Embattled Democrats have new reason to hope.
The party has spent the early months of the year soul-searching the causes of a bitter election defeat and fighting internally over how best to counter President Trump and his fierce effort to dismantle the traditional workings of Washington.
But Democrats this week have watched the political pendulum swing back sharply in their favor.
In Wisconsin, they easily won a hard-fought battle for a coveted seat on the state Supreme Court, despite a massive spending push by Elon Musk.
In Florida, they put a huge dent in the Republicans' comfortable edge in two deep-red House districts, despite a late intervention from the president.
In Washington, Trump's approval rating fell to a new low amid rising prices and sinking consumer confidence — even before new tariffs unveiled Wednesday are expected to exacerbate those menacing trends.
And on Capitol Hill, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) captured Democrats’ attention with a record-breaking, 25-hour speech railing against Trump’s policies while Republican divisions in the House surfaced in stark fashion when a group of GOP rebels bucked Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over proxy voting for new parents — an aggressive show of resistance that forced GOP leaders to cancel votes for the rest of the week.
To be sure, the party is still in an exceedingly difficult position, unable to effectively fight back against a Republican trifecta in Washington and facing widespread frustration from its voters.
But the combination of events this week has given a boost to beleaguered Democrats, who are united heading into the next big fight in the Capitol, over Trump's domestic priorities, and have new reason to believe they're entering a season when the sharpest clashes will pit Republicans against each other.
"They're on the run on the economy. They're on the run legislatively — yesterday they got out of town before sundown, because they have no agenda to make life better for the American people. And they're on the run politically,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday in the Capitol.
Just a few weeks ago, Democrats weren’t flying so high.
The March battle over a Republican spending bill had badly divided party leaders on Capitol Hill, where Jeffries and House Democrats fought to sink the proposal only to watch in frustration as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) helped usher the legislation to Trump’s desk. The disagreement was over tactics, not policy, but the debate eroded trust between the chambers; undermined the Democrats’ claims of unity in the face of Trump; and infuriated liberals, some of whom called for Schumer to give up his leadership post.
House Democrats have also clashed internally over the most effective strategy for pushing back against Trump in the early months of his second term, which have been defined by aggressive efforts to gut the federal government, fire federal workers and use the levers of the executive branch to punish political enemies.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), for instance, generated countless headlines last month when he heckled Trump during ...
