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For a party out of power in Washington, D.C., Democrats are on a roll outside the Beltway. They're winning races, and President Trump's poll numbers are dropping - always good signs for the opposition party in a midterm election year. But there are still a lot of obstacles ahead for the out party. NPR's senior national political correspondent, Mara Liasson, has more.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Democrats like Adam Jentleson are feeling pretty good. His party has won or overperformed in every election this year.
ADAM JENTLESON: The takeaway is that the Americans do not like what Republicans and Donald Trump are offering. They're rejecting it wholesale.
LIASSON: But there's a big caveat, says Jentleson - the president of a new think tank called the Searchlight Institute, which he says is devoted to coming up with new ideas for Democrats.
JENTLESON: The challenge for Democrats is that Americans still aren't super enthusiastic about what Democrats are offering. Even these polls that show Trump's numbers plummeting across a range of issues show that voters still trust Republicans more than Democrats on major issues like the economy, crime and immigration.
LIASSON: Democrats like Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, thinks the party has a way to address that trust deficit. This year, all the Democratic candidates were singing from the same page, whether they were democratic socialists, like Zohran Mamdani in New York City, or moderate centrists, like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey.
NEERA TANDEN: If you look at their ads, their social media, all of those candidates had a relentless focus on how it's really hard for Americans to make ends meet, that costs are outstripping wages. And that through line is really forming a consensus now that Democrats can compete and win with a relentless focus on cost of living - or as the president likes to say, the affordability.
LIASSON: It's unusual for the normally fractious Democrats to agree on much. But this year, in addition to a unified, across-the-board focus on affordability, Democrats also seem to be forming a rare consensus on culture war issues - immigration, crime, transgender rights.
TANDEN: People get that we're in an existential threat and there just aren't these kinds of litmus tests.
LIASSON: Liberal litmus tests like defunding the police or decriminalizing illegal border crossings or the infamous litmus test over transgender rights that came back to haunt Kamala Harris in an attack ad that blanketed airwaves in the weeks before the election. In an effort to gain a liberal group's endorsement, Harris agreed to support taxpayer-funded transgender surgery for prison inmates. Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff, congressman and mayor of Chicago, says Democrats have learned a lesson.
RAHM EMANUEL: Don't focus on the bathroom access or locker rooms. Focus on classroom excellence. I happen to think defunding the police was dumb, but I have a proactive public safety argument, not a legal brief that you're 22% safer this year than last year.
LIASSON: Democrats have also struggled with the question of how much to make their message about Donald Trump. A focus on Trump hasn't worked for them in the past. Emanuel, Jentleson and Tanden think the answer this cycle is to convince voters that the economy is connected to Trump's self-dealing, and Democrats are willing to fight back.
EMANUEL: Corruption is going to be the big issue. And Donald Trump has proven - both him, his kids - they are literally making billions while you are left with the bill to pay.
JENTLESON: Donald Trump came into office promising to bring prices down, and prices are continuing to go up. And meanwhile, he is building himself a giant ballroom funded with money from his billionaire buddies.
TANDEN: The most important thing, I think, for most Democrats today is who is going to have some accountability for the Trump administration.
LIASSON: If that sounds like a chorus, it is. It's the message voters will be hearing nonstop from Democratic candidates all over the country next year. So Democrats think they have a winning message, but they also have to figure out how to win red states and rural districts without which they can't hope to take the House or Senate back next year. And Democrats' problems get even more existential over the long term. After the 2030 census, more than 15 electoral votes could move south away from the so-called blue wall states Democrats currently rely on to win the White House - Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania - and to red states like Texas, Georgia and Florida. Neera Tanden.
TANDEN: With population trends, the blue wall will not have sufficient electoral strength to win the presidency. Democrats will need to definitely win states like Iowa, Ohio.
LIASSON: ...Or West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Nebraska, Georgia, Florida - all places where in the past, says Adam Jentleson, Democrats could and did win.
JENTLESON: Democrats have been able to compete in these states, and we need to get back to being able to win there if we're going to have any hope of overcoming conservative structural advantages, long-term.
LIASSON: Those structural advantages - like partisan gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the rural tilt of the Senate - all favor Republicans. And Democrats are just now beginning to figure out what they need to do to overcome them. Mara Liasson, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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