When President Donald Trump took over for the second time, things looked interminably bleak for Democrats. 

Americans had willingly reelected a man who encouraged a mass of his followers to sack the Capitol and prevent the certification of an election he’d lost. And the first opportunity for a Democratic comeback, in a long two years, was anything but certain: While the Republicans’ House majority was small, the path to Senate control was riddled with states Trump had won three times. 

Then Trump started governing. Some combination of tariffs, ICE brutality, the Iran War and his fixation on construction (and demolition) projects in D.C. created a Pig-Pen-like haze around him so toxic that his approval plunged into the low 30s. Combined with Democrats’ newfound popularity with diehard midterm voters, the Trump miasma was too strong for Republicans to hold the upper chamber, even with a map so friendly they may as well have designed it themselves.