Updated November 5, 2026 at 1:50 PM CST
For more than a year, Democrats hammered one message at every opportunity: put Democrats in charge, and Congress will take action to lower costs and stamp out corruption.
Democrats will soon have that chance when they take control of the House and the Senate after a rout of Republicans at the ballot box.
Now Democrats have to unite a sometimes fractious caucus around a game plan for fulfilling that central campaign promise.
The first 100 hours
Democrats say that in the first hundred hours, they want to restore enhanced Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies and reverse Medicaid cuts Republicans passed last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that are about to take effect.
They also want to reassert Congress' authority over tariffs and try to force an end to the Iran war by bringing new votes on war powers resolutions. These are priorities on which Democrats have near-total agreement.
Despite controlling both chambers with substantial margins, Democrats will still be operating in the confines of divided government.
Most legislation still needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster to pass the Senate, and President Trump has vacillated between promising to be "Mr. Veto," and saying he is open to working with Democrats.
"I want us to get to the work of passing legislation," Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senator-Elect from Michigan, said in an interview last week. "If Trump vetoes that, it's on him. But I think you're going to see a whole lot of Republicans thinking twice about whether they want these Medicaid cuts for example to go through."
Congress has other tools, like withholding funding for the war through the appropriations process, must-pass legislation that will require some compromise across the aisle despite Democrats now being in the driver's seat, says Molly Reynolds, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution.
"But when you have a wave election like this, the seats in the other party that get taken out often tend to be the more moderate end of that party," she says. "And so that leaves you with a large Democratic majority, but also a comparatively more conservative Republican conference."
Investigations will also be a major focus for Democrats now emboldened by subpoena power.
The top Democrat on the House Oversight committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., released a two-word statement on election night directed at Trump and his orbit: "Lawyer up."
Bold, dramatic change
The next likely House Speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters on Wednesday that Democrats will usher in "bold, dramatic change."
What exactly that looks like is a work in progress.
This fall, House Democrats organized working groups to figure out how to address the costs of gas and groceries, utilities, housing and caregiving. Each is helmed by two Democrats, one from the progressive wing of the party, the other more to the center.
"We'll have a family conversation when we get back, and certainly in the new Congress, about what's the best way to do that beyond what we know we need to do immediately," Jeffries told reporters when asked about different approaches to addressing health care costs.
Some newly-elected Democrats ran on a pledge to press for Medicare for All. Others ran promising more gradual steps to expand access to health insurance and cut costs.
Hints of the coming debate appeared even before the election.
Number three Senate Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii, told CNN, "If we want to be more aspirational, if we want to make more bold policy changes … that's for 2028. Right now it's about stabilizing the country itself."
"Nobody thinks this election was about going back to the status quo or being the party of nervous lawyers that tinkers around the edges," Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters on Wednesday.
All the same message?
Top Democrats this week are downplaying that tension.
"If you listened to our candidates, whether they were progressive or more moderate, they were saying the same things," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters. "You talk about it in Maine differently than you talk about it in Kansas, but it was all the same message."
In the House and the Senate, a large chunk of the new majorities will be made up of more moderate Democrats who flipped conservative-leaning districts and traditionally red states, like Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina. A new class of progressives is also preparing to join Congress, some who also flipped Republican-held seats.
Will Lawrence, just elected to Congress from a Republican-held battleground district in Michigan, says in addition to tackling costs and corruption, voters across the political spectrum want to see action not only to end the war in Iran, but also to halt tax dollars going to Israel.
"People are desperate and hungry for change," Lawrence told reporters on Wednesday. "They don't want to see this happening on our dime and with our weaponry."
The ability of progressives to move the agenda to the left will be more limited than they may have initially anticipated because the Democratic majorities will not be narrow.
"We had the right candidates in the right districts at the right time," Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., who chairs the campaign arm of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, told reporters on Wednesday. "[Jeffries] has the flexibility to lead. No more discussion of leveraging the speaker."
But the bright lines between progressives and moderates are also less defined than in the past, as a new crop of Democratic candidates weld together facets of economic populism with more moderate positions on other issues like immigration, energy and social issues.
There are Democrats across the spectrum, for example, who want Congress to move on reigning in artificial intelligence and data centers.
Such a sweeping wave election for Democrats will also amp up the pressure to act, giving voters high expectations about what the party will be able to accomplish quickly.
"We shouldn't overpromise at the risk of underdelivering," Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, who chairs the New Democrats caucus, said in an interview.
As Joel Rutherford, a local Democratic activist in Macomb County, Michigan told NPR in an interview over the summer, "If the Democrats, hopefully, take the Senate and take the House, they better do something, OK? People better see some real change."
Rutherford said if they don't, it won't matter who Democrats nominate for president in 2028 because getting them elected will be a tough sell.
Copyright 2026 NPR
