Democrats woke up Wednesday after a 12-month nightmare with the feeling that their inability to connect with their voters and win elections like the one they lost exactly a year ago against Republican President Donald Trump was nothing but a bad dream.

Faith in the party’s chances of victory returned with resounding wins in New York — where the socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race in the most anticipated contest of the night — as well as in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia (which Abigail Spanberger turned blue) and New Jersey (which Mikie Sherrill won). In both states, the centrist candidates swept their Republican opponents. The Democrats, moreover, won almost everything where they ran: from the Detroit mayoral race to the vote to stop Somerville, Massachusetts, from investing in Israel.

The dose of good news — and the adrenaline rush after a year of post-mortem examinations of the November 2024 defeat — was completed by Californians voting “yes” on Proposition 50, which put to a referendum the efforts of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to redraw voting districts in California. Newsom managed to convince his fellow citizens that only with tactics like this is it possible to defeat Trump, who is pushing to alter electoral maps across the country to favor his supporters in the 2026 midterm elections.

The effect of that vote goes beyond the confines of the most populous territory in the country, because it secures for the Democrats five seats up for grabs in next year’s midterms, in which Republicans risk losing control of one or both Houses of Congress.

Left turn?

The California result arrived around midnight due to the time difference. By then, it was clear what had happened, although there was no consensus on how. The party, which celebrated its victories as a referendum on Trump’s second administration — which is relentlessly advancing down its authoritarian path 10 months after he took office — remains divided on the best way to continue winning. Is Mamdani’s progressivism and shift to the left the key? Or could his phenomenal campaign — from which there is much to learn about how to seduce the electorate in record time and activate young people — never have ended so well in the purple states, a color that comes from mixing Democratic blue and Republican red?

These questions meant that each faction of the party had something to celebrate Wednesday, and, equally, that the victory did not illuminate a single path toward the 2028 presidential elections. “The important thing,” Democratic Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez of New York explains to EL PAÍS, “is that we have sent a signal to the Republicans: there is an erosion of public support for the president, whose approval rating is at rock bottom.” “These elections have made it clear what battles we must fight and what positions we must adopt to win. It’s not about moderates or progressives, but about listening to the voters and fighting again for the working class,” adds Velázquez, who is on the left side of the coalition.

Both Spanberger and Sherrill presented themselves as moderate candidates, and both won by a landslide with over 56% of the vote. Their life stories further reinforced this moderate image. The new governor of Virginia was a CIA agent. The governor of New Jersey was a Navy helicopter pilot. They also share the fact that they entered politics in opposition to Trump and successfully positioned themselves as an alternative to the policies of the Republican president.

Mamdani, for his part, tried to focus on municipal issues such as rent freezes and free buses for New Yorkers, although with Trump in power, everything is inevitably overshadowed by the national circus, with him as its sole ringmaster. The young and proud socialist’s emphasis on affordability in a city ravaged by financial issues, where residents struggle to make ends meet, has proven to be a successful strategy that can be replicated elsewhere. It also stands in stark contrast to the campaign that led Kamala Harris to lose in every key state last year to Trump, whose candidacy successfully convinced voters that only Republicans cared about the cost of living and rampant inflation.

On Tuesday, when the debacle was already apparent, the U.S. president rushed to distance himself from the runners in his party with an all-caps message that once again revealed him as a team player only when the team wins. He wrote: “Trump wasn’t on the ballot, and shutdown [which on Tuesday shattered its all-time record with no end in sight] were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight, according to pollsters.” On Wednesday, he addressed a group of conservative senators at a breakfast at the White House, asking them to examine their consciences, as if the matter had nothing to do with him.

Despite the blatant disclaimer of responsibility, Trump has a point: the results in Virginia — which until Tuesday had a Republican governor and is home to some 150,000 federal workers — indicate that voters blame the president’s party for cutting off public funding. They also show that the Democrats’ risky decision not to vote with their rivals to reopen the government until they receive guarantees that there will be no cuts to healthcare subsidies is proving to be a winning move in the arena of public opinion, despite the harm being done to federal employees who have stopped receiving their paychecks. Many have been forced to rely on food banks to fill their pantries.

Sherrill’s victory in New Jersey, meanwhile, hides hopeful signs for the party, which has seen the return to the fold of some of the Hispanic and African American minority voters who fled in the 2024 presidential elections.

The respite that Tuesday’s elections have given Democrats has not, however, resolved the major outstanding issue: who will lead the party back to the White House? Mamdani cannot run for president because he was born in Uganda and the law prohibits him from doing so. Harris, who has just published a memoir in which she blames everyone but herself for her defeat, has not ruled out the idea. And among the names that have been solidified in the predictions for months, from progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, none clearly stands out.

Newsom, who emerged strengthened from the Proposition 50 referendum as someone unafraid to take shortcuts to achieve results, is another prospect. On Tuesday, he strove to make his victory appearance what history may ultimately remember as the first speech of his presidential campaign.

“Tonight was not just a victory for the Democratic Party. It was a victory for the United States of America, for the people of this country and the principles that our founding fathers lived and died for,” Newsom said.

Now it remains to be seen how far this momentum will take the Democrats, and how they plan to regain their momentum after a year in limbo. In a country perpetually in election mode, the campaign for the 2026 midterm elections, in which the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate will be renewed, is officially underway a year before they take place.

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Estados Unidos ha probado un misil balístico intercontinental (ICBM, por sus siglas en inglés) del tipo Minuteman III este miércoles, según ha informado el Departamento de Defensa. El proyectil no estaba armado y su lanzamiento se había programado con años de antelación, ha precisado. Es el primer ensayo de uno de estos proyectiles, capaces de transportar hasta tres ojivas nucleares, desde que el presidente Donald Trump anunció la semana pasada que Estados Unidos retomaría sus pruebas nucleares por primera vez desde 1992.

La prueba se llevó a cabo en la base de la fuerza espacial estadounidense Vandenberg, en California, para comprobar la “fiabilidad, disponibilidad operativa y exactitud del sistema de ICBMs, un pilar de la defensa nacional estadounidense”, indica un comunicado de la base, el lugar habitual donde se llevan a cabo estos lanzamientos rutinarios.

“No se trata solo de un lanzamiento. Es una evaluación exhaustiva para verificar y validar la capacidad del sistema de ICBM para cumplir su fundamental misión”, ha declarado la comandante del escuadrón que llevó a cabo el ensayo, la teniente coronel Karrie Wray. “Los datos recabados durante este tipo de pruebas son valiosísimos para garantizar que los misiles intercontinentales se mantienen fiables y precisos”.

Trump había anunciado en redes sociales la semana pasada, momentos antes de reunirse con el presidente chino Xi Jinping en Corea del Sur, que había dado órdenes al Pentágono para llevar a cabo “de inmediato” pruebas de armas nucleares, en una declaración que causó estupor en Estados Unidos y alarma en Rusia y China, las otras dos grandes potencias nucleares en el mundo.

Estados Unidos se impuso en 1992 una moratoria a sus pruebas nucleares que ha respetado escrupulosamente hasta ahora. Ningún otro país ha llevado a cabo este tipo de ensayos en lo que va de siglo, con la única excepción de Corea del Norte.

Después de que las declaraciones de Trump sembraran la duda sobre qué tipo de pruebas exactamente tenía en mente el presidente estadounidense, el secretario de Energía, Chris Wright, puntualizó que se probarían únicamente sus vectores ―los sistemas de lanzamiento y misiles que transportan las bombas nucleares a su destino― sin carga letal.

En declaraciones a la cadena de televisión Fox News, Wright precisó que las pruebas se ceñirán a “todas las otras partes (excepto la ojiva) de un arma nuclear para asegurarse de que cumplen la geometría apropiada y permiten una explosión nuclear”.

Aunque Estados Unidos observa su moratoria desde 1992, sí lleva a cabo de manera rutinaria pruebas de sus ICBM y de sus misiles de lanzamiento submarino (SLBM) para comprobar su buen funcionamiento y mantener su capacidad de disuasión estratégica fuente a otros países rivales.

En esta ocasión, el Minuteman III probado este miércoles portaba un vehículo de reingreso, diseñado para alojar una cabeza nuclear, que sobrevoló el Pacífico durante 6.760 kilómetros hasta llegar a su objetivo, el centro de pruebas de defensa con misiles balísticos Ronald Reagan, en el atolón Kwajalein en las islas Marshall, ha indicado el Pentágono.

Los Minuteman son algunos de los misiles más antiguos del arsenal estadounidense, y se encuentran en servicio desde la década de los años setenta, por lo que el Pentágono considera especialmente importante comprobar su buen funcionamiento. Estos proyectiles se están reemplazando gradualmente por un nuevo modelo, los Sentinel. La Fuerza Aérea estadounidense mantiene desplegados cerca de 400 Minuteman III, armados con una cabeza nuclear cada uno, en silos en los Estados de Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, Dakota del Norte y Wyoming.

As fate would have it, the current U.S. government shutdown shattered its historical record this Tuesday at around 9:00 p.m. (Eastern Time), when the polling stations closed in New York City, which had just elected its first socialist and Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

The election of Mamdani, like the ongoing struggle with Donald Trump over public funding, stems from the Democratic Party’s attempt to present itself to voters as more than just a party defeated by Donald Trump in the last presidential election. This Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of that victory.

The previous record belonged to the last shutdown. It lasted 35 days, beginning on December 22, 2018, due to a dispute over funding for the wall Trump wanted to build on the border with Mexico, and it was resolved around 9:00 p.m. on January 25, 2019. So it was the same president but, unlike this time, that Congress was in recess while it was being renewed to reflect the election results of the 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives, two years after Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.

This time, the Senate has remained active. The House, however, has not, as its leader, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, adjourned it before the October 1st shutdown for political reasons. The Senate has voted 14 times to see if enough Democrats would switch sides to reach the supermajority of 60 seats Republicans needed to reopen the government. The latest vote took place this Tuesday and produced a result similar to the previous 13 times.

It makes sense: the disagreements remain the same as at the beginning. Democrats don’t trust their opponents and won’t support their plans until they have assurances that certain Obamacare subsidies — the health assistance plan for those who can’t afford the kind of coverage provided by private insurance — won’t disappear with the new year. They also demand assurances against the cuts to Medicaid, a kind of social security for low-income Americans, which Republicans managed to pass this summer as part of Trump’s mega tax reform, the Big Beautiful Bill.

Republicans accuse their rivals of wanting to offer free healthcare to undocumented migrants, despite the fact that the law prohibits it, as well as of wanting taxpayer money to be used for “gender mutilation procedures,” another fallacy.

Negotiations underway

According to U.S. media reports, negotiations to end the shutdown have focused in recent days on agreeing to a funding package that would allow Democrats to vote independently on extending Obamacare subsidies. The agreement would also include a pact to fund key federal government agencies until September of next year.

Meanwhile, the consequences of the government shutdown have worsened with each passing day. Some 750,000 federal employees are furloughed without pay. Those performing jobs deemed “essential” must continue fulfilling their obligations, but without pay, and the Trump Administration has hinted that what was traditionally guaranteed — that all employees will receive their back pay when the flow of public funds resumes — is no longer so.

On Tuesday, the White House press secretary missed an opportunity to reassure those government employees, thousands of whom have been forced to rely on food banks to stock up on supplies. Karoline Leavitt stated at her press conference that their situation would depend on the agreement the administration reaches with the Democrats.

Last weekend, the situation at airports worsened considerably, with airfields experiencing average delays of up to five hours due to shortages of air traffic controllers and ground staff. However, the worst impact is being felt by the 42 million Americans who rely on food stamps through a program called SNAP.

After Trump, who has found the money to pay the military, said he didn’t intend to honor SNAP promises, two federal judges ordered the administration to do so last Friday. This Tuesday, the U.S. president, determined to inflict as much damage as possible on Democratic voters with the shutdown, announced that his administration will only pay half the money owed for those vouchers.

The U.S. president invited Republican senators to breakfast at the White House on Wednesday. All indications are that he will use the opportunity to pressure them to support the abolition of the filibuster, which requires major legislative decisions to be made in the Capitol by a 60-vote majority. Senate Majority Leader John Thune believes that pressing this “nuclear button” would be detrimental to them when Democrats regain control of the Senate, perhaps in next year’s elections. But things could change. Everything suggests that, unlike with the last shutdown, this time Trump is ready to do anything.

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