A path forward — and a warning — for Democrats: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, politics reporter Alexandra Marquez has a dispatch from the Democratic Governors Association’s annual meeting, where the party’s state leaders were full of concern and ideas about how to tackle future elections. Plus, we dive into the math of the Senate and what it means that the Democrats’ class of 2006 has mostly faded away or lost seats.

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Democratic governors want to set a different tone for their party in a second Trump administration

By Alexandra Marquez

Democrats are still reeling and reflecting on what went so wrong for their party this year. But at Democratic governors’ annual gathering in California, they were in full agreement that something has to change for their party — and, in their eyes, hopefully one of them — to have a real shot at the White House in 2028.

“We can worry later about who we run for president [in 2028] or policy tweaks,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told NBC News, adding that for now, Democrats need to “build the foundation, build the infrastructure, elect a DNC chairman who is committed to doing just that.” 

And amid a pitch to rededicate the party to a focus on improving voters’ everyday lives, addressing key issues such as inflation, health care, infrastructure, transportation and education, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear warned Democrats about a key obstacle to their ambitions for redefinition: President-elect Donald Trump. 

In the last Trump administration, people focused “too much on Trump and what was happening in D.C. and not enough on [Democratic] priorities,” Beshear said.

“Don’t fall into us versus them,” he said. “It’s not a winning strategy.” 

At other levels of the party — including among some of the “resistance” activist groups that gained prominence during Trump’s first term — there’s already broad agreement that Democrats can’t react to Trump in the same ways they did eight years ago.  

But some of the most prominent governors, who happen to be among those mentioned as potential presidential candidates, quickly leaned into setting up their states as bulwarks against Trumpism after his election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special legislative session, while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker talked about how to “shore up” his state against Trump. 

Others in purple and red states have taken less aggressive postures. At the Democratic Governors Association meetings, Beshear and fellow red-state Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas said they’d look for room to work with Trump in areas that would benefit their constituents. 

Read more →

Democrats’ famed Senate class of 2006 has all but disappeared. Here’s why it matters.

By Mark Murray

The celebrated Democratic Senate class of 2006 — the six Senate Dems who flipped GOP-held seats that midterm cycle — fueled Democratic majorities over the past two decades, helped pass the party’s legislative achievements over the next decade and a half and included some of Democrats’ biggest electoral overperformers in the most challenging of states.

Now, after the 2024 elections, just one of the six will remain in the Senate beginning next year: Sheldon Whitehouse, of Rhode Island.

That attrition tells an important story about the geographical transformation in American politics over the last 20 years, and it highlights the Democratic Party’s challenging path back to the Senate majority after their defeats in November.

The first member of the 2006 class to go was Jim Webb, of Virginia, who decided not to seek re-election in 2012 — but whose seat stayed in Democratic hands with Tim Kaine. 

The next to go was Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, who won re-election in 2012 but lost six years later in 2018. 

And in 2024, three more members of that vaunted class lost as Donald Trump carried their states: Jon Tester, of Montana, Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, and Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania. 

Senate Democrats began the 21st century winning in states like Missouri, Montana and Ohio. (Equally important, Republicans were holding Senate seats in places like Rhode Island and Virginia.) Now? It seems unfathomable how Democrats could win statewide federal elections in those three states, not to mention the likes of West Virginia and North Dakota. 

And that reality underscores Democrats’ challenge to win back the Senate in 2026 or 2028 — and beyond. After the recent election, the party controls all but one Senate seat in every state Kamala Harris carried. (The lone outlier? Susan Collins in Maine.) Democrats also have 10 of the 14 Senate seats in the seven key presidential swing states. 

Yet that gets them to only 47 Senate seats. Even if they defeat Collins and flip the four other Senate seats in battleground states (two in North Carolina, one in Wisconsin, one in Pennsylvania) while holding the others, that maxes out at 52. If Democrats want more than that, they will need to figure out how to win again in places like Missouri, Ohio and other now-reliably red states.  

There’s one other important story about the Democratic class of 2006: At the beginning of that election cycle, few observers thought Democrats would be able to flip more than a couple of Senate seats, let alone six. 

But the unpopularity of the Iraq war and George W. Bush’s administration expanded the Senate battleground far beyond initial expectations. 

That’s a reminder that no political map stays in place forever. It’s always changing.

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

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