The Democrats’ Premature Elation Trap

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Frank Bruni

Opinion

The Democrats’ Premature Elation Trap

April 27, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

Credit...

Ben Wiseman

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By

Frank Bruni

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

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For Democrats, the good news just keeps on coming.

Did I just write that? I’m in shock that I had legitimate cause to. That it’s true. The party ended 2024 in such profound devastation and stumbled through so much of 2025 in a daze that I’d begun to wonder if it were operating under a cosmic hex, never again to feel a flicker of hope, a tickle of joy.

But here we are. Virginia voters just

passed

a redistricting plan that could net the party an additional four House seats in November. It answers, tit for tat, Republican gerrymanders elsewhere. Even before that hopeful, joyful turn, political analysts were abuzz with how increasingly friendly to Democrats the midterm political environment was shaping up to be. My Times colleagues Emily Cochrane and Reid J. Epstein

reported

last week that the Democratic Party was expanding its midterm ambitions to red House districts that it discounted before. In an article the following day, my Times colleague Nate Cohn

explained

why the Democrats’ designs on a Senate majority, once wishful, were now realistic.

President Trump may not be Jesus, but he’s performing a resurrection — of the Democratic Party. It’s enough to give an agnostic like me religion.

But there’s always doubt, and mine arises from the dangers of overconfidence. With the president at peak derangement, with former compatriots such as Tucker Carlson swearing him off, with tacky monuments rising, with prices refusing to fall and with the country lurching ever closer to the edge, how could Democrats

not

start to think that the midterms are in the bag? They have a surfeit of reasons for optimism, which means I have grounds galore for dread. The party could face a premature elation problem.

To ward that off and make sure that they don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Democrats should keep these warnings in mind:

Voters still dislike them. A lot.

By some measures, voters remain more sour on Democrats than they are on Republicans or on Trump. According to the Real Clear Politics

polling average

as of midday Friday, just 34.3 percent of voters had a favorable view of the Democratic Party while 57.0 had an unfavorable one. The comparable numbers for the Republican Party were 37.7 and 56.1. Meantime, despite all of Trump’s troubles, 40.3 percent of voters

approved

of the job he’s doing while 57.8 disapproved, according to Real Clear Politics.

“Every time people tell me, ‘Well, Trump is getting less and less popular, and his approval ratings are so low,’ I say, ‘Yeah, and national Democrats are even lower,’” Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan,

told

Politico’s Playbook earlier this month. “So when there’s a binary choice, we still don’t come out winning on those comparisons.” That means the party cannot follow the script it did in 2024, cannot assume that an anti-Trump posture and message are enough and must attend to its cultural disconnect from many voters. Its fortunes have risen without its reputation being restored — and that leaves it vulnerable.

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