Excuse the truism, but winning sure beats losing.

Rarely has a political party needed a victory as badly as Democrats did in the off-year elections two weeks ago. Theirs was a party in despair, struggling to come to terms with how they were so thoroughly routed by Donald Trump and his partisans last November and reeling from the control he has exerted since.

The mood among Democrats was dark and dispirited. The promised enduring majority of the Obama coalition had long since gone up in smoke. Not only had they lost virtually everything in sight in 2024, but they had done so to the most unfathomable of opponents.

This year’s Democratic triumph was impressive even as its breadth was limited. Two congresswomen, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, won the governorship of their respective states by double-digit margins.

California’s governor, the cloyingly ambitious Gavin Newsom, gained approval of his anti-Texas redistricting measure by almost a two-to-one vote. His ultra-blue state heeded his core message of “gerrymandering for thee means gerrymandering for me.”

The premier race saw uber-progressive wunderkind Zohran Mamdani happily embrace the label of “democratic socialist” and easily win the New York City mayor’s office. All aspiring up-and-comers should be so lucky as to run against a discredited, has-been politician with the warts of Andrew Cuomo.

There were other contests as well. You know it has been a dry spell for Democrats when they loudly point to Pennsylvania judicial elections and to previously obscure races for seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission.

Here in Colorado, already deeply azure, Democrats cheered several wins for candidates and favored ballot issues. Their defeat of Aurora’s Trumpy firebrand, Danielle Jurinsky, was of particular note.

All of which gives rise to the question of how much significance should be attached to these conquests.

My answer is that they carry some consequence and harbinger potential while being far from fully predictive and not resolving the Democratic Party’s internal challenges.

By and large, these races took place on favorable terrain. Spanberger’s victory was never in doubt as Virginia has largely mimicked Colorado in its two-decade-long emergence as solidly blue.

The New Jersey battle was supposed to be closer. The size of Sherrill’s walkover spoke to Democrats’ dominance of the day. Evidence is that she managed to reverse some of Trump’s gains among Latino voters.

New York City is its own unique and idiosyncratic entity. California, meanwhile, had plenty of scores to settle with Trump. His audacious redistricting gambit in Texas and elsewhere engendered an equal overreach by way of response.

The predictive power of these off-year elections is a mixed bag. Way back in 2009, Republican sweeps of the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey presaged the GOP mid-term wave a year later.

More recently, a Republican won the Virginia governor’s office in 2021 only then for the party to notably underperform expectations the following year. In 2023, Democrats enjoyed solid showings in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Any tailwind they felt at the time quickly reversed to a brisk headwind as 2024 unfolded.

The reality is that approval ratings for both parties are in the dump. Affordability retains its political punch and voters seem determined to vent their dissatisfaction with whichever party is in power.

Trump’s poll numbers have been underwater and sinking. A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 63% of voters disapproved of his management of the federal government and 64 percent opposed his attempts to expand presidential powers.

That disapproval was enough to spell defeat for the GOP earlier this month. But before Democrats get too high on their prospects, they might reflect on numbers from the same survey showing that where 63% of voters regard Trump as out of touch, 68% hold that assessment of Democrats.

In short form, the nosedive of Trump and Republicans was sufficient to revive Democrats and tip the scales in these few locales. But Trump’s travails and excesses have not fixed Democrats’ underlying political problems.

Sherrill and Spanberger are mainstream types and will certainly govern as such. But it is Mamdani, not them, who has captured the headlines to go along with many Democratic dreams. As he acts on even a small share of his promises, market realities will bite. Trump will use Mamdani as a convenient foil and Republicans will exploit his every failing.

Democrats used to rule West Virginia and be quite competitive in states like Ohio, Arkansas, Iowa and both Dakotas. Such days are long gone.

Further, Democrats once prospered from higher turnout as marginal, less engaged voters broke their direction. That, too, is a relic of the past.

The risk is that Democrats take too much comfort from the 2025 off-year success. Their relief is palpable. But it could be short-lived unless and until they do the necessary work of reconnecting with wide swaths of middle America from which they remain largely estranged.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and The Gazette. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann