The town hall in America prevailed in 2026
US politics has always been a quarrel between two impulses. In this week’s midterms, one won.
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The first signs of a resurgent Democratic coalition lie not in the big races but in the night’s local votes.
PHOTO: ALEX KENT/NYTIMES
Elvin Lim
Eighteen years ago, Barack Obama arrived in Washington promising hope and change, with 257 Democrats in the House and, for a time, 60 in the Senate. This week, Democrats won something remarkably like it – about 255 House seats and 55 or 56 senators, on a popular-vote margin unseen since the 1970s.
It is tempting to read Nov 3 only as a verdict on President Donald Trump, and it was one. But it also marked a second chance at the political realignment that Obama promised and could not complete. The first signs of a resurgent Democratic coalition lie not in the big races but in the night’s local votes.