Dems won. Now what?

The blue wave turned into a blunami. Rahm Emanuel was in Congress the last time this happened. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen and Kelli Wessinger with help from Ariana Aspuru, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed smiles onstage after declaring victory in Michigan's US Senate race during an election night party in Detroit, Michigan, early on November 4, 2026. Photo by Jeff Kowalsky / AFP via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

04/11/202626:23

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Résumé de l'épisode

The 2026 midterm results indicate a significant shift in American politics, characterized by a resounding victory for the Democratic Party. In the aftermath, political analyst Rahm Emanuel discusses potential legislative priorities for the new Congress, including lobbying reform, ethics oversight, and economic measures to address affordability. The conversation emphasizes that while the results serve as a repudiation of current Republican leadership, Democrats must work to solidify their broad-based coalition of independent and non-MAGA voters heading toward 2028.

À retenir 1The midterm results are viewed as a seismic political shift and a direct referendum on the current administration.

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The midterms. What a night for the old American experiment. I guess that whole focus on John Houston's ass thing didn't work. It's like a pile of muscle. I guess that whole Islamophobia throwback campaign didn't work. His name is actually Abdullah something it's Abdullah baba baba. I guess they might stop trying to make Vivek happen. And and that the president was rocking about that awful ad? So I told him leave it up and look upstairs and say thank you God very much. I appreciate it. But maybe the most impressive thing about last night more so than all the wins was that for like three hours as he watched the returns come in, President Trump was silent.

No interviews, no speeches, no posts. Dems won. Now what? On Today Explained from Vox. Support for Today Explained comes from Better Help. It's that time of year when we are reconnecting with friends and family and sometimes those reunions can be a little stressful. When that happens it can help to have someone talk things through with. Better Help therapists are licensed experienced professionals including psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and more. Better Help is now in network with more than 125 health plans with copays as low as $15 for eligible members and if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month.

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Find your favorite holiday recipe at creamcheese.com. Blue nami. Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram with my Vox colleague Ested Herndon. Ested, was it a blue wave, a blue nami, a blue sky maybe? What have you determined? I like the idea of blue sky, but I'll go with blue nami. I mean, I think that we were first talking about whether wave or trickle and early in the night it became pretty clear that this would be a resounding result for Democrats and I think it only got more true as the night went on.

We're not just talking about a blue wave here. We're talking about a seismic political earthquake. Michigan, we did it!

And then there's Ohio and then there's Texas and then there's Kansas. I almost can't even believe the states I'm I'm listing here. Last night changed the trajectory of American politics and radically expanded the geographic and demographic reach of a new Democratic Party. You know, all of that evidence really adds up to the best night that Democrats could have hoped for and more importantly, I think, a resounding rejection of this administration from the American public. This did really feel like a referendum on our present politics, on our president, more so than the country really loves Democrats now.

But did you see any particular races, be they House, Senate, gubernatorial, whatever it may have been, that suggested like, wow, Democrats really do have some solid footing here? Certainly, I think there's a lot of fresh faces from Democrats or fresh messages that certainly had a good night. I'm thinking about Tarrico and Ossoff in Texas and Georgia who really leaned into that corruption message. We saw that really be successful. Ken Paxton says, I don't have his experience and he's right. I've never been indicted for fraud. I've never been reported to the FBI for bribery.

Congressman Mike Collins, the bigot congressman. I've talked about candidates who backed a data center moratorium. I would issue a moratorium on any new data centers until the legislature can pass laws to protect Texans. Everything from water to electricity, um, jobs, all of it, right? Making sure we have guardrails when it comes to AI. This is what AI is for. This is what it is not for. And I think that really speaks to some of the issues that were, uh, really making up this sort of populist backlash.

Yeah. You have affordability, you have AI, and I think that those things really drove Democrats to really have a bottom versus top election in the ways that they won it rather than right versus left. But I think that like although there are a lot of encouraging signs for Democrats that certainly does not mean they're about to cakewalk to the White House in 2028, but at the same time, I think there's a lot of seeds of a message that will get them closer. I think two or more, uh, big tent party unifying theme that they were not, maybe three four months ago.

We spent a lot of time talking about redistricting, gerrymandering, this war for every last seat that was going on in the months before this election. And then ultimately last night, it felt like it didn't matter that much when you talk about what happened with Darlene Grays race or what happened in Texas or Kansas even. I mean, why didn't that pan out for the Republicans? Well, I would say a couple things. One, it still matters because they might have just been an even bigger. So like, I think we should also say it still has an effect even though Democrats were able to overcome some of those gerrymanders.

But you're right, Democrats won several districts that were specifically drawn for Republicans to win in Florida, in North Carolina, in Texas, and Alabama. I think it actually shows how Trump's rigging of the game caused an electoral backlash. I mean, I I I think we can't overstate that he tried to win these midterms months ago when he was trying to redraw these maps in Republican favor. Well, I think it's been a wonderful process. They've been the Democrats, they've redistricted for years and now we took our shot and it looks like we're going to pick up a lot of seats and that's a good thing.

He tried to win them two months ago when he was leaning into voter intimidation and stay voter roll purchase. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls and yet we still have elections with no voter ID, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots flowing aimlessly through the mail. He has taken the anti-democratic option at every turn here and we've seen people actually respond to that. I think that we're seeing, uh, a kind of electorate that really did not like the anti-democratic lower D games that Republicans were playing here and they saw folks really come out, uh, to stand up on that front.

And I got to say, I find that a little heartening, you know. I think that we sometimes assume in political journalism that these rules and these kind of structures cannot be overcome and I think in the results yesterday, we see that that's not matching up with the public. Okay, so you wouldn't say, you know, the gerrymandering didn't work. You would just say that the turnout overwhelmed Trumped it. They uh yeah, Trumped it. That's a better way to say it. But what about the money? Because that's the other thing people were really worried about.

I mean, how much money Elon Musk was pouring into Texas. Did political spending not ultimately matter in the most expensive election we've ever had? Yeah, we really saw that money flop, I would say, largely. Elon Musk poured millions into specifically that Texas race. Yeah, the GOP have a huge spending advantage and it was around a couple issues. They tried to kind of wage this tech war, uh, in support candidates who were backing, uh, less regulation on crypto or less regulation on prediction markets. Congress shouldn't let Big Banks destroy Trump's crypto agenda.

And I would say, um, you also had them really lean into the kind of culture war, right? Like all of those ads were about Tarrico. They were about, uh, masculinity. They were about kind of causing and stoking trans panic. James Tarrico supports parents being charged with child abuse if they do not support transitioning their children. And we haven't really seen, uh, that really move people in maybe the ways it did three four years ago. I think there was a projection that some of this like anti-wokeness message was forever resonant with the public and I just don't think that's true.

If anything, I think that the what they were using the money on was not a message that was resonant to people and, and to your point, no amount of that spending was really able to overcome the things that people already knew. They knew they had less money in their pocket. They knew their gas prices were higher and that's where the head was in the ballot box. Affordability really has been the Democrats' calling card throughout the year. Now, I think it's important to say that's not where Democrats started.

I mean, even when Donald Trump announced his tariffs, there was a lot of Democrats who were mming and hawing about whether that should be something that they, uh, pushed back against. Really, the Democrats embraced that message in full after Mumdani's win in New York in in 2025 and that worked for them. It actually repositioned the party from the bigger culture war focus of three four years ago back to things that matter most to people and we saw that intertwined with some other, uh, policy issues too.

Corruption was really intertwined with affordability. It wasn't just that Donald Trump was, uh, kind of conducting an open grift. It was that he was doing it as things were becoming more unaffordable for you. Trump told voters to vote as if he were on the ballot. Pretend please that I'm on the ballot. Then when he took a shellacking last night, he said, it's because I wasn't on the ballot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Truth Social. I wasn't on the ballot and if I was, we would have won in a landslide. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump. He told reporters last night that he would be happy to work with Democrats and then, also last night, he posted a MAGA hat that said veto on it. He's clearly in his feelings. How bad was his night? Maybe scale of one to 10? Yeah, it was an 11. I mean, I think if you're Donald Trump, there's no, you know, space to hide here.

His handpicked candidates lost. He put Republicans in a tougher position and then you had a kind of margin on the House that's going to give Democrats some wiggle room to really follow through on some of these accountability measures. And so I think Donald Trump is going to go through the stages of grief here. Like, you know, when the first that might be, you know, maybe I'll work with them. Well, we're going to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country. Very important.

They've already called and they want to work with me. They have the right to veto everything. But I don't want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything. Does he follow through on that? Does he use his kind of executive power that they've that they've steadily grown over the last two years to really try to insulate himself from Congress? I think we don't know those answers to the question yet because this is a president who could respond to these results not through moderation but through escalation.

And, uh, I think we should be really wary, uh, of taking what he says in that initial, uh, response as something that he'll still believe in a month or two.

Okay, Rahm Emanuel has been everywhere this election and he's going to be here next because he's been here before. We'll Today Explained in a minute.

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Taxes and fees apply. Regime change. Uh, should I call you mayor, ambassador, chief? In that order. Okay. Mayor, ambassador, chief Emanuel, welcome to Today's Explained. Thanks, Sean. How are you? Doing well. I saw you on TV last night and here you are now. It's funny how that happens, man. Thank you for your service to the Republic. We wanted to talk to you today because you've been here before personally, way back in 2006. It was a different Congress, a different president, certainly a different time. But can you tell people who don't remember what position you were in back then?

Oh, in 2006, I was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and led the effort to take back, uh, the House. Then became, after that election, Nancy Pelosi was speaker and I became, uh, caucus chair number four and also kind of helped also in the 28, 2008 cycle, uh, the Democratic Congressional Campaign where we added another 20 seats. So Democrats were in around 254 seats when President Obama puts his hand left hand on the Bible. And and to put a finer point on it, George W.

Bush is president in 2006. You guys win control of the House. And Senate. And Senate and then use that control in some respects to notch another win in in 2008, which of course is what everyone's going to be talking about for the next two years. So so what did you do? What was the playbook? So this is a so let's pull back a little, take a wider lens. One, uh, this is a repudiation of the Republicans, not a vindication of the Democrats. So you got to start understanding what happened here.

It's broad, it's deep, much, I mean, I always thought we were going to have a blue wave. This is a tsunami. I mean, this is Watergate numbers. Hm. To your question, uh, does state with which is they lost last night. What we do in 2027 will determine whether we have won. And then in that case, um, the voters voted for change, not a Democratic version of more of the same. Understand that. You have what a broad-based coalition where non-MAGA Republicans and Independents are giving the Democrats a second look.

Solidify this as a working coalition. Make the election transformational, not transactional. So A, massive lobbying and ethic reform bill. First two months. Okay. Okay. Now, in '07, then there's this guy called Senator Obama and Congressman Rahm Emanuel and we drive for the first last lobbying and ethics reform bill. It was 20 years ago. Power wash all of Washington. Power wash the place, all three branches. Ban stock trading. Ban prediction market participation. Mandatory blind trust. Mandatory term limits and or retirement age. And then what I call the Jared Kushner rule.

No foreign no foreign money while in government and no foreign money two years afterwards. No Saudi Arabia and Qatari little blind little blind trust for you. Nah. So do all that and then the Republican voters have voted on you and the independents will go, "Okay, that's the change I wanted." Do the hearings, but produce a piece of legislation that acts on the hearings. Second, everything's going up in price. What hasn't? The minimum wage. Last time it went up, Nancy Pelosi was speaker. She had the gavel.

Pass a minimum wage 20 by 2030. Third, repeal, restrict all these tariffs that are driving prices up. Everything I just told you, bipartisan House and Senate, you'll get bipartisan votes. And it puts Trump in a position. You sign it, we win. You veto it, we win. There's obviously this tension between legislate and investigate right now. Based on last night, people want legislate, but a lot of the base wants justice. They want Hegseth out. They want corrupt They want their they want their pound of flesh. So, tell me how you think Democrats should It's not it's not an it's not an either or, but here's the lesson.

You should do the investigations. Like where is the Venezuela oil money? If you want to hear more about that, tune into Today Explained on Friday. Okay. Okay. What what where is Jared Kushner's secret account with the Qatari money and the Saudi money? And what was he doing for them for that bidding for that price? I'm all for that. But that's not change. That's the predicate. If you now I'm against this. Now it's not it's not popular with people. I'm against impeachment because it's one person. And you won't get it done.

But all three branches are are needed cleaning. Not just one man. What about his cabinet? Clean it all up. The job of the Democrats is to roll up your sleeves and get to work. And again, now look, some Democrats may think this is a vindication vote. I think it's a repudiation vote and we'll earn the victory in 2027 by producing change. You have to accept this. It's not like either party has a moral high ground here or a political high ground. Right. Earn that trust. Solidify that winning coalition that went from Texas to Maine, possibly from Alaska to Mississippi.

Solidify and I think if you listen to Hakeem Jeffries last night and you listen to Chuck Schumer, they understand the test is about to come. It wasn't behind us, it's in front of us. Hakeem Jeffries feels a little unknowable sometimes. What do you think of him as a Speaker of the House? Well, it's unfair because I'm close to him. And what okay, so uh So tell us what we don't know about him. Well, he's Look, I I I respect this because uh pretty much all our conversations first start with what?

A discussion make checking in on each other's families. As soon as we I mean now we rush through it so we get to politics. But he's a very much uh a family he takes his family serious and his role as a parent very serious. He takes Okay, but now he's very important to the country. Well, he's also very I mean I respect him for that. The other thing uh I can say I only say this because uh he's also very observant and serious about his faith.

He's because I've gotten a number of texts back. I can't talk. I'm in service. So I said, "Put the phone down. Listen to the sermon. You're going to need it." And I say that. So that's another thing you don't know. The other thing is he's a consensus builder, but he does know what he wants to get done. He's a consensus builder in a time where the democratic tent feels like it's never been bigger. Karl Rove's in the tent now. How do you manage that tent? Karl Rove and AOC and Mom Donny, how does Hakeem Jeffries use that to his advantage somehow in this new Congress?

Um, I can't say it on a podcast. You can say anything on a podcast. That's the whole point of podcasts. I'm not going to do that. So, I used to say to Speaker Pelosi when I was caucus chair and we were counting votes and trying to move X or Y. I said Mo Udall used to have a great joke. And he was you know post Watergate. And he used to say what is the difference between a cactus and a caucus? In a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.

And so let me say this. With the numbers Hakeem will have as Mr. Speaker will have. Nobody can hold him hostage. When you're at 221, everybody's a kingmaker and they're going to sit there and hold you hostage. When you're at 250, okay, 254, no you want to Hakeem has the liberty to say, when you walk out of here, make sure the door doesn't hit you. Okay. Can I ask you about something you said on TV last night? No. Sure, you can do whatever you can do whatever you want.

It's your show. I'm here. So, all right, I will. You told Democrats that they should go after Republicans now in 2028. And there are people who hear you say that and they go absolutely. And there are people who hear you say that they want to reach through their TV screens and choke you because they're hearing they're hearing this 2024 let's go campaign with Liz Cheney kind of mindset here that did not work. Here's what I would say to you is just a little bit we don't have to do this.

This is not this is not like a hypothetical. Yeah. Go tell the Kansas senator now who is a former Republican. Forget about it. Hamilton? Yeah. He's a former Republican. Yeah. Okay. Neo Bush who gave everybody a permission slip in Texas said, "I'm voting for Talarico." Okay. That's an opening Well, Kamala Harris did it with they ran around talking about democracy. I'm talking about people's pocketbooks. And look, having helped Senator Hamilton, having helped Nancy Lacore, the three-star general that just won in Charleston, South Carolina, helped helped recruit her and then went down and did three events for her.

Those are people that built a winning coalition. Now here's the difference. The fact is to flip red to blue, you had to get Republican votes and independents. If you want to keep going and keep winning and solidifying this coalition, you got to know who was part of it. Now if you think you're going to go into 2028 just on the backs of Democrats, God bless you. Swing voters in swing states swing presidential elections. You're graduate now of the Kennedy School of Government. You have your PhD.

You just learned it. Swing voters in swing states swing presidential. And I'll give you an example. This will get me yelled at. President Biden made a pledge in 2020 to govern and bring America together. Yeah. He spent a good portion of his presidency bringing the party together, not the nation. And I think it actually cost him politically. I think so. Okay. So that's the lesson. Now we can either ignore it, heed it, and be smart and strategic about it. Yeah, okay. That was the last democratic president.

I'm going to ask you about the next one. Paul McCartney told me never to drop names. You've dropped a few in this conversation. Drop one more for me. Who do you like as a candidate in 2028? And you can't pick yourself. I'm sorry. I I want to going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to answer that. You're not going to answer it? No. I'm not going to answer it because here's the good news for you. As I joke and say this is look, in 2024, let's be honest, the party didn't have a choice.

We were told who our nominee is. Pretty much that's true also in 2020, 2016. In 2028, you're going to have Baskin and Robbins 31 flavors. And if I decide to do this, you're looking at Rocky Road.

That was good. That's a good answer. Yeah. I still want a name. All right. Well, you ain't going to get it. So, question next question. That's it. That's all the That's all the time we have. All the questions I had for you. Mayor, Ambassador, Chief Rahm Emanuel, thank you for your time. Yeah. I like that shirt, brother. Hey, thank you. They can't see it on the radio. No, they can't. But it it takes a lot of courage to wear it.

I'll talk to you, man. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. All right. All right. Bye-bye. If you want to see the shirt, the conversation I had earlier with the Stead will be on YouTube, which is also one of the many places you can find his show, America Actually. Peter Ball on Rosen, Kelly Wessinger, Amira Al-Ossaili, Ariana Spruill, Gabriel Donato, David Tatersall, and Bridger Donigan made this episode of Today Explained and we'll have another tomorrow. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other.

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