Rust Belt Insurgents Will Determine the Midterms

“Rust Belt Insurgents Clinch Democrats’ House Takeover, Repair Blue Wall.” A little over a year from now, a headline like that will convey the state of the electorate—if Democrats prevail in the 2026 midterms.

Of course, Democrats hoping for such a rebound should have gotten straight to work the morning of last November 6. In the interim, they have been predictably overwhelmed by Trump’s “shock and awe.” Now, amid a dispiriting shutdown fight after a summer of drift, they must muster all they can to bring an insurgency to fruition and perhaps do a bit of praying besides. Democrats’ most immediate and urgent problems have only mounted across the Midwest and interior Northeast, in working-class districts that have swung hard to Trump but were crucial to the Democratic coalition up through Barack Obama’s 2008 triumph. Though parts of the “just out of reach” suburban Sunbelt beckon (most tantalizingly in the Texas Senate race), rebuilding the fabled Blue Wall remains the first order of business if the party is to have any hope in 2028.

The alternate paths back to power—or even just divided government—are scant. GOP redistricting schemes already threaten to depress party competition in Texas. Potential pick-ups in Arizona and California, even if bolstered by Gavin Newsom’s own redistricting plan in the latter, could be offset by fresh losses among aging Democrats elsewhere. Democratic campaign operatives pining for a party-wide “comeback kid” narrative need to be steeped in unadulterated realism. As indicated by Cook Political Report’s toss-up seats, a blue wave akin to that of 2018 or 2006 is not in the cards unless a painful recession occurs. And Democrats can’t count on that (as lousy as the job market is).

That leaves a dwindling number of mostly Rust Belt swing districts, which unfortunately seem to have little bearing on the machinations of the current Democratic leadership. While historical patterns suggest that the incumbent party is virtually bound to lose seats in the midterms, polling underscores that Democrats risk squandering their theoretical edge over Speaker Mike Johnson’s lot.

There is nevertheless a cohort of independent-leaning Democrats who could have an outsize impact—not just on the party’s morale, but on its trajectory for the next decade. Driven by a desire to genuinely serve and make government accountable once more, they embody an older progressive tradition of weeding out special favors and undue privilege. To flip the script, however, these would-be insurgents cannot merely capitalize on grassroots anger at the GOP’s populist feint. Their success—and the fate of their party—will hinge on whether they can overcome perceptions that today’s Democrats have become wildly “out of touch,” at the expense of reforms that empower regular Americans and affirm the dignity of work.

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Among the House candidates, Rebecca Cooke of Wisconsin, Christina Bohannan of Iowa, and former news anchor Janelle Stelson of Pennsylvania all ran very close races in 2024. After coming up short when Kamala Harris led the ticket, they may be the strongest beneficiaries of anti-incumbent sentiment metastasizing to MAGA, especially given the unpopularity of the GOP’s chief domestic bill and increasing concern in the Farm Belt over Trump’s tariffs. Others, such as Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti and firefighter union leader Bob Brooks, who are challenging vulnerable Republicans in PA-8 and PA-7, respectively, are outspoken adversaries of machine politics and Washington’s self-dealing. Like Iowa’s Nathan Sage, who is vying to flip Joni Ernst’s open Senate seat, and Nebraska’s independent labor-populist Dan Osborn, now making his second bid for the Senate, Cognetti and Brooks could win over disgruntled swing voters who feel Team Trump has mainly enriched the swamp.

Full-bore progressive populism, uncowed by the recent backlash to identity politics, is also making waves in unexpected places. Former army veteran Graham Platner, who overnight has electrified many progressives looking for a rural, millennial heir to Bernie Sanders, could harness Mainers’ enigmatic independent streak in his bid to topple that avatar of discredited moderation, Republican Senator Susan Collins.

A commitment to “pragmatic populism” nonetheless best describes the bulk of these candidates (including brewery founder Dan Kleban, Platner’s main rival for the reformist banner). This does not mean they vacillate on the core issues of political corruption and economic predation. But they are sensitive to, rather than uncharitable toward, the concerns of working-class Trump voters. One reason is that they are very much a part of the communities they seek to represent and have neighbors who never saw the fruits of the knowledge economy. Although critical of Trump’s tariffs, these Democrats know firsthand the costs of offshoring and corporate mergers. They understand, too, that the repercussions of hyperglobalization have compounded for years. They know that lost businesses and lost jobs lead to broken families, blight, and crime, problems that fester the more they inhibit redevelopment.

This familiarity with hardship has indubitably shaped their candidacies and is often personal. In particular, Bohannan, Cooke, Brooks, Sage, and Platner have stressed their working-class roots, with Bohannan and Sage openly discussing their separate upbringings in trailer parks. To them, affordability is not just a buzzword—they know what being on the brink of destitution is like.

The lack of fancy pedigrees offers a common touch so often missing from the modern, celebrity-obsessed national party. Still, what unites these Democrats is a relentless focus on the dying American dream, encapsulated by exorbitant prices, declining life chances, and the cronyism and rent-seeking that flow from too much economic concentration. On taming monopolies and promoting regional development, they are likely to boost the influence of their prospective allies in the House—Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA-17), Pat Ryan (NY-18), Josh Riley (NY-19), Kristen McDonald Rivet (MI-8), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-3), and Jared Golden (ME-2)—assuming these swing-district incumbents can hang on. On sociocultural issues such as immigration, crime, abortion, and gender/sexual identity, the picture is still emerging. Some of these insurgents arguably range from moderate to liberal, with “liberal” generally denoting the pre-Trump, pre-“woke” meaning. Notably, Cognetti and Brooks have platforms that thus far avoid the culture war. As underdogs in must-win districts, they naturally want to highlight economic issues and not be tagged as in thrall to the Brahmin left.

Depending on the issue, some of these candidates may even be described as “not a progressive,” at least according to the strict criteria of 2019-2021. Most, including Platner, have platforms recognizing the importance of border security, the issue that, after inflation, inflicted the greatest damage on Democrats’ reputation in recent years. This is not to overstate what is still a tentative shift back to the less laissez-faire immigration policies of the Obama administration. Nodding to the consequences of an expanding pool of exploitable labor kept in the shadows, Platner and Sage have respectively assailed the “slave wages” and “cheap labor” desired by multinational corporations. It’s a tougher stance that echoes—perhaps unintentionally—the economic arguments of right-populists such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. The dilemma here is that it is implausible to stem the phenomenon of undocumented, underpaid labor without difficult choices entailing tougher rules that also fall on migrants. While rhetoric about exploitation may, for now, prove acceptable to pro-immigration activists desperate to elect anyone who might exert restraint on Trump’s callous deportation regime, it may not be enough to satisfy blue-collar voters demanding concrete proof of deterrence.

Can these underdog Democrats thread a coalition that withstands compromise on the most polarizing issues? The answer will be partly determined by how much berth progressive activists grant them. To be clear, pragmatic populists shouldn’t forsake their integrity in a bid for far-fetched support. Not every working-class Trump voter they hope to reach can be peeled off. Yet would-be insurgents must also resist the pressures of a donor network whose intolerance of all “right-coded” stances is out of sync with the sentiments of “normie” voters, including plenty of long-suffering Democrats.

For some candidates, it will be tricky inspiring grassroots volunteers while keeping kingmaker advocacy groups at arm’s length. But it is a necessary balancing act, as Gluesenkamp Perez and Osborn can attest. The purpose, after all, of running as an insurgent in a deeply polarized age is to build bridges with the disaffected, not least blue-collar Americans who feel as though modern progressivism demands they atone for the simple act of disagreeing. Being able to speak one’s conscience while recognizing the complexity of issues wrongly reduced to black and white will be essential to being a different kind of Democrat. Indeed, the coalition necessary to move the country past Trumpism won’t be possible otherwise.

No one intent on reforming the Democratic Party should doubt it will take unusual discipline and talent to forge that coalition. All the aforementioned candidates have qualities that could connect with voters who have grown extremely skeptical of the national brand. Rather than dwell on Trump, they promise to strengthen forgotten communities and bring transparency—that long-elusive goal—to Washington. The truth, though, is that meshing populism, pluralism, civic nationalism, and progressive values has not come naturally to Democrats in the Trump era. Both the fortunes of seasoned, pro-labor politicians like Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan and once-promising newcomers like Lucas Kunce testify as much. It will take a lot of persuading and a lot of stamina to score an upset—let alone spark a realignment.

In this respect, progressives and left-populists should be careful not to mistake sharp ads and viral moments for momentum. Despite their best efforts, not all of the swing-district candidates are guaranteed to raise the bar for Democratic hopes next fall. Some might not even secure the party’s nomination. The primary contests are months away, and a few are crowded fields. Purity tests or #Resistance theater may overshadow dogged bridge-building. In a party submerged in consultant-speak, one cannot discount the possibility, too, that a hackneyed idea of “electability” will undercut those candidates with the most authentic backgrounds and messages.

Nearly all of the top insurgents, moreover, are at odds with their party’s leadership and direction—a vital trait, but one that could hobble critical fundraising and institutional support from both the left and the center. The risk of iconoclasm, even when the political advantages seem palpable, is that one can end up alienating influential groups. The extent to which these challengers can convincingly vocalize their independence will, therefore, be a test case of whether Democrats can reset the narrative in America’s rural and industrial heartlands. It will also reveal whether the party’s power brokers truly care to.

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As the approval of the Democratic leadership sinks to miserable new lows, the party’s key thinkers and allied journalists must ask themselves why it has come to this. More precisely, why is the party struggling to merely restore the Blue Wall instead of racking up wins everywhere the GOP has failed the working class? Connecting with the downtrodden and ignored shouldn’t be that difficult. Yet in most cases it has been.

This was not the vision of vigorous party competition imagined the night of Obama’s historic 2008 victory. Alas, the bitter irony of our moment is that the outsider candidates who will decide the midterms are the down-to-earth types that then-DNC chair Howard Dean sought a generation ago. Were it the turn of the century, most would be cast as Paul Wellstone liberals—principled, but determined to speak across cultural divides. Regional polarization, however, has made them insurgents against hardline conservatives and an inept (and often delusional) Democratic establishment. In a certain light they represent the socioeconomic and cultural “periphery” of the Democrats’ shrinking regional base—places that punished the GOP establishment (and, by proxy, John McCain) in 2008 and then spurned Mitt Romney’s chauffeur-and-cufflinks conservatism but have since tired of giving Democrats the benefit of the doubt.

It has thus fallen to candidates facing some of the toughest odds to right the ship. Yet it is just those odds that crystallize what Democrats absolutely must grasp: American liberalism cannot endure without the ranks of the unheard, misunderstood, and beat down. After months of flailing leadership, the time is now to yield the stage to those newcomers willing to talk to anyone, anywhere, about what it will take to renew the country’s promise.