El Sayed, Talarico, Ossoff. The new faces of the Democratic Party, without a common platform

Two parties in need of reinvention, searching for their identity and grappling with a generational shift and a change in political direction that will shape America and the world in the coming years. This is the country the mid-term elections have handed us. Whilst on the Republican side this marks the beginning of the end of Trumpism, with no alternatives in sight, on the Democratic side the vote has revealed a mosaic of new or revitalised faces, ready to battle it out for control of a party that is far from having a common platform. The new Democratic team, which is preparing to arrive in Washington or take the helm of states that until yesterday were Republican, has, first and foremost, a coach who has spent the last two years on the sidelines, beginning to reorganise a defeated and demoralised team: Barack Obama. The impartiality with which former presidents of the past usually conducted themselves has now been cast aside, in the face of Donald Trump’s excesses. 

Obama, Bill Clinton and, to some extent, George W. Bush on the other side have returned to politics, whilst Joe Biden is too fragile to do so. It will fall primarily to Obama to try to steer the party’s various factions and the new stars jostling for the limelight towards a common ground. Amidst socialists, establishment figures, moderates, the religious left and post-woke activists, the party is a melting pot where the only constant is that Americans continue to wonder what it has to offer. Last night, America voted ‘against’ Trump, not yet ‘for’ the Democrats. Yet many Democratic candidates still secured their seats through a hard-fought campaign. In the coming months, the spotlight will be focused above all on the trio of stars who not only lived up to but even exceeded the poll predictions.

Abdul El Sayed, a doctor turned politician and newly elected senator for Michigan with 52 per cent of the vote, is now emerging as a new standard-bearer for a more radical left-wing faction, alongside figures such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani. However, El Sayed is not necessarily aligned with this trio, and his ambitions remain unclear: will he support Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) in her almost certain presidential bid, or will he enter the race himself? Unlike Mamdani, who was not born in the United States and cannot stand for the White House, El Sayed is a Detroit native with an all-American background, a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford and Columbia, and he might decide that a Senate seat is not enough for him. This would make him a problem for AOC.

The second key figure of election night, James Talarico, is instead infusing the Democratic Party with the spirit of a new, unusual religious left, characterised by words of reconciliation and biblical quotations. This proved to be a disruptive force in Texas; it rallied Hispanic voters who had switched to Trump just two years ago, mobilised young people, and attracted independents outraged by Ken Paxton’s track record. Is this a formula that could work beyond the context of Texas and the ‘blue wave’ that Talarico skilfully rode? That remains to be seen, but it is certainly striking that on the very same night, a little further north, Adam Hamilton – a Methodist pastor and founder of a large congregation – also triumphed, having challenged the evangelical right on its own turf and won a seat that had not gone to the Democrats since 1932. Far removed from the socialist left of El Sayed and the religious left of Talarico and Hamilton is the third key figure of election night, Jon Ossoff. He was no newcomer, having already served as a senator, but he managed to reinvent himself and build the most enthusiastic election campaign in Georgia. A year ago, his re-election was far from a foregone conclusion in a state that Trump won in 2024. Yet it turned out to be a triumph, with two-thirds of the vote, accompanied by that ‘presidential’ aura which, in American politics, sometimes suddenly descends upon a particular candidate and begins to make them appear as though they were destined for the role. That is how the stories of Clinton and Obama began. Ossoff belongs to a group of moderate yet tough politicians – even within their own party – which makes him a potentially dangerous rival for governors preparing to run for the presidency.

The latter have had a night that serves as confirmation of their potential: Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), J. B. Pritzker (Illinois) and Wes Moore (Maryland) were all re-elected with over 60 per cent of the vote. The ‘party of governors’, ready to launch their bids for the White House primaries, includes all three of them, alongside the outgoing governors Andy Beshear in Kentucky, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Gavin Newsom in California, as well as a former governor, Kamala Harris, who decided not to stand in order to keep the door open for a possible second presidential bid. Speaking of governors, among the new faces now stepping into the spotlight are Texas’s first Hispanic governor, Gina Hinojosa, and, most notably, the first African-American female governor in U.S. history, Keisha Lance Bottoms, elected in Georgia.

Whilst the Democrats will spend the coming weeks analysing the electoral miracles in places such as Iowa and Ohio (two states where Trump’s ‘red wall’ has crumbled), the Republicans face the difficult task of charting a way out of a MAGA-driven form of Trumpism that no longer seems to be working. It remains to be seen how much the two presidential hopefuls, J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, will suffer the consequences. The former has taken joint responsibility for the referendum on Trump – and thus the defeat – whilst the latter – who, in theory, might be secretly pleased with the results – is paying the price for his support for the war against Iran. From the sidelines, yesterday’s defeated candidates—such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley—are raising their heads again, along with rebels like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even what remains of the old Bush-era Republican Party. All are ready for a showdown with a Trump who has two years ahead of him entrenched amongst the gilded stucco of the White House. Increasingly isolated, increasingly unpredictable.