Earlier this month, Democrats won decisively in the Virginia gubernatorial election. The party’s triumph in the state was broad-based, as Democrats nearly secured a supermajority in the Virginia House of Delegates. Even Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general who sent text messages hoping for the death of the children of a political rival in 2022, won comfortably. He carried 52.9% of the statewide vote against incumbent Republican Jason Miyares, powered by decisive margins in the party’s base of northern Virginia — 68% in Fairfax County, 77% in Alexandria, and 78% in Arlington.
Meanwhile, in New York, socialist Zohran Mamdani won a majority of the vote in a three-way mayoral race, beating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani’s margins were built in part on huge hauls from gentrified Brooklyn, where a disaffected professional class has struggled to keep pace with New York’s astronomical cost of living.
The results have been pored over by analysts for the last two weeks, and all signs point toward trouble for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterm elections. But what do they say about the parties in this moment? From Fairfax County to Brooklyn, one beholds a Democratic Party that has a notable level of comfort with the forces of radicalism and political intolerance. As for the Republicans, the party has fallen so short of its promises on the economy in 2024 that it will struggle to stop the Democrats from winning.
On the Democratic side, consider the muted public reaction within the party to Jones. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) criticized Jones for those text messages when they came to light in October. Yet she did not call on him to suspend his candidacy. No major party officials did. In the end, it did not matter. Democrats turned out en masse for him, particularly in the party’s base around Washington.
Judging by their actions, Democrats are comfortable running candidates with the views expressed by Jones — the substance of which is that his political rivals are evil, and that bad things should happen to them as punishment for their evil views. The party has gone a long way from Barack Obama’s keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, in which he said, “We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.” In fact, Jones appeared at a pre-election rally in Virginia that Obama himself later attended.
Of course, Republicans are inclined toward a similar Manichaeism — it is a psychological aspect of factionalism to define one’s own side as good and the other as evil. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, frequently nasty and personal, belies his relatively moderate views on policies such as social welfare and flames the passions of partisan hatred on his own side. But it is hard to ignore the growing gap between Republicans and Democrats.
Compare the reaction of Democrats to Jones with the reaction of Republicans to Mark Robinson, the party’s candidate for governor of North Carolina in 2024. When it came to light that Robinson had posted racist and sexually explicit comments, the party treated him like a pariah. Not every Republican officeholder denounced him, but the difference between the reactions to Jones and Robinson was striking. Democrat Josh Stein easily triumphed in the race for governor, winning 55% even as Trump bested Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the state by 3 points.
Consider as well how the two sides respond to strands of antisemitism within their own ranks. Conservatives have been debating the influence of Nick Fuentes, amplified by Tucker Carlson, with most of the prominent leaders in both the intellectual and political world of the Right denouncing this development. Nothing like this is happening on the Left. Instead, “context” is provided to explain a person such as Mamdani refusing to denounce phrases such as “globalize the intifada.”
Meanwhile, any pretenses in Gotham about Mamdani’s moderation from his whimsical, media-savvy campaign were dispelled by his hard-line victory address on Election Day, in which he said, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” That is a recipe for totalitarianism, albeit one that really, really cares about people. And of those who might be skeptical of the all-powerful balm that is municipal government, Mamdani averred, “In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another.”
Mamdani’s ascent to the summit of New York politics did not come from nowhere. For a decade, there has been a growing faction within the Democratic Party that embraces socialism. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) ran for the party’s presidential nomination even though he identifies as an independent — making him an outsider looking to effect change. He has certainly succeeded, as most establishment Democrats lined up behind Mamdani’s candidacy.
The victories of Jones and Mamdani are worrisome developments. On one hand, the party is increasingly looking not to reform but to upend the basic premises that have governed America’s civic and economic life. On the other hand, it is increasingly expressing contempt and fury for those who disagree with its goals. We have already seen these dispositions combined in Democratic politics — on the matter of transgender rights. A generation ago, hardly anybody was demanding that transgender people be allowed to play in women’s sports, use women’s facilities, or have their preferred gender on government documents. These are still new and radical proposals that profoundly redefined the relationship between the sexes. But now, for many in the Democratic coalition, they are taken as self-evident, inalienable rights, and those who do not accept them are not just wrong but evil.
Not all Democrats hold such views, of course. Much of the party remains basically where Obama was, circa 2004, progressive but not radical, capable of using sharp rhetoric but still seeing those of opposing views as fundamentally American. But the new forces are clearly numerous enough to wield substantial power within the party — and acquire important offices such as mayor of New York and attorney general of Virginia.
That the Democratic Party is drifting simultaneously toward radicalism and extreme intolerance is an indication that it is not fit to govern the country at the present time. The party should remain in the political wilderness until it reconstitutes itself the way it was until recently: liberal, not radical, partisan in its rhetoric but fundamentally ecumenical in its outlook.
Unfortunately, the duration of Democratic exile depends largely on the effectiveness of the Republican Party. Last year, Trump and the GOP campaigned as a moderating and effective force that could tackle public problems without embracing fringe worldviews. But that has not happened, as far as the public is concerned. The public gives the Trump administration poor marks on the economy in general and affordability in particular — two areas where the GOP made hefty pledges last year but has yet to deliver.
No doubt, Democrats were always bound to win the off-year elections. The main contests — in Virginia, New York City, and New Jersey — were held in places that are, to varying degrees, left-wing. But if the public had greater confidence in the Trump administration, the margins in each would not have been so lopsided, and perhaps Jones would have lost.
TRUMP’S GOVERNANCE BY EXECUTIVE ORDER WILL BE CONTINUED BY FUTURE PRESIDENTS
If by next year’s midterm elections, the public verdict is still sour, the Democrats will likely triumph, just as they did this month. And what kind of Democratic Party will it be? Emboldened by its victories, will it check its most divisive elements? Judging by the 2025 election returns, it probably will not.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans must return their focus to the core promises of the 2024 campaign — above all, improving the economy and lowering costs. And not just because it is good for the country: It is a necessary check on the rising forces in the Democratic Party, to keep its radical and intolerant fringes on the periphery of federal politics, where they belong.
Jay Cost is the Gerald R. Ford senior nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.