israel remains a singular area of multi-partisan agreement, and while change is both overdue and likely, reversing a decades-long consensus backed by money and passion is going to take time.

So how can a voter effectively express a view that challenges such a consensus? Or a view that challenges their own party’s policies — whether on Gaza or another issue, such as single-payer health care — without making a worse policy outcome more likely? In several of this year’s Democratic primaries, voters had the option to mark their ballot for “Uncommitted,” “No Preference” or other terms that indicated some measure of discontent with President Biden. Those expressive votes, which amounted to roughly ten percent in most of the states where it was an option, weren’t meant to have any effect on the nomination; they were at best a gentle signal of dissent from President Biden’s policies. But they represented one of the few opportunities voters this year have had to voice views that differ from the administration’s policies.

But many voters want a way to express their view more emphatically, and with teeth, in the general election. A typical version of this sentiment comes from human rights advocate Sarah Leah Whitson a few months ago: “While in short run this may result in a worse candidate winning—Trump—in long run, there’s simply *no* *other* *way* to shift US policy on Israel than to show democrats that they will be punished for unconditional Israel support.”

There are other ways to send such a message, of course, though without the same punishment. Protest is one, so is joining or donating to organizations that advocate for a change in US policy. But each of those require either money or time, and protest requires a willingness to risk arrest or harassment. Voting is our most basic and universal form of democratic engagement, and it should offer more of an opportunity to express a view, along with choosing a candidate.

For those frustrated by the “Get over yourself” message we encounter in the voting booth, it wouldn’t require dramatic changes to the electoral system or an amendment to the Constitution to give a vote more of an expressive value. Even modest, achievable reforms would create a small mechanism to express a first choice without helping the worst choice, or a way to indicate a policy preference in addition to a preferred candidate.

This expressive value has never been the main selling point for reforms such as ranked-choice voting, fusion voting, or proportional representation. Each of these proposed changes has its own merits, flaws, and unknowns when weighed against goals such as increasing competition, improving governance, or creating more meaningful political parties. But one thing all the reform ideas on the table would do is add a bit of voice to the ballot. Ranked-choice voting, for example, would allow voters to name a first choice and then a second or third. If used in this year’s primaries, for example, it would have allowed Democrats to endorse first a candidate closer to their views, and then perhaps Biden, forcing Biden to reach out and earn those second-round votes, assuming that more candidates with different views would come forward in such a system. (It could also be used in the general election, but the interaction with the Electoral College would be complex.)

An even more promising reform, for the general election, would be ballot fusion, which involves simply allowing parties to nominate a candidate who is already on the ballot under another party. A new party with a platform that included, for example, changes to US policy in the Middle East or stronger action on climate change might endorse Biden but a vote for Biden on that party’s line would indicate a strong preference for a different approach. That party could also indicate to Biden or any other candidate that they had to earn their position on its line, by changing or promising to change their position. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie explains the value of fusion as a means of expression in this short video. Fusion isn’t a dramatic change — it’s a familiar practice in two states that allow it, New York and Connecticut, where the Working Families Party takes advantage of it as others have in the past. In other states, it was prohibited by law around the turn of the 20th century, often in order to block alliances between populist and progressive parties. Those bans could be overturned by statute or by courts.

The point here is not to make the case for fusion and multi-party democracy, which my colleagues and I have made elsewhere. It’s just to point out that there is an alternative to the “get over yourself” message, and the frustrations with this year’s choices. Both the frustrated voters and the scolds who insist there is no alternative should be more aware of those possibilities and perhaps get behind efforts to enact change, if not for this election, so that we don’t face such demoralizing constraints in the future.

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