For Democrats, the 2012 election felt less like a competition than a confirmation. Despite a disappointing economy and the reemergence of an Islamist terrorist threat that the administration had insisted was subdued just weeks before the vote, Barack Obama won reelection. What’s more, he increased his party’s Senate majority and representation in the House. For true believers, more than just the power of incumbency was at work. This was destiny made manifest—the kind of providence foretold in John Judis and Ruy Teixeira’s The Emerging Democratic Majority. That book predicted that what Ron Brownstein called “the coalition of the ascendant”—single women, minorities, and young people—would help paper over the ideological divisions within the Democratic Party and lay the foundations for an enduring majority coalition.

To initiates in the cult of demography, the two election cycles that followed 2012 were embittering betrayals. The etiological myth that guided the left’s tactical choices for years would be shattered. Judis abandoned his theory of an emerging Democratic advantage after the 2014 midterm elections, but his acolytes reacted to this recanting as though it were heresy. It took the 2016 election cycle and Donald Trump’s unlikely victory to hammer their dispiriting reality home. Defying all conventional wisdom, Trump won a larger share of the black vote than either Mitt Romney or John McCain. He did better with Hispanics than Romney, too—a condition both Judis and conservatives such as Reihan Salam attributed to increased assimilation within immigrant communities. Trump even won a majority of white women, including 61 percent of women without college degrees.

Given this, you might expect Democrats to abandon the Marxian conviction that the arc of history bends inexorably toward their politicians and policy preferences. Well, old theologies die hard. Minorities and women might have disappointed Democrats over the last four years, but the Democratic Party appears incapable of giving up on their destiny. This time, so the thinking goes, the young will save them.

Although Hillary Clinton underperformed compared to Barack Obama among voters under the age of 30, she still won that demographic by 16 points in 2016. In the months that followed, young voters contributed immensely toward the Democratic Party’s enthusiasm edge—an edge that helped to push Democratic candidates over the finish line in some deep red states and districts. Young voters are more Democratic, more disapproving of Donald Trump, and more opposed to Republican policy achievements than most. And according to last autumn’s Harvard Institute of Politics survey, young voters prefer a Democrat-led Congress by a 2-to-1 margin.

The appetite for political change among young votes has only intensified following the massacre of high school students in Parkland, Florida. A   Harvard poll released in April found 69 percent of young voters backing Democrats, with 37 percent describing themselves as “definite” midterm voters. That’s up from 23 percent in 2014 and 31 percent in 2010. The party has responded to these conditions by investing heavily in targeted voter registration drives and advertising on mobile and social-media platforms.

If 37 percent of young voters turn out for Democratic candidates in November, that would yield a pretty dramatic turnaround for Democrats. But that’s a big “if.” According to research conducted by Tuft University’s CIRCLE Center, the number of young voters who say they’re likely to vote in midterm elections beats out the number of voters who show up at the polls by a reliably substantial margin. In 2010, the actual share of the electorate represented by young voters was just 24 percent. In 2014, it was an anemic 19.9 percent. As Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore noted recently, when it comes to the under-30 crowd, self-reported enthusiasm and intensity of feeling toward politicians are poor indicators of likelihood to vote. Compounding the Democratic Party’s conundrum, young voters’ enthusiasm to repudiate Donald Trump by proxy may be waning.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos online poll of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 found them souring on the “out-party.” Their support for a Democratic Congress is down 9 points from 2016. Perhaps most critical, these voters now say Democrats have a better plan to increase economic growth by a negligible two-point margin. In 2016, Democrats enjoyed a 12-point advantage over the GOP on economic issues among Millennial-age voters. It’s only one poll—a survey of 16,000 voters that was in the field for months—so it is easy to dismiss. And yet, amid the GOP’s recovery in generic congressional ballot polling and with the range of outcomes in November increasingly pointing away from a guaranteed Democratic takeover of the House, these results cannot be rejected outright.

If 2018 does not produce a “wave” victory for Democrats, it would be the first midterm election since 2002 to spare the “in-party” from repudiation. But such an outcome would not be beyond explication. The chief source of voters’ consternation—the president—has managed to recede into the background.

The economy is relatively strong and stable (Trump’s efforts to undermine it notwithstanding). The foreign conflicts to which American troops are committed are not producing an intolerable number of fatalities. Divisive social issues have the power to galvanize the most motivated voters, but that motivation is fleeting and dependent upon exogenous events. Donald Trump’s imprudent tweets have become background noise. And his otherwise questionable conduct has not split his party. These circumstances may not last, but they prevail today.

Omens continue to point toward a disaster for the GOP in November. The near-record number of House Republicans declining to seek reelection—including the sitting speaker of the house—suggests minority status is still imminent. Yet a condition that was once a fait accompli is today a question mark. Democrats insist upon Balkanizing the electorate while simultaneously projecting palpable discomfort over the prospect of appealing to Donald Trump’s voters. That strategy is only viable so long as Donald Trump continues to be the all-consuming and largely negative figure he was in the first year of his administration.

In the 1,300 words Reuters published around the poll revealing increasing satisfaction with Republican governance among young voters, Trump’s name appears only once. And then, only to describe the extent to which Democrats had failed to tar the GOP as the party of Trump.

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