Trump faces political setback after Democrats capitalize on voter anger over prices

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It has been a year since Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 presidential election, and the White House had planned an anniversary event on Wednesday highlighting promises made by the Republican leader since he returned to office.

Instead, the president and his Republican allies were left grappling with a series of Democratic victories in off-year elections, a rare setback for Trump as voters in a handful of states showed resistance to his agenda.

Trump, known for resisting defeat, reacted as expected.

He blamed Democrats for a government shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — that he said contributed to his party’s losses, cajoled Republicans into changing Senate rules to make it easier to pass his agenda and distanced himself from the results by pointing out the absence of his own name on the ballot.

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But he also acknowledged that the night had not gone well for Republicans and, somewhat unusually, suggested that they had lessons to learn from their defeat.

“Exactly one year ago we won that big, beautiful victory,” Trump told his party’s lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday morning. “And last night wasn’t expected to be a victory. I don’t think it was good for the Republicans.”

“I’m not sure it was good for anyone, but we had an interesting evening and learned a lot,” he added.

Democratic victories in New Jersey, New York and Virginia, driven in part by concerns about the cost of living, highlight the challenge Trump and congressional Republicans will face next year in addressing voter frustration with the economy in the 2026 midterm elections.

Tuesday’s election also thrust a dynamic populist leader into the national conversation with the rise of Zohran Mamdani to New York mayor, creating a natural foil for the president, a fellow New Yorker who likes to refer to the 34-year-old as a communist. Mamdani is a democratic socialist.

But Mamdani’s message and his ability to connect with voters could pose a threat to Trump’s dominance in wielding populist appeal among the electorate.

That appeal appeared to have waned in both New Jersey and Virginia, where about two-thirds of voters who turned out said they were dissatisfied or angry with the direction America was taking. Democrats won more than 75% of those voters.

Democrats also won a majority of voters who said their family’s financial situation was stable or falling behind.

Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that it was “idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections” in Democratic-leaning states. However, he suggested that Republicans focus on the economy.

“We need to focus on the home front,” he wrote in X. “We are going to continue working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that is the metric by which we will ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”

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WHITE HOUSE SAYS AFFORDABILITY TOP THE AGENDA

A White House official said the administration’s messaging heading into the midterm elections would be directed at the issue of affordability, an issue Trump himself successfully raised in his 2024 campaign against Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

“We’re reminding voters that this is how we win: by talking about costs that affect their wallets,” the official said.

Some Republican strategists said voters also needed to see Trump more focused on domestic issues than foreign affairs and noted that tariffs had not helped his push to lower prices.

The president, who returned last week from a five-day trip to Asia, has used tariffs as a cudgel internationally and spent much time in recent months seeking peace deals in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine.

“The problem with Trump is that he’s trying to save the world, but he’s forgetting about the people who brought him here, and they’re not doing a very good job,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “You need to run less back and forth and focus more on domestic political issues.”

Trump touted his peace efforts but barely acknowledged Republicans’ electoral losses during nearly an hour of remarks at an economic conference in Miami on Wednesday.

He opened the speech by noting that it had been a year since the “most important election victory in American history” and said Americans had “restored our sovereignty” by putting him in office.

“Last night we lost a little bit of sovereignty in New York,” Trump said in a comment about Mamdani’s victory. “But we’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Nandita Bose, Tim Reid, Jason Lange, James Oliphant, Steve Holland and Andrea Shalal Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Howard Goller)