Can the Democrats Take Back the Senate?

Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; Source photographs from Getty Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story In a debate for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Iowa this month, one of the moderators, Erin Murphy, asked the candidates, Josh Turek and Zach Wahls, both state legislators, a reasonable, if downbeat, question. They had proposed progressive policies to address the state’s affordability crisis: raising the federal minimum wage, restoring Obamacare subsidies, rolling back tariffs, fighting “corporate greed.” What “I didn’t hear,” Murphy said, was anything that could be done “with a Republican President, because that’s the reality of the next two years.” Turek, in response, countered that, if “we’re able to win this race here in Iowa, we’re looking at taking back Congress and taking back the U.S. Senate. And I think that gives us an amazing opportunity to be able to get a lot of these across the finish line.”

Iowa is a state where Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by thirteen points, and where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly two hundred thousand. But Turek’s answer was a serious one. Something has changed lately in the dynamics of the Democrats’ drive to reclaim the Senate, or, at least, in the Party’s mood. Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to below forty per cent, the Iran war grinds on, and gas prices have been rising, as has inflation. More than that, there is a general sense of anger and suspicion about entrenched élites. A comment that Trump made last week about how much he considered Americans’ financial situation when negotiating with Iran—“not even a little bit”—encapsulates how recklessly he is willing to alienate even his own supporters.

Disillusionment with Trump, however, does not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for any given Democrat. The Party’s approval ratings are at forty per cent, about the same as the G.O.P.’s. Riding a wave of outrage in an era of MAGA-inflected conspiratorial thinking is a different task than, say, hoping that a blue drift in Texas could get Beto O’Rourke elected. (That said, Texas has a Senate race that Democrats think they can win this year; a runoff on May 26th will determine whether James Talarico, a progressive, will face the incumbent, John Cornyn, or Texas’s scandal-ridden attorney general, Ken Paxton.) Democrats are also fighting among themselves. In Michigan, a primary for the Senate seat left open by the retirement of Gary Peters, a Democrat, has been marked by disputes related to Gaza and economic populism. Opportunities can quickly give way to divisions.