I was not particularly optimistic ahead of the US midterms. I thought the Democrats would make gains, and would almost certainly win the House of Representatives, but gaining control of the Senate was going to be much tougher.

Even at the end of last year, Jon Ossoff’s Georgia  Senate seat looked vulnerable but last night he absolutely smashed it. Not only that, Keisha Lance-Bottoms becomes the first woman of colour to be Governor of Georgia.

I am always mindful of “tempting the Wrath of the Whatever from High Atop the Thing” on election day. Feeling confident is not a healthy instinct on polling day when every vote is up for grabs.

The actual results, though,  are way ahead of even the most optimistic predictions. I was thrilled that paediatrician Annie Andrews pulled off a surprise win in South Carolina. I’ve seen a few interviews with her over the past few months and been very impressed.

Having his rear end admired by Donald Trump did nothing for Jon Husted in J D Vance’s home state of Ohio, who was beaten by Democrat Sherrod Brown by 4 points.

I was particularly delighted to see Amy Acton win in Ohio after the Republican Vivek Ramaswamy blew $4 million on a disgusting attack ad featuring Amy’s mother, failing to mention that her husband, Amy’s stepdad, had been charged with raping her as a child.  This was endorsed by both Donald Trump and J D Vance.

I don’t know why on earth it has taken until The Year of Our Lord 2026 for an openly gay man to get elected to the US Senate, but congratulations to Chris Pappas who defeated John E Sununu, the former Senator and son of the former Republican governor. Try as he might, he couldn’t dissociate himself from Donald Trump.

One of the sweetest wins for me was that of Abdul El Sayed in Michigan at the end of an absolutely brilliant campaign on his part and a vicious, racist, islamophobic one on the part of his Republican opponent Mike Rogers. Disgracefully, Rogers was endorsed by Haley Stevens, El Sayed’s defeated Democrat primary opponent. On the day before the election, the Republicans blew $4.5 million on attack ads. El Sayed’s victory speech was beautiful: “in a battle between the money and the many, the many won.”

And money there was. Elon Musk wasted the best part of half a billion on Republican campaigns

My colleague Paul Walter pointed me at this from Teagan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Elon Musk may have spent nearly half a billion dollars trying to shape this election, only to get almost nothing for his money. Worse for him, he now faces the prospect of a Democratic Congress armed with subpoena power and a Texas state government that may be considerably less welcoming. It’s hard to imagine a more spectacularly unsuccessful political investment.

At the time of writing, incredibly, 43 votes currently separate Democrat Scott Colom and Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in MISSISSIPPI? Who saw that coming?

So why did the Democrats do so well? They had the help of Donald Trump, whose damaging war in Iran had put up the price of fuel, but in places like Georgia, the Democrats had carefully built up grassroots movements connecting with people and listening to their concerns – good old fashioned community politics. As someone has just said on CNN, 400,000 black women have lost jobs because of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts to things like DEI programmes and they are mad as hell. The success of Gina Hinojosa in the Texas governor race showed that Latino voters are unimpressed with Trump on issues like immigration. It will be interesting to see if she is able to reverse the state’s brutal anti abortion legislation. Her own record is very much in favour of abortion rights.

I am old enough to remember when Democrats ruled the roost in Texas and it is good to see that we have a Democratic senator, James Talarico, for the first time in 40 years.

It’s interesting that the Republicans’ gerrymandering of districts in Florida to give themselves an advantage did not help. No seats changed hands for the House.

Whether the Democrats can translate this success into winning the White House in 2028 depends on them picking a candidate who understands the importance of grassroots movements like Obama did but who also has the charisma to really connect positively with voters across the airwaves, like Obama did.

The next couple of years will be interesting. We can probably expect Government shutdowns if the toddler in the Oval Office won’t sign off budgets. It will take careful, credible communication to keep people on side.

I have to wonder whether Chuck Schumer is the right person to lead the Democrats in the Senate. This job will maybe take someone more radical and more willing to take risks. That will be up to the new caucus. When I saw Barack Obama in Glasgow a few weeks ago, he said that it was time for the old men running politics to go. He was undoubtedly talking about Donald Trump, but that logic holds for  75 year old Schumer too.

For the first time since, I think 2012, it’s good to wake up on a Wednesday and have such a clear result in the Democrats’ favour. I’m really looking foward to seeing how the new Governors, Senators and Congresspeople perform in their new roles come January.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social