Democrats/progressives – September 2026

5 November
Democrat locked in Deep South Senate stunnerThe race remains too close to call.
(Axios) One of the biggest nail-biters of the 2026 election isn’t playing out in a purple state, but crimson Mississippi, where Democrat Scott Colom is trying to pull off a Magnolia State upset.
The big picture: It’s one of the most remarkable currents of Tuesday’s blue wave. The race pitted Colom, a Democratic district attorney powered by grassroots clout, against incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in a state Trump won by some 23 points in 2024.
Colom would be Mississippi’s first Black senator elected since Reconstruction, and its first Democrat elected to the Senate since the 1980s.
Who is Scott Colom, the underdog Democrat stunning Mississippi

4 November
Democratic victories bring historic breakthroughs for women and minorities
– Analysts cite economic frustration, Iran war and immigration enforcement in Democratic gains
(Reuters) – Voters across the US elected a historic slate of women, candidates of color and other underrepresented politicians on Tuesday, reshaping the face of political leadership…
Democrats flipped control of both the House of Representatives and Senate while winning key statewide races, delivering a series of milestone victories.
Gina Hinojosa became the first Latina elected ‌governor of Texas, Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan the first Muslim elected to the US Senate and Deb Haaland of New Mexico the first Native American woman elected governor. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of a US state while Xavier Becerra was the first Latino elected as governor of California. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire made history as the first openly gay man elected to the US Senate.
…Wisconsin Democrat David Crowley, the state’s first Black governor-elect…
The breakthroughs marked a striking expansion of who holds political power ​at the highest levels of American government, in a country where people of marginalized backgrounds have long been underrepresented.
… Democrats made unexpected gains in deeply conservative states, suggesting the party attracted Republicans while rebuilding support within its ​traditional coalition, analysts, civil rights leaders and grassroots voter organizations said. Black and Latino voters had become increasingly contested constituencies in recent election cycles. …

26 October
Gallego pulls the levers for Latino voters
(Politico) Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego has been banging the drum for Democrats to pay attention to and invest in the disenfranchised, working-class moderate Latino voters that helped push him to a statewide win in 2024 — the same bloc that helped boost President Donald Trump back to the White House.
Gallego has carved a lane as one of the party’s loudest voices on the future of the Latino coalition.
Now Gallego’s kicking off a final push across several key gubernatorial and House battlegrounds, according to details shared exclusively with Playbook. And he’s tracing a map of where Latino voters could be most critical for Democrats’ path back to power.
… Early voting numbers out of Texas are already telling an eye-popping story: Harris County has seen record-breaking turnout, and Latino turnout in the state last week passed 2024 levels — meaning more Latinos have voted now than at this point in the presidential election. It’s overwhelmingly young voters driving the numbers. …

25 October
Peltola postpones campaign stops after Saturday car crash
The Alaska Senate candidate and her family sustained minor injuries, her campaign announced Sunday.
(Polirico) The crash disrupts the start of Peltola’s eight-community “Alaska Always Tour,” a seven-day campaign swing ahead of the midterms. Events in Fairbanks and Bethel originally scheduled for Sunday and Monday will be rescheduled, while stops in Homer, Kenai, Seward, Juneau, Anchorage and Palmer will continue as planned, the campaign said.
Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola and her family suffered minor injuries Saturday in a car crash while driving to a campaign stop, her campaign said. …
Peltola, an Alaska Native and former congresswoman, is challenging Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, hoping to become the first Democrat in nearly two decades to represent the state in the Senate. Both candidates have tried to rally support from Alaska Native voters, a key constituency in the high-stakes race that has become one of the most watched in the nation.
On Friday, President Donald Trump — who held a rally in support of Sullivan earlier this month — said he told his administration to sue to block certification of the race if the incumbent loses. The lawsuit cites potential confusion with another candidate who is listed on the ranked choice ballot as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.

24 October
Obama rallies rapturous Michigan crowd for El-Sayed: ‘He’ll finish the job we started’
Former president speaks to crowd of thousands in support of Abdul El-Sayed for US Senate and Democratic ticket
(The Guardian) Barack Obama told a Detroit crowd on Saturday that Abdul El-Sayed was “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket”, as he threw his weight behind the Democratic Senate candidate and the rest of the ticket on the first day of early voting in Michigan.
Obama said in front of thousands of onlookers at Cass technical high school in Detroit that El-Sayed would “finish the job we started with the Affordable Care Act and guarantee quality, affordable healthcare to every single American”.
The former president headlined the rally for El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for US Senate, and secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, the party’s candidate for governor, at an evening event to “get out the vote”.
He accused Donald Trump of “enriching himself and his family”, and said the administration had set a “culture … at the top” of taking favors. “Never seen a president so intent on selling favors like this,” he said.
The rally came on the first day of Michigan’s early voting period, with the general election on 3 November. It was also Obama’s first weekend of in-person campaigning during the midterms, which started in Cleveland, Ohio, earlier in the day to stump for the former Ohio senator Sherrod Brown and Democratic nominee for governor Amy Acton earlier in the weekend. He issued similarly scathing remarks aimed at the White House and the GOP.
Jon Ossoff’s films exposed corruption. Then his colleague was murdered.
What the Georgia Democrat and potential presidential candidate learned about politics and going viral from his time making documentaries.
(WaPo) … the episode also carried a lesson for Ossoff. Exposing corruption drew attention — and attention was a form of power.
Seven years later, Ossoff, now a U.S. senator, is putting that theory into practice as he runs for reelection in Georgia — and, some Democratic operatives suspect, tests the waters for a possible 2028 presidential bid. On the campaign trail, Ossoff has leaned into an aggressive anti-corruption message, touting his record of oversight investigation in the Senate and attacking President Donald Trump and his “Mar-a-Lago mafia” for profiting off the presidency.
… Ossoff’s knack for turning anti-corruption messaging into viral content has come as no surprise to his former colleagues at Insight Film, the independent production company that he ran from 2013 to 2021. According to interviews with his colleagues and close collaborators from the time, Ossoff’s tenure at the production company served as a kind of unconventional apprenticeship in the workings of the modern attention economy. It was there, his colleagues say, that he first came to grasp the potency of corruption as a political issue and mastered the craft of turning anti-corruption investigations into effective political entertainment.

21 October
Abdul El-Sayed Confronts Attacks on His Faith and Family Ties
In the final weeks of Michigan’s Senate race, the Democratic nominee finds himself facing both ugly attacks and pointed questions about family members. He has pushed back forcefully.
(NYT) His Republican opponent, former Representative Mike Rogers, invoked Dr. El-Sayed’s mother during their first debate, trying to draw a connection between her and Al Qaeda. President Trump has mocked the pronunciation of Dr. El-Sayed’s name and has started referring to him by his middle name, Mohamed. And Republican ads have suggested that Dr. El-Sayed has ties to terrorist groups or to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political movement.

17 October
The new Democratic candidate: Progressive, anti-Trump and jacked
Candidates posting thirst traps, calling opponents betas and ripping bench presses: the strange new world of campaigning as a Democratic man.
(WaPo) … Democrats are desperate to prove they’ve learned their lesson after men propelled Republicans to victory in 2024. They agree they need to talk to men again. But the chaotic midterm elections show they have very different ideas about how to do it.
Gone are the days in which traditional masculinity for Democrats was toxic. Now, it seems more like a campaign credential. The party is determined to shake off the reputation it has accrued among some voters for being woke and weak. …

13 October
Democrats fear “more October surprises” after Ilhan Omar raid
(Axios) Congressional Democrats’ private text chains lit up with fear and anger on Monday after Department of Homeland Security agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) home in Washington, D.C. … What to watch: House Democratic leaders are already signaling plans to wrap this into their oversight agenda if they retake the majority.
“We will deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his deputies said in a statement.
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in a statement: “We will be demanding transparency and accountability as to who authorized this abusive search and who carried it out.”
So is Monday’s raid part of a political prosecution, or could it be a legitimate inquiry?
(The Slatest) … At some point, we may see the administration’s full case against Omar, which will give us more information to assess whether there’s any legitimate law enforcement going on here. But here’s what we know right now: The president has put the Justice Department under his personal control, promised to use it to attack his political enemies, and removed top officials who fail to completely acquiesce to his whims. He has made false claims about Omar, and now, decades after these alleged crimes but weeks before Election Day, his administration has staged a high-profile search of her home. On balance, this looks like an alarming escalation of Trump’s abuse of power, and the burden is on his administration to prove otherwise.

Robert Reich: The Twin Evils: Unaffordability and Corruption
Democratic candidates are connecting the affordability crisis to corruption. If Dems get the chance to govern, they’ll need to attack both.
The two are inseparable. In large part, prices are rising faster than paychecks because so much of the economy has become subject to political bribery, Trump Republican pay-to-play schemes, and kickbacks to Trump and his cronies.
… The Democrats’ agenda if they retake control of Congress
If Democrats regain control of Congress, they will need to focus not only on alleviating high prices but also on eliminating the causes of those high prices. It will be impossible to do the former without attacking the latter.
In addition to ending Trump’s war and his arbitrary tariffs, they must reform campaign financing, and help reduce the influence of big money in politics. One method would be to match public financing with small-dollar donations.
They’ll also need to resurrect the systems of accountability Trump has dismantled —the independent civil service, independent inspectors general, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Federal Election Commission.
Under Trump and his Republican enablers, the richest Americans and biggest corporations have made out like bandits. Average working Americans are paying dearly for what the bandits have stolen. The grift and the graft must end.

6-7 October
Democrats now favored in key midterm races that could give them control of US Senate, new projections find – US politics live
(Guardian – US politics live) Nonpartisan Cook Political Report revises analyses in Kansas, New Hampshire and North Carolina, forecasting Democrats have stronger odds than previously estimated
(Cook Political Report) Four weeks out from Election Day, the Senate map is shifting further in Democrats’ favor — and with it, their odds of winning back the majority. While Republicans continue to have a financial edge in almost every competitive state, President Donald Trump is a drag across the board even in deep red states due to rising fuel prices and the persistent high cost of living. At this point, the question isn’t whether Democrats will gain seats, but how many. As such, we are revising our estimate of potential pickups to two to six seats for Democrats — squarely within the range of the four seats they need to net for a majority. And we are moving three Senate ratings, all in Democrats’ direction: Kansas from Lean Republican to Toss Up, New Hampshire from Toss Up to Lean Democrat, and North Carolina from Lean Democrat to Likely Democrat.Republicans are still hopeful about picking up a seat in Michigan and holding one in Maine, which could limit Democrats’ gains and narrowly protect the GOP’s majority. …

26 September
House Democrats plan vast oversight of Trump administration. Impeachment is an option
(AP) — House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda, with investigations of President Donald Trump, his family and his administration if the party sweeps control of the chamber from Republicans in the November elections.
The undertaking is as robust as it is daunting, spanning several House committees. With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power. Impeachment of the Republican president and Cabinet officials is not off the table.
“There is a cost to the American people of the out-of-control corruption,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win control at the Capitol.
Congress has enormous ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch as part of its power as a coequal branch of government, and a road map for the Democratic-run investigations has already been set by the almost daily letters lawmakers send to the administration and in amicus court filings.
Democrats are asking about the money-making by Trump and his family, whose wealth has grown dramatically since he returned to the White House in January 2025. They are investigating the potential civil rights violations of Americans killed protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and of detained immigrants being deported to faraway countries. They have fought the closing of the Kennedy Center, launched investigations into private funding of the America at 250 celebrations and tracked the shuttering of federal operations, including the U.S. Agency for International Development.

23 September
The Senate is in play. These 10 seats are most likely to flip.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Here’s my assessment of the races.
(WaPo) 1. North Carolina -The Tar Heel State leans Republican in federal elections and has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008. But most statewide races there are close, and the Democrats nominated popular two-term former governor Roy Cooper, who has led in polling all year. …RealClearPolitics has Cooper at 49.3 percent, and as long as he remains around the magic 50 percent mark, it will be hard for Whatley to win.;   2. Ohio -Democrat Sherrod Brown appears on track to reenter the Senate two years after he was defeated by Republican Bernie Moreno. 3. Maine – Republican Sen. Susan Collins remains popular with the state’s independents, which explains why she trails by only two points in the RCP average. One to watch, but Democrat Troy Jackson is the favorite. 4. Michigan -Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s well-known weaknesses give Republican Mike Rogers a shot to pull off a blue-to-red upset. The big unknown: Will Michiganders who vote Democratic in other races abandon El-Sayed knowing his defeat could cost the party control of the Senate? It’s a good sign for El-Sayed that his support has been steadily rising since he won his primary, but the race is far from over. 5. Alaska -…another case of a good Democratic candidate combining with a good environment. 6. Texas -Democrat James Talarico has been ahead in the last nine polls, but his lead still averages under three points. 7. Iowa -According to the polling, the race between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek is a dead heat. … It’s still a toss-up, but I join most raters in thinking Hinson is likelier to prevail. 8. New Hampshire -…polls consistently show former senator John E. Sununu running ahead of expectations in this light-blue state. … New Hampshire is a highly educated, moderate state that has elected only one Republican to the Senate since President George W. Bush’s first term. It would be extremely strange if Sununu, who lost his reelection bid in 2008 to outgoing senator Jeanne Shaheen, can buck that trend in such a Democratic year. 9. Minnesota -Recent polling shows Minnesota close. The Democratic candidate, Peggy Flanagan, is very progressive, and as the sitting lieutenant governor she can be tied to the benefits-fraud scandal that destroyed Gov. Tim Walz’s career. Republican Michele Tafoya …is a talented campaigner… But it’s very rare for a candidate from a party likely to do poorly in a midterm to capture a seat in the opposing party’s column. 10. Georgia After a narrow runoff win in 2021, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has turned himself into a fundraising powerhouse and dark-horse presidential contender. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Mike Collins has had trouble raising money and has been stalked by a series of controversies involving problematic staffers. Georgia is Republican enough that the GOP is spending to try to elevate Collins, but don’t be surprised if he gets cut off — triaged, in political parlance — in October.
New 2026 Georgia Poll: Ossoff leads Senate race; Governor race in dead heat
(Yahoo!) According to a new YouGov poll conducted Sept. 15–18 among 3,447 registered Georgia voters, [ Democratic U.S. Sen Jon] Ossoff leads Republican Rep. Mike Collins 51% to 41% in the 2026 Senate race, with 6% undecided. Voters in both camps show high certainty, with 94% of Ossoff supporters and 96% of Collins supporters stating their minds are made up.

17 September
Why Democrats might choose to impeach Cabinet members
(The Atlantic) … Regardless of the results in November, Democrats are unlikely to get enough votes in the Senate to convict and remove him, meaning that a third impeachment would hit the same dead end as the first two. …and an impeachment might give him a way to rally his remaining base around him—which would only strengthen his power and resolve.
But what if House Democrats impeached Trump’s Cabinet members instead? The power to impeach secretaries and other executive-branch officers is explicit in the Constitution but perhaps not well known, because it’s been used only twice in history.
A Democratic House could plausibly launch impeachment inquiries into several administration officials, many of which would dovetail with investigations that representatives say they already have planned. In some cases, Democratic representatives have already filed articles of impeachment against Cabinet members, including Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, but those have gone nowhere in the GOP-led chamber. A new Democratic majority could change that. …

4 September
El-Sayed split Michigan Democrats. Whether they unify could decide Senate control
(NPR All Things Considered) .. Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin did not endorse in the Senate primary, but now is among the Democratic leaders trying to help the party heal and make sure that El-Sayed joins her in the Senate, rather than a Republican who she says would be beholden to President Trump.
Slotkin is a moderate. El-Sayed leans much further left. Slotkin …says El-Sayed, like her, is willing to buck the old ways of doing things and fight. If he wins, Slotkin notes Michigan will be the only delegation where neither senator has accepted corporate PAC money.
… A new generation of progressive insurgents, some affiliated with the Democratic Socialists, defeated several incumbents backed by Democratic heavyweights. … Now campaigns are trying to unify their parties after some bruising primaries — and amp up efforts to woo independent, undecided and irregular voters. Healing those fissures inside the Democratic Party is proving more complicated in some battleground states, like Michigan. …

3 September
Here’s a look at ‘reach’ election races where Democrats hope to pull off House upsets
(AP) — … Democrats are dreaming of pulling off upsets in what might be called “reach” House districts, where Republicans usually win and likely will again — but where races could tighten if a rare political wave gains strength in November.
The party in power traditionally suffers losses during midterm elections. Democrats managed to avoid a predicted 2022 “red wave,” but they saw Republicans flip both chambers when President Donald Trump was reelected last cycle.
Now, with an unpopular war in Iran and lingering concerns about inflation, Democrats are hoping that this year could be a replay of 2018, when a backlash against Trump changed the balance of power in Congress.