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The midterm mirage: Democrats shouldn’t get high on their own supply

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by Ben Austin, opinion contributor - 04/25/26 2:00 PM ET

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by Ben Austin, opinion contributor - 04/25/26 2:00 PM ET

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Former U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel speaks to voters as he participates in the South Carolina Democratic Party’s “On the Road” series on Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Newberry, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

Democrats are confident about winning the midterm elections. And they should be. Just about every indicator from public opinion to political gravity points to a blue wave blowout this November. But even if Democrats take back the House, and perhaps the Senate which is an uphill climb but not out of reach, they must be careful not to get high on their own supply.

In 1994 I was working in the White House Political Affairs Office for President Clinton where it was our job to manage midterm politics. It’s an understatement to say it didn’t go well. Democrats lost the Senate and the House for the first time in half a century — and we didn’t see it coming.

Usually, White House staffers trip over each other to get face time with the president. But as that long election night bled into early morning and we continued to lose race after race in jaw-dropping fashion, senior advisors were deputizing junior staffers who were deputizing interns who were deputizing random people off the street to deliver the news to the president.

In the wake of that historic wipeout, President Clinton looked so weak that he was famously forced to assert what should have been patently obvious to every American: “The president is relevant.”

Less than two years later as a staffer on his reelection campaign, I watched Bill Clinton cruise to an easy victory over party insider and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) by tying him to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and the newly minted Republican Congress.

What had looked like a red tsunami two years earlier dissipated into a political ripple.

Given the stakes for American democracy and the world order, Democrats cannot afford to replicate that miscalculation in 2028. Midterm victories can create the illusion that partisan backlash is enough. In presidential politics, it rarely is.

Dating back to Clinton, winning presidential candidates of both parties have generally run, in one form or another, as outsiders willing to challenge elements of their own party. Losing nominees too often look like wholly owned subsidiaries of their party’s interest groups. The two most electorally successful Democratic presidents since Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — ran as change agents against status quo interests including teachers unions, which was a feature, not a bug of their success.

Voters elect members of Congress and senators to vote with their party. They elect presidents to stand with the people.

Education may not be the first issue Americans think about when contemplating their vote for president, but it is Exhibit A for the Democratic divide between change agents and agents of the status quo.

Multiple potential 2028 presidential candidates have strong records of challenging party interests on behalf of the public interest including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. But former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been driving the early dialogue on education and other heterodox issues.

Emanuel doesn’t fit the profile of a central casting presidential candidate, but so far, he’s framing the debate. He’s refined a line that perfectly critiques the Democratic drift on cultural issues when it comes to what matters to working class voters: “We’ve become so obsessed with bathroom access that we’ve ignored classroom excellence.”

Classroom excellence means adopting common sense reforms that have succeeded in deep red Mississippi, such as: the Science of Reading, ending social promotion, early screening and intervention, and accountability for results. It also means embracing charter schools as the progressive school choice alternative to President Trump’s national voucher plan. And it means finally translating “high quality public schools” from a soundbite into a civil right for every child in America.

Having served as a top staffer in both the Clinton and Obama White Houses, Emanuel has had a front row seat to the midterm mirage. He understands that not being Trump will likely win the midterms but is far from sufficient to win the presidency.

Emanuel isn’t the betting favorite to win the nomination, but Democrats ignore his ideas at our collective peril. He is