Op-Ed: Three Reasons to be Optimistic after 14 months of Trump

by Scott Phillips, Author

In recent gatherings of Democrat faithful, the mood has been frustrated.  It’s been grim about the direction of our country and there seems a decided lack of faith in our democracy and the Democratic Party as a whole.   I have heard people suggest that the next elections won’t be free and fair.  Or that it is time to move somewhere else (almost anywhere really).  The outrages of this Administration seem to have created a mood of despair and despondency.

For the record, I think this is a bit premature and risks falling into the trap Trump has set.  He wants you to be discouraged and to feel overwhelmed.  He wants you to give up, focus on the daily outrages, and wallow in despondency.  He’s banking on it.

As for me, I’m an optimist.  I truly believe that America is made up of pretty normal people that don’t like extremists from either the left or the right.  I see an epic backlash brewing.  And I think the data backs me up.  Actual data is all pointing in one direction:  We are winning – even without a real plan.

The evidence for this is significant.   Here are three reasons to be optimistic.

Reason 1:  The Momentum is Towards Democrats

Below is a graphic from the New York Times showing that there has been a big shift in every recent election in 2025 with the even safe Republican seats shifting dramatically left.   The smallest gain in 2025 was +13 towards Dems.  There were even bigger shifts in evidence.

Source: “An Election ‘Off Year,’ but Not a Year Off,”  New York Times, Dec 18, 2025

Reason 2:  Abigail Spanberger

You could see this in the Democratic response to President Trump’s State of the Union given by Abigail Spanberger, Governor of Virginia.  But it wasn’t her words that mattered as much as her back story.

Just a few months ago, she beat her Republican opponent by a staggering 15% (57.6% vs. 42.2%), a landslide margin in a state that went for a Republican governor just four years ago in 2021 by a solid 2%.  Spanberger is just one proof point that an electoral route of Trumpism and MAGA is both possible and brewing in a high visibility election in a state that was just recently on the fence.  She did it on a theme of affordability, driving that message right down the center and winning overwhelmingly.

Reason 3:  The Map is Wide Open

Here’s another reason to be optimistic.  I downloaded a file from Cook Political Report on the current House membership and sorted the Republican members by their district’s Partisan Voting Index scores, or PVI, a measure of how partisan these districts are.  There are 220 Republican House members on the Cook list.  What it shows is that 131 of them are in districts that are R+13 or less.   That means 60% of Republican House seats today are theoretically in play just nine months from now.  (Try it yourself at: https://www.cookpolitical.com/cook-pvi/2025-partisan-voting-index/district-map-and-list)

These numbers give me (and should give you) a lot of room for optimism.  Where I am a bit more worried is on whether Democrats have a plan to capitalize on Trump’s extremism or can step back from positions that have been polarizing and divisive and a turn off to major portions of the electorate.   Here is a good perspective on that from Thomas Edsell (also from the NYT), “I Wouldn’t Say the Democrats are in Good Shape.”

If we can reclaim the center, focus on messages that extend beyond the base like affordability, and get that message out consistently, there is a very good chance November 2026 could be an historic route of an unpopular president and a repudiation of MAGA that would even put Senate Republicans on the run.

This doesn’t feel like a time for gloom and doom.  It feels like a golden opportunity to reinvent the Democrats and win big.  We have 214 seats in the House of Representatives today, just a few short of the majority.   But a few is not enough.   We should be more ambitious.

A more worthy goal is a veto-proof majority of 288.   That means we need 74 pickups.  That sounds like a lot.  In fact, it would be historic.  But we have 131 targets that are R+13 or less.  We should focus on what it will take to do the impossible and get that Spanberger 15% route across the board.

If someone tells you that an epic route is not possible, you can point them to the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada that went from 169 seats to 2 in 1993.  The Socialist Party of France that collapsed from a majority to just 29 seats in 2017.  Or the Scottish Labor Party that was decimated from 41 to 1 seat in the UK general election of 2015.  Or the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan that lost 54% of its seats in 1993.   Anywhere a political party in a democracy strays from what the vast majority want, a wipe out is possible.

If Democrats can find voices with messages of hope rather than despair, affordability rather than culture war then they can meet the vast majority of the electorate where they need help the most.  If that happens, then anything is possible.

You can find Scott’s writing at https://scottphillipsus.com/

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