There’s just over a month left in a midterm campaign season that feels like it has dragged on forever, and as Politico’s Jonathan Martin opined last week, the polling cliff facing Republicans has grown so dire that “the only uncertainty remaining ahead of the midterms is the depth of the party’s losses.”That’s hardly the message President Trump and his MAGA minions hoped to end with when they weighed a defensible red electoral map late last year.

Washington’s Democratic leaders are also facing their own moment of reckoning. More incumbent Democrats have lost their primaries than at any time since 1992, and the candidates who have replaced them are promising a sweeping policy agenda coupled with a pledge to shake up the party’s House and Senate leadership. But calling for change is one thing — actually delivering on it is another beast altogether. After years of missed opportunities to claim real gains under Presidents Obama and Biden, voters are sick of waiting.

Democratic outsiders, like Texas’s James Talarico, Maine’s Troy Jackson, Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan and a host of other rising stars, are channeling voters’ frustration by acknowledging that change under Democrats has often come so slowly that it often feels like nothing is moving at all. Their plan even looks beyond 2026 to the pivotal presidential contest in 2028, when insurgent Democrats may have a golden opportunity to elevate one of their own to the White House.

That’s partly because even the most ambitious reformer doesn’t expect much progress from a Democratic Congress hobbled at every turn by a recalcitrant White House. If Republicans go down in flames in November, as polls increasingly suggest they will, Trump will be in no mood to work with the Democrats who battered his MAGA coalition.

El-Sayed and company could succeed in electing an outsider to replace Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer only to find their next two years jammed with shutdown standoffs and budgetary gridlock. Democrats may find narrow areas of policy overlap with Trump, like their shared desire to claim a populist victory by banning Wall Street firms from buying up residential homes or barring lawmakers from trading stock (despite Trump being perhaps the most prolific stock trader in the presidency’s history). But those compromises won’t come cheap, and any cooperation with the White House will likely come with a healthy dose of scorn from a Democratic base that views any collaboration with Trump as a betrayal of the highest order.

Would Talarico or Jackson have the grit to accept a ban on politicians trading stock and an end to Wall Street homebuying in exchange for a big boost to ICE funding? It’s unclear, but seems highly unlikely given the campaigns they are currently running and the longer-term goals they desire from a Democratic administration beyond 2029. Insurgent Democrats may find an unlikely ally in Schumer. It’s widely expected that the long-serving New Yorker will not seek another six-year term, but the Old Man of the Senate is still acutely sensitive to his legacy.

Schumer has clearly learned a lesson from his bitter and unsuccessful proxy battle to defeat El-Sayed in the Michigan primary, and recently tried to mend fences by dispatching $10 million in superPAC money to bolster El-Sayed’s general election chances. With most of the Democratic base now rallying behind the very outsiders he failed to beat, Schumer may find it more advantageous to embrace the kind of “big-tent populism” that defines political legacies instead of trying to force his own way forward.

If Democrats’ contingent of Senate outsiders can convince the party’s rattled establishment leaders to grant them political cover as they develop their signature proposals into actual policies, they may find the breathing room necessary to be effective lawmakers. Without that buy-in, though, Democrats will once again find themselves holding power and yet fighting among themselves for the microphone. Keeping the temperamental Democratic base from losing faith will be a key test of the new lawmakers' skills.

Voters love Talarico’s proposed “New American Dream” program, a huge bundle of anticorruption and quality of life bills that would reshape federal ethics laws and address the mounting affordability crisis. But are they willing to wait until 2029 at the earliest for Talarico’s biggest priorities to get a real hearing under a possible Democratic president? Democratic voters are upset, frustrated, anxious and angry about the slow pace of change in their party.

Their most effective politicians have harnessed those emotions to generate a record amount of voter enthusiasm ahead of one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime. Winning will be the first step, but developing a real plan for using their power will be Priority No.1 once the polls close on Election Day. Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.