Comedian Jon Stewart on Thursday said that despite Democrats making major gains following Tuesday’s election, he thinks the party is still unpopular and in disarray.
On the latest episode of his podcast “The Weekly Show,” Stewart told MSNBC host Chris Hayes and “Pod Save America” co-host David Plouffe that he thinks “Democrats are still a mess.”
“I truly believe they’re a mess because there is, what this shows to me is, again, there is this underlying potential energy within the United States of America that is much larger than I think any of us could have imagined,” Stewart said. “And channeling that energy directionally will be the challenge for whoever wants to harness it. I still don’t believe they’re doing that.”
While he praised California’s passage of Proposition 50, which allows the Golden State to redraw its congressional map, Stewart earlier in the show asked his guests how Democrats will “squander” and “piss away” their latest victories.
Hayes replied that the victories were based on President Trump’s unpopularity — the “thermostatic public opinion when one party has the White House, the other party tends to do better in the off-year elections.”
“Those first two layers Democrats don’t make,” Hayes continued. “The third layer is candidate recruitment, messaging, campaigns. And I think … that’s the place you’re talking about how they’re going to screw it up or how are they going to build on it, that’s the place where they can control stuff, and I think they did a lot that was right.”
Plouffe said that ahead of the 2026 midterms, the “atmosphere should be just as good if not better for Democrats,” but the “important thing” is the “quality of the candidate.”
“The piece of messaging [is]: Are you maximizing the critique against your Republican opponent as much as you can?” Plouffe added.
Democratic victories on Tuesday gave party lawmakers in Washington, D.C., a confidence boost over Republicans in their battle over the government shutdown. Democrats won the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, won the mayor’s race in New York City and won their first congressional redistricting measure in California.
Trump suggested the shutdown was part of the reason why Republicans lost many of Tuesday’s races.
“Last night, it was not expected to be a victory. It was very Democrat areas. I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” Trump told Republican senators on Wednesday. “I’m not sure it was good for anybody. But we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot.”
