Moderates and progressives both claim credit for 2026 Democratic wins - USA Today
After a primary season that featured a string of wins for the Democratic Party's progressive wing, the moderates are striking back by claiming credit for a landslide midterm takeover of Congress.
The party will return to Capitol Hill in 2027 with at least 54 Senate seats and 255 House seats, thanks to wins in deep-red districts and states such as Kansas and Iowa. And many of the candidates, such as megachurch pastor and Kansas Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton, avoided staking out controversial progressive policy proposals.
"It is incredibly striking and profound that Democratic moderates were able to hand Trumpism some of its biggest defeats this cycle," Kate DeGruyter, a spokeswoman for Third Way, a centrist Democratic group, told USA TODAY.
The debate over how and why Democrats won will influence what measures the new majority caucuses will take up first and how far those actions should go.
Third Way struck early, with a Nov. 4 memo that claimed "high-quality" moderate candidates "were the majority makers" in this year's midterms.
Of the 44 House seats that flipped this cycle, about 29 came from red districts that President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024. The group calculates those candidates outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 margin by an average of 15 percentage points in those districts.
Democrats have similarly flipped at least seven Senate seats in states the president won with contenders who've ripped the White House, but stopped short of demanding Medicare for All or abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"That's a pretty profound answer to this question that we've long debated about whether all of the energy is on the left," DeGruyter said. "There was a hell of a lot of energy in North Carolina and Georgia and Kansas and Texas, and that is why Democrats have an incredible opportunity here to take back the middle from Trump."
Like many of the Democrats who flipped Republican seats, Hamilton − who won by 5 percentage points in Kansas, which hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president − stressed being "independent-minded."
Hamilton, a 62-year-old Methodist pastor and former Republican, espoused views cheered by the Democratic base such as opposing tax breaks for AI data centers, expanding Medicare coverage for seniors and investigating "private equity consolidation" to break up monopolies. He also supports restoring what he called "disastrous cuts" to Medicaid through the president's "one, big beautiful" bill.
But in post-election interviews, the Kansas Democrat has already begun positioning himself as a counterweight to more liberal-minded colleagues on Medicare for All, which he said isn't the "right approach" on health care.
"Even though it sounds great, I don't think it's going to pass," Hamilton said during a Nov. 8 interview on CNN's State of the Union. "You're talking about an entire health insurance industry with millions and millions of employees that is going to be affected by Medicare for All."
Oliver Libby, a Democratic consultant, said there will be "many mothers to the success" the party had this fall but noted that many Americans are drifting away from party and ideological labels. He attributed the decisive margin this month to a coalition of independents and previously disengaged voters, who largely backed Democrats in purple districts.
"People who have been homeless politically came in in overwhelming numbers, and not just came in for Democrats, but switched sides or came off the sidelines profoundly in this cycle," Libby said.
"I don't think this was a victory for the Democratic brand," he added. "I'm not entirely sure the Democrats have a brand right now, and I think that's something that they absolutely have to fix between now and the 2028 presidential race."
Democrats running in red states in 2026 were often difficult to pigeonhole ideologically.
Sen.-elect Josh Turek, who won in Iowa after Trump carried the state by double digits two years ago, prefers creating a public health insurance option to Medicare for All. On social issues, the two-time Paralympic gold medalist released an ad that infuriated some Iowa Democrats and trans rights supporters for opposing transgender women competing in female sports and "taxpayers paying for sex changes."
Libby points out that roughly two-thirds of self-described moderate voters supported the Democratic candidate in their local contests, up from the approximately 6 in 10 moderates who backed Harris in 2024, the Associated Press reported.
Progressive activists say many of the candidates being labeled "moderate" by centrist groups are better described as "outsiders." Many of those candidates running in historically Republican areas ran against corporate power and the Washington establishment of both parties.
"If those who call themselves moderate want to put their label on issues that we've (championed) and trying to make more popular for years, then great, we have consensus around our issues — that's awesome," said Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a left-leaning grassroots group involved in several primary contests this year.
The PCCC backed Sen.-elect James Talarico, of Texas, along with candidates such as Rep.-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York, one of six democratic socialists heading to Washington.
During much of the Texas Senate race, Talarico, who prevailed by 12 percentage points, railed against billionaires. He often talked about U.S. politics being more "top versus bottom" rather than left versus right.
On the senator-elect's website, Talarico said he supports making "billionaires pay their fair share in taxes, including by imposing a higher tax on their income and capital gains," which Green and others say sounds much more like Sens. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, than so-called moderate Democrats.
But Talarico also tried to back away from the progressive label as he campaigned in a state that hadn't elected a Democrat to the Senate in over 30 years. During the course of the campaign, the 37-year-old state legislator and Presbyterian seminary student said he opposed abolishing ICE and reversed course on supporting trans athletes in girls' sports.
The PCCC's sister organization, PCCC Institute, shared its "How Dems Ran" database, which examined 60 competitive midterm elections, exclusively with USA TODAY. Research examined those candidates' debates, speeches, social media content, campaign ads and websites, finding Democrats who won even in red states and districts supported many left-leaning proposals.
Roughly 98% backed a ban on stock trading by lawmakers, according to the group's research. Another 85% supported some version of expanding public health care coverage through either Medicare for All, a public option, or Medicare buy-in.
An October KFF poll showed 66% of U.S. adults favor having a national health plan, the largest total since the foundation began measuring the issue in 2017. That support includes 72% of independents and 34% of Republicans who support Medicare for All, according to the survey.
"If the corporate-aligned Democrats at Third Way want to somehow lay claim to that style of politics, we've just won the battle for this whole of the Democratic Party," Green told USA TODAY.
Some progressive candidates also won in swing states, such as Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who supports Medicare for All and ending U.S. aid to Israel. He won Michigan by 8 percentage points and has been touted by progressives as proof their movement can win, in the words of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, "anywhere."
Some red-state winners, such as Rep.-elect Sam Forstag, of Montana, created a populist message that was embraced by top progressive figures from the outset of his campaign against Republican Aaron Flint to replace Ryan Zinke, a Republican who served as interior secretary in Trump's first term.
The 32-year-old union leader and political newcomer won by three percentage points in a western Montana district, which borders Idaho, that Trump won by four times as much in 2024. He was endorsed by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez but later received support during the general election from the moderate Blue Dog Coalition.
"We don't see our, like, fundamental lived experience reflected in the people who are representing us purportedly in Congress," Forstag told USA TODAY.
He believes in expanding Medicare, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and banning congressional stock trading. But he also favors reforming ICE over abolishing the agency and supports protecting gun rights.
Forstag will join both the rival Blue Dogs and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
He explained his desire to embrace populism in a social media video Nov. 9, saying both factions are needed to achieve the American people's goals.
"I will be one of just a few Democrats who are sitting in both of those caucuses," he said. "You see, the overlap is, well, giving us the chance to fight for populist economic policies that are actually going to help working people."
Rep.-elect Brian Poindexter bested scandal-ridden Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a Trump White House alum whose bitter divorce battle involved domestic violence allegations from Emily Moreno, the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno, by 10 percentage points.
Poindexter's campaign contrasted Miller's biography with the union ironworker’s rugged image. He is counted among the flips by centrist groups, but progressives point out that he called for ending tax breaks for the wealthy, banning dark money spending in campaigns and supported a "phased in approach" for Medicare for All.
During that race for the northeastern Ohio seat, Poindexter also expressed his support for law enforcement when he ran campaign ads featuring an Ohio sheriff.
"When you see the world through the prism of outsider, insider—everything makes sense," Green said about the midterm outcomes for Democrats.
"Poindexter ran as an economic populist outsider and spoke to many of those same people who voted for Trump," he added. "I don't think he's run away from his values, but even Trump voters don't self-identify in many cases as being of one ideology. They want someone who's going to shake up a broken economic and political system and stand up to corporate power."
