To understand what happened on Tuesday, you have to begin by acknowledging that the fight for control of the Senate was a home game for President Donald Trump—and he won it, as expected. The real battlegrounds were the House of Representatives and the gubernatorial contests in states the president won in 2016, including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.[...]
Gratifying as that may be, Democrats shouldn’t misinterpret the results. The voters who wrote off Democrats two years ago haven’t retroactively endorsed the party’s 2016 agenda. Their votes in 2018 were driven by their antipathy for Trump. That’s an important distinction because it suggests they won’t automatically stick with the Democratic Party in 2020. So how can Democrats turn this onetime rejection of Trump into a long-term realignment?
Here’s the political reality. In 2016, Democrats suffered because too many Americans viewed us as the urban-enclave party. I’m a big-city mayor—these are my people. But I’m experienced enough to know that the fate of Democratic candidates in 2020’s nationwide and statewide contests depends on their ability to win the hearts and minds of the new “Metropolitan Majority,” a bloc encompassing both the progressives who came out for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and the swing voters who live in the suburban and exurban communities that recently turned from red to blue. [...]
Here’s the crucial takeaway. Over the next two years, Republicans will try to cleave the suburbs from the Democrats’ urban base, pulling swing voters into a coalition with rural conservatives. To build the new “Metropolitan Majority,” Democrats will have to do the opposite, building ties between voters in cities and those in the suburbs that surround them. The election two years from now will hinge on which party is more successful. If Republicans prevail, we’re likely to face a second term of President Trump. If Democrats succeed, we may remember Tuesday as the moment the Democratic Party began building a durable coalition.
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