Voters Deliver A Big Win For Democrats, And A Blow To Trump

THE TRUMP BACKLASH HAS BEGUN. One year after their stinging defeat, Democrats bounced back in the off-year elections on Nov. 7 with a surprise sweep from coast to coast, delivering an ominous rebuke to an unpopular President and his party.

- Molly Ball and Philip Elliott

By resounding margins, Democratic candidates took the marquee gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. But those triumphs were only the start of a blue wave that crashed across the map. Democrats won control of the Washington state senate and ushered in the first Democratic mayor of Manchester, N.H., in 14 years. They passed progressive ballot measures in Maine and New York; won key local races in Georgia and Florida; and elected a slate of candidates that mirrored the diversity of the party, from Ravi Bhalla, the first Sikh to become a mayor in New Jersey, to Virginia’s Danica Roem, the first person to run and win a legislative seat as an openly transgender individual. “We are taking our country back from Donald Trump, one election at a time,” crowed Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

For the beleaguered party, it was the first proof that the antiTrump fervor that has galvanized the President’s opponents could be channeled into significant election victories. Until this week, despite Trump’s abysmal approval rating and a gridlocked GOP Congress, the opposition had failed to notch a win at the ballot box. Throughout 2017, Democratic candidates running in congressional special elections in red states had narrowed margins but fallen short of victory. Democrats have yet to show they can win in GOP strongholds. But the off-year election wave was a sign that antipathy to the Trump Administration is a force powerful enough to shake the nation in 2018 and beyond.