Democrats can’t ever seem to win federal races in North Carolina, but former Governor Roy Cooper is the strongest U.S. Senate candidate that the party has run there in a long time. The party has also convinced former Senator Sherrod Brown to run for his old job in Ohio. And this week, Mary Peltola, who in August 2022 won a statewide special election for Alaska’s only U.S. House seat and was reelected that November, officially entered the U.S. Senate race there.

Such a strong crop of Senate candidates is very positive news. With these candidates running and the increased unpopularity of Maine Republican Susan Collins, Democrats have a small chance of winning the U.S. Senate this year, which would block President Trump from judicial confirmations and many other powers in his final two years in office. Even if they can’t pull that off, flipping one or two seats in 2026 hands the party a very strong chance to get to 50 in 2028, giving it a majority if a Democrat wins the presidency and a Democratic vice president can cast tie-breaking votes. Democrats also have strong prospects of flipping the House this year. So even though we are enduring a dark, scary time in American democracy, a Democratic trifecta in January 2029 and a chance to reverse much of what Trump has done is now a very real possibility.

These successful Senate recruitments also tell another story: Perhaps Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the party’s leadership isn’t totally useless. Schumer has deserved the intense criticism that he received for his inept handling of a government funding fight early last year (he was better during........

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