| | | |  | | By Ali Bianco | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Rachel Umansky-Castro Good Sunday afternoon. This is Ali Bianco. Get in touch.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
“We’ll learn from this last election for sure,” DNC Chair Ken Martin told Playbook, “but we still have to fix some of the challenges from ’24.” | Jacquelyn Martin/AP | 2026 STARTS NOW: With Tuesday’s off-year election blowout now in the rearview mirror for Democrats, the race toward the midterms is underway. But with a calendar year to go, Democrats are still dissecting what went wrong in 2024 — even despite the bravado over the 2025 results. This split-screen of reliving the trauma of 2024 and celebrating the sweep in 2025 was on display this weekend at Crooked Media’s inaugural “Crooked Con,” where prominent elected Democrats and party poobahs came together to revel in Tuesday’s results. The victory lap: Playbook caught up with several Democrats on the sidelines Friday, all of whom were riding high on the euphoria. “It was one of the most historic off-year elections for the Democratic Party ever,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said. “It's a very encouraging sign,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said. But if Friday’s gathering of Democratic politicians and operatives was any indication, one great night isn’t yet healing Democrats who are still badly burned from last year. “We’ll learn from this last election for sure,” Martin told Playbook, “but we still have to fix some of the challenges from ’24.” And the party’s lingering fault lines are as variable as the “big tent” of politicians they’re trying to convene. Ahead of 2026, there are several pain points and bits of conventional wisdom the party will have to shed, according to the Democrats we spoke to. The generational change debate: As the party faces perpetual questions about a lack of a clear leader, many are arguing that the span of varying voices is a good thing — for now. “We are going to need candidates that span the spectrum in order to win,” Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) told Playbook. “Out with the old, in with the new,” Khanna told Playbook. “If you were part of the old establishment, you probably shouldn't be leading the party.” This age-old question is only set to grow as major Democratic leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) retreat to private life. A key lesson from this week, as Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) put it to Playbook, is that “the future of the Democratic Party is diverse — but it’s younger; it’s bolder.”
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Explore our ongoing work. | | | | The price is right: The primary throughline for the party’s success in 2026, according to every Democrat we spoke to, is that Democrats need to coalesce their brand around a singular message: affordability. "The reason that I think Donald Trump won is he convinced the last group of undecided voters that he was more focused on their everyday concerns … but he’s done exactly the opposite,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear told Playbook. “[Voters] also believe right now that Democrats are more focused on their everyday concerns, and we as a party have to remain laser-focused on that.” Indeed, tying the cost of living with a souring public opinion of the Trump administration proved a gangbuster combination — both for Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, former public servants who clawed back some of Trump’s gains in minority communities, and for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who cleared 50 percent of the vote in the biggest city in the U.S. The “woke” label: After that ad the Trump campaign ran against Kamala Harris in 2024, the fight over identity politics has become the party’s sorest subject. But in the Virginia governor’s race, GOP candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’ identity-based attacks against Spanberger fell flat. McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, said Spanberger and Sherill “employed an approach that defended, for instance, trans people, while doing it in a way that actually explained to voters what their positions were.” Democrats can turn it around and paint Republicans as “obsessed with fomenting cultural wars” while hammering the consequences of their policies. But what’s the most effective response in the face of attacks? A “hyper-focus on affordability,” McBride said. The Trump bump: Relying on Trump to turn out voters either way doesn’t solve any of the party’s greater problems and risks the party becoming a cautionary tale. Democrats also have to actually sell their agenda to flip voters and keep them in the long term. “Rejecting Trump gives us the opportunity for us to actually do something,” Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego told Playbook. “But now you have to be closing the deal.” The complacency trap: The biggest piece of conventional wisdom Democrats have to ditch is that they’ll be favored in the midterms because of precedent. “It’s a trap,” Martin told Playbook. “What it does is it gives people an idea, ‘Well, I don’t need to work hard for this. I can just take it a little easier, because the Democrats are automatically going to win.’ Well, that’s bullshit.” But if you ask Democrats, Tuesday was the start of the playbook for what they could do next year. “We treated the race as the first race of 2026,” Sherrill’s chief of staff Alex Ball told Playbook. “I really hope that our party does more than just dissect and actually goes out and runs on message and stays disciplined to it.” REPUBLICAN RECRIMINATIONS: Meanwhile, Republicans in Virginia are having their turn in the wilderness, POLITICO’s Liz Crampton and Brakkton Booker report — and they’re spreading the blame to everyone except for Trump. “Many say lackluster gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears was deeply flawed and didn’t focus enough on the economy. Some accuse popular GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin of failing to use more of his war chest to boost candidates. Others complain that the state party failed to employ an aggressive strategy — and a group of county party chairs is considering calling for the resignation of the Virginia Republican Party chair.”
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| | | | SUNDAY BEST … — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on whether he’d support a government funding deal that includes only a promise to vote on extending Obamacare subsidies, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I don’t think that the House Democratic Caucus is prepared to support a promise, a wink and a prayer from folks who have been devastating the health care of the American people for years. … These Republicans have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act more than 70 different times over the last 15 years. They’re not acting in good faith as it relates to dealing with the health care crisis that they’re visiting on the American people.” — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on the growing crisis in the skies, on “Fox News Sunday”: “As we get closer to Thanksgiving travel, listen, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have air travel slow to a trickle. … You’ll have a few flights taking off and landing at our different airports across the country. But the thousands of flights that happen every day to move people around the country for this great American holiday — it’s not going to happen. You’re going to have massive disruption. … Those who say this is political — this decision to reduce capacity by 10 percent? It didn’t come from me. It didn’t come from the White House. It came from the safety team in the FAA, the career people who do this every day.” — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether ending the filibuster is the best way to end the shutdown, on ABC’s “This Week”: “The best way is for five Democratic senators to come across the aisle. … Sen. Chris Murphy gave the game away this week when he said, ‘Well, you know, now it’s to our advantage to keep the government closed.’ They have turned the American people into pawns.” — International Rescue Committee CEO David Miliband on the catastrophe in Sudan, on “This Week”: “The Trump administration has revived something called the quad. That’s the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — they are the key players who need to bring diplomatic pressure. And of course, the U.S. has very close relations with all those countries. The activism that we need needs to go to a whole new level, though, if lives are to be saved, because for us to hear reports that from satellites in the air, you can see the blood on the ground because so many people have been killed — that needs to be a real wake-up call for the international system.”
| | | | Washington is fixated on the shutdown fallout — and POLITICO is tracking every move.
Inside Congress breaks down how lawmakers are navigating the politics, policies, and power plays driving the debate.
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West Wing Playbook follows how the administration and federal agencies are responding — and what it all means for the people running government day to day.
➡️ Sign up for West Wing Playbook | | | | | TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
- “Why I Am Resigning,” by federal judge Mark Wolf in The Atlantic
- “California and Texas Are Going Full Gilded Age,” by POLITICO Magazine’s Joshua Zeitz
- “Will we have fair elections in 2026? The answer is up to the states,” by Samantha Tarazi in USA Today
- “Zohran’s Media Challenge,” by Political Currents’ Ross Barkan
- “Mamdani’s anti-hate crime pledge will fail New Yorkers,” by Meagan O’Rourke in UnHerd
- “Trump’s GOP Is Losing Independents,” by Matthew Continetti in the WSJ
- “The Catholic Church and the Trump Administration Are Not Getting Along,” by The Atlantic’s Elizabeth Bruenig
- “The Washington Post Got 21,000 Emails After It Didn’t Endorse. I Read Them All,” by Alyssa Rosenberg in NOTUS
- “Another U.S. Attempt to Topple Maduro Would Be a Disaster,” by Quico Toro in the WSJ
| | | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN: The Senate could vote as soon as this afternoon on Republicans’ new package of bills to reopen the government and fund a few agencies for the full fiscal year, Fox News’ Chad Pergram reports. Majority Leader John Thune sounded a more optimistic note about the status of bipartisan negotiations on a deal to end the shutdown, per Reuters. But Democrats continued to decry the Trump administration’s handling of the shutdown. Another wrench in things: In a flurry of posts yesterday and this morning, Trump said on Truth Social that instead of striking a deal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, Republicans should send that money directly to Americans to buy health care themselves, per WaPo. That would be a major shift — and a huge lift to get through Congress — though some Republicans quickly took up the mantle and said they’d write legislation. But Bessent said on ABC this morning that Trump is not formally proposing this to the Senate right now. Buckle up: As airline disruptions upend Americans’ travel and work plans, tens of millions more are grappling with precarity and chaos after the Supreme Court paused a judge’s order that the Trump administration fully fund lapsed SNAP benefits, NYT’s Tony Romm and colleagues report. Though some states have stepped into the breach, food stamp recipients elsewhere are feeling whiplash — and seeing their cards get declined. And it could get worse: Late last night, the Agriculture Department said states need to “immediately undo” their efforts to pay out full SNAP benefits, Romm reports. Air dud: A growing crisis in air traffic could continue to get worse today and through the week, as airports stare down shortages of unpaid air traffic controllers. The number of canceled flights yesterday jumped to 1,500 (plus 6,000 delays), per Reuters. More than 1,000 flights scheduled for today have been axed, per the AP. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday accused the administration of politicizing the situation by forcing cuts to the number of flights for shutdown leverage, but Duffy has said this is about safety. The FAA plans to increase the rate of flight reductions again on Tuesday and on Friday. The politics: Senate GOP leaders are pissed at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp after a group he supports, boosting Derek Dooley for Senate, put out an ad blaming both congressional Democrats and Republicans for the shutdown, Axios’ Alex Isenstadt reports.
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| | | | 2. MUST READ: “‘You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison,” by NYT’s Julie Turkewitz and colleagues: “In March, the U.S. government sent more than 200 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. … We interviewed 40 of the men who were imprisoned: They described being beaten, sexually assaulted by guards and driven to the brink of suicide. A team of independent forensic analysts examined their testimony. The experts called it consistent and credible, saying most of the acts described met the United Nations’ definition of torture.” 3. TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE: Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán got what he came for from Trump — an exemption from sanctions on Russian oil, which were meant to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin over his war on Ukraine. But the two countries disagreed over the length of the reprieve: Hungary claimed it was indefinite, while the White House told Reuters it would last for just a year. 4. WEAPONIZATION WATCH: “Trump Loyalists Push ‘Grand Conspiracy’ as New Subpoenas Land,” by NYT’s Glenn Thrush and colleagues: “Far-right influencers have been hinting in recent weeks that they have finally found a venue — Miami — and a federal prosecutor — Jason A. Reding Quiñones — to pursue long-promised charges of a ‘grand conspiracy’ against President Trump’s adversaries. Their theory of the case, still unsupported by the evidence: A cabal of Democrats and ‘deep-state’ operatives, possibly led by former President Barack Obama, has worked to destroy Mr. Trump in a yearslong plot.” Reding Quiñones last week sent subpoenas to James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and others. 5. FOR YOUR RADAR: “How an Adam Schiff indictment could shake the Senate,” by POLITICO’s Hailey Fuchs: “Trump’s retribution campaign against his political adversaries could soon hit the Senate — and lawmakers are already bracing for impact. … Interviews with senators revealed concerns that their institution is at risk of becoming further polarized if the DOJ goes ahead with charges. … Democrats are on edge, worrying a [Sen. Adam] Schiff indictment would open the floodgates to more targeting of Democratic elected officials. Many Republicans are either visibly uncomfortable with the dynamics or unwilling to weigh in on a matter that could put them crosswise with the president.”
| | | | Global Security is POLITICO’s new weekly briefing on the policies and industrial forces reshaping transatlantic defense. From Washington to Brussels and beyond, we track how decisions ripple across borders — redefining the future of security and industry. Sign up for the free preview edition. | | | | | 6. DANCE OF THE SUPERPOWERS: The Trump-Xi Jinping summit produced some tangible results today as China announced a yearlong pause on export controls for five critical minerals, NYT’s Keith Bradsher reports from Beijing. This is mostly a confirmation of what the White House said — and China had omitted — after their summit, though the relief is only temporary for these materials that are crucial to semiconductors, batteries and more. 7. TRAIL MIX: Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) dangled the prospect of a comeback bid for Alabama governor, telling a crowd in Birmingham to “stay tuned,” AL.com’s Joseph Bryant reports. If Jones mounts an uphill campaign in the deep-red state, he could face off again against Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who unseated Jones in Washington. … Meanwhile in New York, some Democrats are excited about Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) gubernatorial campaign — because they think it will allow them to link Republicans in swing House seats to Trumpism, POLITICO’s Nick Reisman and Bill Mahoney report from Albany. Sign of the times: Michigan Senate GOP candidate Mike Rogers is now making unsubstantiated claims that he lost last year’s Senate race only because of voter fraud, The Detroit News’ Craig Mauger and colleagues report. This is a shift for Rogers, who “hasn’t prominently made such allegations in the past … [which] don’t match the facts.” Talker: Axios’ Alex Thompson reports that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico follows porn stars and OnlyFans models on Instagram. Talarico’s spokesperson says his team “follows back and engages with supporters who have large followings and does not investigate their backgrounds.” 2028 watch: In Texas yesterday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom amped Democrats up to fight against Trump and retake the House next year, POLITICO’s Faith Wardwell and colleagues report. But some of the Democrats around Newsom were thinking one election further: “He is the future president of the United States of America,” Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said. 8. IMMIGRATION FILES: “Venezuelans begin fleeing U.S. as protections end and threat of war looms,” by WaPo’s María Luisa Paúl: “[M]ore than 600,000 Venezuelans … have, as of Friday, lost temporary protected status … Overnight, some lost the jobs they’d held for years; others closed shops, walked away from leases and left homes standing empty. Many have also lost their licenses, health insurance and access to routine care. … Many are scrambling to try to stay — waiting on pending asylum or change-of-status petitions, searching for lawyers, hoping for any reprieve … [C]ountless Venezuelans now have expired passports and no embassy to renew them. The only place that would accept them with those documents is the very country they fled.” 9. REVISE YOUR PRIORS: Some people predicted that Trump’s aggressive crackdown on international students at U.S. universities would lead to a significant falloff in their enrollment numbers. Not so, WaPo’s Todd Wallack reports: The latest DHS data shows that the year-over-year decline this semester doesn’t even top 1 percent.
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Learn more. | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Varun Chandra and Christian Turner are now the two frontrunners to be the next British ambassador, per The Telegraph’s Rob Crilly. PLAYBOOK ARTS SECTION — “These exhibits took years to plan. They’re gathering dust during the shutdown,” by WaPo’s Kelsey Ables: “The National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian worked on major shows of Australian Indigenous and Korean art. They’re ready to go — once the government is funded again.” MEDIA MOVE — Carla Babb is now national security correspondent at Newsmax. She most recently worked at Sightline Media Group and is a Voice of America alum. WEEKEND WEDDING — Eva Kemp, VP of events at American Bridge, and Brendan Kownacki, who runs Kownacki Media and is an ABC alum, got married yesterday in a New-Orleans-meets-Michigan celebration at Long View Gallery. Pic … SPOTTED: Matt Kownacki, Tara Palmeri, Neil Grace, Juliegrace Brufke, Phil Beshara, Courtney Cohen Flantzer, Todd Flournoy, Mike Lucier, Meredith Fineman, Daniel Schwartz, Janet Donovan and Steve Ross. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: POLITICO’s John Harris … former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) … Nancy Jacobson of No Labels … Sarah Isgur … Allison Worldwide’s Robyn Patterson … Charles Kupperman … Endpoints’ Zachary Brennan … Peter Roff … AP’s Matt Brown … Hugh Ferguson … Hunter Hall of the Picard Group … Matthew Ellison … Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski … Marcus Switzer … Geoff Verhoff of Akin Gump … HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney … Peter Lichtenbaum of Covington & Burling … Matthias Reynolds of Targeted Victory … The Atlantic’s Idrees Kahloon … Kendra Kostek … API’s Bethany (Aronhalt) Williams … former Reps. John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) … Joel Seidman … Marie Baldassarre of Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) office … Walker Livingston … Will Green of the State Department … LaWanda Toney of LA Communications Group … author Lisa De Pasquale … Maeve Webster of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s (R-Minn.) office … ICE’s Laszlo Baksay … David Levine of Orchestra Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
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