Democrats Won. More Importantly, Democracy Won

Froma Harrop on Nov 5, 2026

Stop the talk about a triumphal arch at the gates of Arlington Cemetery. Stop bullying the Kennedy Center into putting the Trump name on its front. Stop obsessing over the Reflecting Pool. Stop cutting down trees at a public golf course in Washington to make a championship course.

These pictorial distractions -- televised media take note -- stopped working on the Main Streets and on the farms. The public felt in their wallets that they were being played. As Donald Trump, his family and his courtiers amassed billions, ordinary Americans' economic interests were ignored, even held in contempt.

The midterm results were a massive revival of Democrats with the big "D." They also breathed fresh air into the democracy with a small "d." Elon Musk couldn't buy it with some $400 million of his own money.

Democrats are now blessed with a big tent party. They ran candidates suited to their electorates. They had the self-preserving smarts to offer a political moderate, Pastor Adam Hamilton, in Kansas. James Talarico had run as a man of faith in deeply religious Texas.

Thus, the noisy Democratic radicals, who've been flattering themselves as the "energy of the party," can no longer run the show. Or, should we say, they will no longer be allowed to run the show. Televised media, again take note.

Going forward, Democrats will further luck out if, as expected, they choose Hakeem Jeffries as the next speaker of the House. Asked on CNN, once the extent of the Democratic romp became clear, about going after Trump and his kleptocratic inner circle, the Brooklyn Democrat was pitch-perfect. He parried the question and instead said:

"We ran on affordability, we won decisively on affordability, we now have a responsibility to govern on affordability, to lower the high cost of all the things ..." and so on.

The midterms were about electing Congress, not a president. Where did Republican members of what's supposed to be an independent branch of government go wrong? They forgot that they would be held accountable as an independent branch.

Recall 2016, when the seemingly off-the-wall Donald Trump was the Republican nominee for president. Pollsters and most everyone else thought he could not possibly defeat Hillary Clinton. Many Republican candidates for the House and Senate tried to shield themselves from the ugliness by promising to stop a President Trump from his worst excesses.

In an interview that May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered this reassurance: "There will be constraints on some of the things that he would like to do."

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio promised he would be "a check and balance on whoever the president is."

They caved. That's why we now have the worm-brained Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running Health and Human Services and scaring Americans away from taking their shots in the middle of a measles comeback. That's why we have Pete Hegseth, the talking head with a checkered past, carrying on about testosterone and promising parades of photogenic soldiers as head of the newly named War Department. (Bring back the Department of Defense from the days when America, as Teddy Roosevelt advised, spoke softly and carried a big stick.)

Republicans in the Senate who knew better voted to confirm them rather than risk being primaried by MAGA. They put their careers ahead of America's interests. And guess what? Trump went after several of them anyway for showing the slightest spark of independence. John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana didn't even make it to the general election

As for Democrats, they now have a powerful mainstream and are once again a national party. Democrats won. But more importantly for the nation at large, democracy won.

Follow Froma Harrop on X @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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