I would like to think that last week’s shellacking (thank God) of Republicans happened because voters are rightly reviled and outraged by how horrible President Donald Trump has been. Or because Democrats found policies, messages, and candidates that really resonated with the public. But there’s another possibility, one that’s great news for the Democrats in the short term but long-term bad for both Democratic and small-d democratic governance: Perhaps American voters these days are always just mad at whomever is in the White House and take it out on that person’s party, whether that’s a normal president pushing a logical, popular agenda (Barack Obama, Joe Biden) or a radical authoritarian who doesn’t care that most people hate his policies (Trump.)
So Democrats can’t assume everything is fine and back to normal because they won last week, and inflation and a 80-something president are no longer anchors on the party. They need to keep studying the changes in media and politics that keep making presidents unpopular, so the next Democratic commander in chief can avoid that fate.
There is real (and growing) evidence for an EHTP (Everyone Hates the President) theory of American politics. Except for presidential first years and a surprising uptick for Barack Obama in 2015-2016, we’ve had basically 20 straight years of unpopular presidents, according to polls, starting with George W. Bush’s second term. And that constant backlash against the president is driving election results. There was a decades-long pattern of the party in the White House losing seats in the House.
But since 2004, that’s become an ironclad law: The party not in the White House has won the House majority the last 10 House midterms. Presidents used to win reelection, but Trump’s loss in 2020 followed by Joe Biden not running in the face of likely defeat four years later harkened back to Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter’s defeats in 1976 and 1980. Including Hillary Clinton in 2016, the incumbent president’s party has lost the last three presidential elections. The last time that happened three times in a row, the men involved were named Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley.
Recent elections in New Jersey and Virginia perfectly capture these dynamics. With Trump in the White House in 2020, Democrats carried New Jersey by 16 percentage points and Virginia by 10. In the gubernatorial races a year later, with Biden in the White House, we saw huge swings against the Dems—Democrats won New Jersey by only three and actually lost Virginia by two. Last week, with Trump back in the White House, there was a swing back to Democrats. Democrats won by 14 in New Jersey and 15 in Virginia after carrying both those states by just six last year.
I encourage Glenn Youngkin (the Virginia Republican who won in 2021), Mikie Sherrill, and Abigail Spanberger’s aides to attribute those wins to their brilliant campaign maneuvers and charge the highest possible fees to clients who hire them as political consultants. But a clue to what actually might be on going is New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, who ran in both 2021 and 2025 and did 11 points worse the second time. He’s the same person; it was a much different environment because of who was in the White House.
I’m sure you’re thinking Hurricane Katrina, Trump’s craziness, Biden’s age, and the high inflation from 2021-22 explain all of this presidential unpopularity. I can’t easily refute that. But the fact that Biden, an honorable man trying to implement a practical agenda, was about as unpopular a president as Donald Trump actually isn’t easy to explain, and is absolutely insane and really depressing if you think about it. Obama wasn’t old and was an incredible politician, and had to endure intense backlashes that are really hard to explain in both 2010-2011 and 2013-2015.
Here’s what I think is going on. Since the time of the last truly popular American president, Bill Clinton, whose approval rating was in the 60s for most of his second term, politics has become more nationalized and polarized, the mainstream media has changed dramatically, and social media has come into fruition. The nationalization and polarization mean that the party not in the White House is always furious, and its voters turn out in mass numbers. Mainstream news outlets have become increasingly desperate to refute the charge that they are liberal, so they are extra hard on Democratic presidents. August 2021 was a strange month in America, with Biden breathlessly attacked by the press for the flawed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The overt bashing of the president from anchors on CNN and non-partisan journalists reminded me of Hurricane Katrina or January 6, 2021—but the actual mistake from the president was nowhere near as bad or impactful to people living in the United States. Biden’s poll numbers plunged then and never recovered.
I’m fairly confident in this theory because of two other kinds of politicians: U.S. governors and heads of state worldwide. There is increasing evidence of anti-incumbent sentiment for leaders across the world, particularly in richer nations. In Britain, the country that is arguably the closest political parallel to the United States, voters soured fairly quickly on a succession of Conservative prime ministers and have now done the same with Labour’s Keir Starmer.
In contrast, U.S. governors, even in swing states, often maintain high approval ratings and win reelection. Why this discrepancy? Presidents and heads of state abroad get outsized national media attention and become the subject of intense, constant criticism from the opposite party. In contrast, no one is getting rich with a podcast attacking Laura Kelly or Maura Healey. (That was a pop quiz to see if you even knew the names of the Democratic governors of Kansas and Massachusetts, respectively.)
I may not have fully convinced you of the EHTP theory, but let’s assume that I’m onto something. This theory has at least three major implications.
First, in the short-term, Zohran Mamdani needs to understand his situation. By not only winning the mayoral race in the media capital of the country but becoming a leading character in American life, Mamdani is going to get attention, coverage, and criticism more akin to a president than a mayor or even a governor. I want him to succeed. And in my view, his success depends on not just running the city well, but also controlling the narrative about himself. As Obama and Biden showed, effective governance is not enough to be popular in this era, when people are literally profiting off of portraying you in a negative light.
Second, the Democratic Party can’t get fat and happy based on its wins last week, or even in 2026 and 2028, if they come. Based on presidential hatred alone, there’s a good chance that Democrats will be in control of the House, Senate, and presidency in January 2029. (Assuming free, fair, and not super-gerrymandered elections.) And because basically all governors are popular and there is a large group of Democratic governors running for president, there’s a good chance that a Democratic governor who has been consistently popular in their state is in the Oval Office.
The danger is that Democrats assume they have figured out American politics if they have won the 2026 and 2028 elections and have a seemingly smart politician in the White House. That kind of thinking will keep us on the road to fascism. It is very easy to imagine President Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer in October 2029 with dismal poll numbers, a year away from ensuring that a person even crazier than Mike Johnson will become the speaker of the House.
If basically all governors are popular and all presidents are unpopular, it’s about the jobs, not those in the jobs. As the Democrats start thinking about their 2028 candidates, it’s imperative to consider not just, “Is this person popular in their state?” but, “Is there something about this person and their political skills that suggests they would be popular as president after two years of being attacked by all sides in America daily?”
More importantly, Democrats shouldn’t leave this up to one person, even if it’s a strong politician. The party needs to be thinking now about what kind of media and information infrastructures and strategies can help prevent the next Democratic president from becoming unpopular almost immediately after they take office.
It is hard to imagine a Democratic president staying popular if the mainstream media and social media are controlled by conservative oligarchs, unless there are alternative information sources where tens of millions of Americans are getting a more liberal take. I worry some of soul-searching within the party about media and information infrastructure and other longstanding shortcomings of Democrats will end or dissipate after last week’s wins. That would be a huge mistake.
Finally, politicians can’t criticize the voters. But writers can. And America’s voters are falling down on the job and need to get their act together. (I’m really referring to swing voters, those who either vacillate between Republicans and Democrats and those who go from backing Dems to not voting at all. I don’t expect conservatives to back Dems.) Democratic government works when voters carefully assess the policy ideas and implementation of those in charge. Voters should reward politicians who have smart policies and manage the government well, and punish those who don’t. But what America’s voters seem to be doing instead is getting angry at whomever is in the White House, without giving politicians or parties any real sense of what direction they should go.
I’m relieved that Americans are rejecting Trump’s agenda, both in New Jersey and Virginia, and nationally according to polls. But it’s exactly what he ran on! And he had already shown for four years that he was a madman. The right time to reject Trump was November 2024, not November 2025. If voters honestly think (as poll numbers suggest) that an agenda of infrastructure expansion and massive aid to states and cities (Biden 2021) is about as bad as huge tax cuts for the rich and illegal National Guard deployments (Trump 2025), not only are they nuts, but they are sending an incoherent message that politicians can’t follow, making it hard to really do democracy.
It’s great that there is a backlash to Trump. But it’s hard to tell if that’s a backlash to Trumpism—or just whoever is the current occupant of the White House. I know many Democrats are fine with piling on Biden and Harris or blaming everything on inflation. I’m not. Something went wrong from 2021-2024 that resulted in Biden being so unpopular that Trump returned to the White House. We will not be on the path of maintaining a true multicultural social democracy until a president who executes a normal agenda can stay popular. That obviously won’t be Trump. But that absolutely must be the next Democratic president.