Flush with wins, democrats confront fear of fleeting success

U.S. Democrats gathered this week to celebrate their biggest electoral triumph in a generation and confront an inescapable anxiety — the risk of squandering it all.

Scores of party lawmakers, staffers and faithful descended on Denver for a conference hosted by one of the party’s moderate groups that featured potential 2028 contenders, took stock of the remarkable breakthroughs in the midterm vote a week earlier — and, at times, laid bare the disagreements in the party’s expanding tent.

The mood across Thursday and Friday veered between jubilation and catharsis after Democrats won commanding majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and overwhelmed Republican strongholds with victories that had been dismissed as magical thinking just weeks earlier.

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