One year after Donald Trump took office in the White House, there is only one question on the lips of many: what happened to the American Democrats? If it is true – and it is true – that the 47th president of the United States has lined up a series of distortions, pushing the Constitution and US practice to the limits, it is equally true that the opposition has remained virtually defenseless.

In twelve months, Trump allowed himself to: fire thousands of public officials considered hostile (well beyond the tested and shared method of the spoils system); to pardon nearly all those responsible for the Capitol Hill riot; to send the National Guard to numerous states ignoring the powers of individual governors; to start a trade war with half the world, to bomb Iran; to promote a controversial blitz against a sovereign state like Venezuela. Not to mention the threats, more or less veiled, to Mexico, Canada and now Greenland. All of this – and this is the point – through executive orders, without going through Congress and, in certain cases, even with the doubts of the Supreme Court (as in the case of tariffs).

A year of Trump: allies and enemies, it’s the same for Washington

If the same things had happened in Italy – or in France to name a state with a “presidential” structure – the opposition would have occupied Parliament, staged strikes and street demonstrations, trying to block the country. In the United States, nothing: Trump has gone and continues like a steamroller. Every now and then timid echoes of some protest arrive, stuff that we forget about the next day. It is not easy for us Europeans to understand a dynamic of this type. And in some ways it worries us: the idea that the greatest power in the world can be governed according to the wishes (and whims) of a single individual does not make us feel at ease.

What happened to the US dems

However, the question remains: why, amidst this upheaval, have the US democrats failed to strike a blow? To try to venture an answer – and perhaps understand what might happen from here on out – two factors must be kept in mind.

The first is the disastrous state of health with which the Democrats emerged from the 2024 presidential election, where Trump obtained 312 electors against their 226. It is true that the percentage gap in absolute votes was slight (about one percentage point in favor of Trump), but it is a fact that counts relatively in America. Overall, the management of the campaign – first with a battered Biden and then with a Harris who never really appeared in the game – gave the idea of ​​an army overwhelmed by a catastrophic rout, one from which it takes time to recover. And that’s actually how it went.

The second point is the notable difference between our party system and the American one, where the “national party” as we know it (with a secretary, a political line, a congress) in fact does not exist. There is a Democratic National Committee (DNC) which, however, is mainly responsible for organizing primaries and caucuses for the presidential elections every four years and, at most, coordinating the democratic structures of the individual states.

In such a situation, the “response to Trump”, to the Trump cyclone, is therefore entrusted to the democrats at state level: and it is clear that, by force of circumstances, it is less strong, less visible, less noticeable than what one would expect (or what we would see) in France or Italy. The reaction that the “national” party can deploy is concentrated above all in the parliamentary sphere, because it is only in Congress that Democrats and Republicans have a truly coordinated strike force. The point, however, is precisely this – and it is the other side of the coin – what explains the dem’s aphonia over the last year: the Democrats are in the minority in the House and the Senate. And this, combined with the majority of Republican judges on the Supreme Court, has prevented them from taking concrete action to counter the presidency.

Starting from the “bench”

There is one last important point to understand the possible developments, a more political one, and it concerns the Dem agenda. In recent years she had put woke issues and battles first, and for this reason many analysts had indicated her as one of the causes of the Harris debacle. The Dems had moved away from their usual programmatic platform – defense of the less well-off, high cost of living, Obamacare – to embrace an approach based on cancel culture, inclusion, ultra-political correctness, LGBTQ rights. Thus offering a good game to Maga propaganda and Trump.

And it is precisely in this field that the first innovations are recorded. Some of the democratic committees in the various states have started a slow but decisive retreat, rediscovering issues more linked to the concrete needs of voters, to everyday life. For example, a current is emerging that has taken the name of The Bench (the “bench” of candidates), which is trying to “reset” the democratic electoral narrative to make it engaging for a larger majority, and not just for a minority as happened with woke.

The Bench is sponsoring some candidates for the Senate and the House for the next midterm elections scheduled for November 3, 2026. And other local electoral platforms are bringing forward similar requests in various states. It will now be a question of understanding whether this reversal of trend could be enough to snatch the majority in Congress from the Republicans (in the House it is easier than in the Senate), confirming those signs of recovery that had already been seen in November in Virginia and New Jersey – passed from the Republicans to the Democrats – and which the same polls are highlighting with a progressive but constant worsening of approval ratings for Trump.

The date on the calendar

The November elections will essentially be decisive. And, remaining in the Democratic camp, they will also be a key step in bringing out the profiles of possible challengers to the Republicans in 2028. For now, at the starting line are the governors of Pennsylvania (Shapiro) and California (Newsom). But it will be the midterm vote that will tell where the Democrats are healthiest and will truly launch the challenge for the next White House.