In this week’s episode of The Good Fight Club, Yascha Mounk, Larry Diamond, and Arlie Hochschild explore what the Democrats’ historic midterm landslide reveals about Donald Trump’s waning hold on American voters, how Democrats can balance accountability with a positive agenda ahead of 2028, and whether democratic institutions have proven more resilient than many feared.
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many → explore → 2028
Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and is the founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy.
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Diamond → found → Democracy
We thought we couldn’t quite torture our East Coast contributors at 2 a.m., so we have this amazing West Coast panel.
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we → think → panel
Or a bicoastal panel, since I’m currently in Europe.
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To update people on the current state of the election results: Democrats will control both the House and the Senate, and they will do so by really quite astonishing margins.
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they → update → margins
According to the betting markets I’m looking at right now, they will likely control 56 Senate seats, up from 47.
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they → accord → 47
They will win not just in swing states like Ohio or Michigan.
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They → win → Ohio
They will win not just in blue states that have had Republican senators for a long time, like Susan Collins in Maine.
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that → win → Maine
They will win in Texas.
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They → win → Texas
They will win in South Carolina.
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They → win → Carolina
They will win in Iowa.
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They → win → Iowa
They are at the moment favored to win in Mississippi, though that race is currently too close to call.
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race → favor → Mississippi
As we are recording, we have the Democratic candidate there ahead by 28 votes.
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we → record → votes
They will win in Kansas.
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They → win → Kansas
In the House, we are likely to see not a close race—not a slight Democratic lean, but a solidly Democratic House.
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we → see → race
At the moment, 261 seats are projected to go to the Democrats with some amount of certainty, and only 173 seats to the Republicans, with a number of seats still too close to call.
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seats → project → seats
And then, of course, the governors’ races tell an astonishing story of their own.
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races → tell → own
Republicans win in places like Florida, where they seem to be winning across the board.
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they → win → board
They are able to hold the governor’s mansion in places like New Hampshire or Vermont, where they have popular local moderate Republicans.
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they → hold → Republicans
But Democrats will win not just in California and Illinois and New York and Massachusetts, where you’d expect it.
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you → win → it
They will also win in Texas.
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They → win → Texas
They will win in swing states like Nevada and Arizona, in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania.
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They → win → Ohio
That is my attempt to summarize what just happened: a midterm blowout for the Democrats of historic proportions.
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what → summarize → proportions
Arlie, what do you make of all of this?
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Well, when I stop jumping up and down, I think we should remember that Europe and the whole world have been tuned in to this election.
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Europe → stop → election
What it tells us is that we’re awake, and that democracy, although it has been laid low, is functioning.
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it → tell → us
So I think this is a really big deal.
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this → think → ?
We can’t take it for granted, and we have lessons to learn from this, but it’s great news.
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it → take → this
Well, I don’t know how partisan you want to get.
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I could express my purely partisan preferences, but as a democracy scholar, I think it’s great news in several respects.
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it → express → respects
First of all, we have an authoritarian president who has had authoritarian ambitions and an authoritarian agenda.
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who → have → ambitions
Fortunately, he’s been too incompetent to make a great deal of headway in achieving them.
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But he has represented the most serious challenge to American democracy, I’d say, from presidential intent in American history.
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And he’s now been rebuked decisively and across the board.
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he → rebuke → board
He has been rebuked geographically, politically, and demographically in the United States to an unprecedented degree.
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He → rebuke → degree
Secondly, he’s going to be checked by large Democratic majorities.
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he → go → majorities
That’s true not only in the House, with dozens of Democratic seats as the margin, but also in the Senate, where it’s looking like the Democrats might potentially have something like a 55-to-45 majority.
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Democrats → ’ → majority
People thought it would be a miracle if the Democrats picked up four seats and won control of the House, but they may pick up seven or eight.
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they → think → seven
And then Democrats are winning governorships in states like Texas that were thought to be off limits.
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that → win → limits
It’s not just Jon Ossoff in Georgia, but James Talarico in Texas.
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It → ’ → Texas
…and 354 more, not listed.
The Aporia
